Eight months ago I left TVNZ as Head of News and Current Affairs and ever since I've tried to keep my head down, mouth shut and breathe through my nose when it comes to what's going on at the state broadcaster.

However, now I'm starting a political column in this paper I thought I needed to clear the air. Everything about TVNZ is political, so it's a relevant subject to kick off on.

I spent nearly four years there and, yes, I made some dreadful mistakes. Apart, perhaps, from Helen Clark, we all must concede occasionally we make mistakes.

Probably the worst error I made was accepting the job in the first place because the fundamentally flawed nature of the company makes it almost impossible for anyone to succeed in a TVNZ management role.

My sympathies go to my successor, Australian Anthony Flannery. Although the lucky bugger has taken off to the World Cup for the next five weeks. Still, maybe that's not a blessing. God knows what catastrophes may occur while he is away.

Now, I know you all want to know the inside gossip on Judy Bailey, Paul Holmes and Susan Wood and I'll get to that, but first you must endure a short lesson on why the place has a tendency to implode and why it keeps lurching into a tailspin: TVNZ attracts trouble like a magnet.

We hold it much more accountable than any other business in the country because it's state owned. We all feel we have some share in it and, besides, many of the folk working there are regular visitors to our living rooms every night.

Those visitors are often a potentially incendiary mix of talented creatives and performers, with all the attendant traits of ego, insecurity and over-confidence. The bottom line is they are prone to hissy fits.

TVNZ can and does become a political football as puffed-up politicians use it to boost their own profile by grandstanding on its every mistake and attempting to embarrass the Government as a result. They're also intent on settling their own scores with the news division for its coverage of their mistakes and try to cow the state broadcaster into doing weaker coverage of their own abysmal performance.

Rival media organisations give TVNZ's blunders maximum coverage because they think the public are fascinated by the lives of the telly rich and famous. Those rival media organisations are, of course, TVNZ's competitors.

TVNZ is a Croc. I am not being rude here, that's what you call a Crown Owned Company. This means it has a shareholder that is schizophrenic. As a shareholder, the Government wants a 9 per cent return on capital invested but it also wants, through the charter, a non-commercial social dividend. The Government wants to have its cake and eat it too and that just doesn't work.