KEY POINTS:
Years of Sky lobbying against limits on sports rights have come to nought as the television war between Rupert Murdoch's pay TV firm and free-to-air channels hots up.
Cabinet has approved the next stage of a broadcasting review of regulations to deal with convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting.
And it includes looking at anti-siphoning rules despite diligent lobbying of Labour and National.
The review has a whole raft of changes including the creation of a new super quango to regulate content both in traditional broadcasting and online. Labour's thumbs-up to examining Sky - revealed this week - marks a big success for TVNZ and MediaWorks.
They told the Ministry for Culture and Heritage that Sky TV - which also owns Prime - had deep pockets and bundled programme purchases.
MediaWorks pressed for anti-siphoning laws ensuring that the pay TV company was not allowed to own some key sports events.
Sky winning the rights to the London Olympics shocked TVNZ, which has always covered the Games.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage team found there was prima-facie evidence that Sky's position could limit New Zealanders' ability to see important events.
Sky says it is doing nothing wrong and the only dominant player in New Zealand was TVNZ with 44 per cent of viewership.
Chief executive John Fellett says he is not worried about the next stage in the review unless its aim was to entrench the power of TVNZ.
He said that some investors had been concerned in the past about regulatory moves but when he explained the situation they did not view it as a problem.
Many are surprised that the anti-siphoning laws survived given that National and Labour politicians have both had a hands-off approach to media dominance issues and avoided challenging Sky for 20 years.
MEDIA OVERSIGHT
The review goes beyond Sky TV and one option is to have two new regulatory bodies for the converged telecommunications and media worlds. One would look after network issues and the other would look at content, opening the door to more government oversight of media and online content.
One TV insider counselled networks to be wary about the review, saying there was a strong push toward regulation in the bureaucracy, and oversight of media content could be a problem.
NATRAD NOELLE
Who will replace Sean Plunket when he stands down from Morning Report? Plunket would not speculate, saying his endorsement would be the kiss of death for any applicant. But one scenario floating around Blogland is for Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan taking over from Plunket, and Noelle McCarthy taking over Nine To Noon. Gordon Bennett.
That sounds unlikely to me. McCarthy and her Irish brogue are inordinately popular with the powers that be at Radio New Zealand, even though - without being too xenophobic - she is a strange fit for the "sounds like us" branding Radio New Zealand uses.
She even turned up recently as a political commentator on Prime's election programme. A part of the Auckland celebrity circuit McCarthy - who made her name on BFM - delivers a young profile for Radio New Zealand National. She fills in on Jim Mora's afternoon show.
Many would say she delivers pleasant light listening. But surely she would struggle to hold together Nine to Noon.
What are Mora's plans? Sometimes he seems uninterested in his afternoon slot, apart from the panel discussion. Maybe Mora and McCarthy - who also writes a column for the Weekend Herald - could share the show.
Or maybe RNZ could dig out Wayne Mowat, the longtime afternoon host who was pushed out for Mora who has been enjoying his old five-days-a-week wage on a rather light schedule of fill-in jobs.
EDITORIAL SHAKE-UP
Around five people are believed to be on the shortlist for the new role of managing editor for the Fairfax Sunday papers.
The new role will see the Sundays managing editor in day-to-day control of the Sunday Star Times and overseeing both that paper and the tabloid Sunday News. The move is part of a major reconfiguration in editorial management at media companies.
Fairfax editorial staff are creating a sub-editing "hub" for some pages. The world and business pages of its nine New Zealand daily newspapers and the feature pages of the Dominion Post, the Press and Timaru Herald will be produced at the hub being established from next month.
Also Fairfax is publishing a new weekend magazine inserted into the Press, Dominion Post and the Waikato Times.
Fairfax Magazines has made similar mergers of editorial management for its titles while ACP magazines has a combined editor-in-chief overseeing Metro and North & South. APN News & Media set the ball rolling when it outsourced sub-editing for its newspapers to Pagemasters.
OLD FOR NEW
ACP Media has ceased publication of the print version of Auto Trader, focusing attention on the online version autotrade.co.nz. The change is part of the trend towards online classified advertising.
ACP said editor Mike Stock, the award- winning editor of the magazine, would continue as a contributor. The last retail edition of the Auto Trader magazine will be on sale on October 2.
FLIM-FLAM
Fairfax Magazines' ad department continues to make incursions into the editorial for the Sunday Star Times liftout Sunday. This column mentioned last month how Sunday included a plug for advertiser OPSM in its "going up, going down" list, though the magazine denied there was an ad deal.
Last week the SST ran an advertisement for Arnott's Tim Tams biscuits in the format of its rather engaging consumer comparison column.
Its a very good readable ad, so no doubt Arnotts paid extra for the plug. But it was a direct steal on an editorial format and there was no label advising it was an ad. Is everything for sale at Sunday?
I am showing my age, but I am still surprised at the degree that the old rules about editorial plugs are changing. You would have thought the TV One consumer watchdog Fair Go was off limits.
But no.
This week its advertising awards included an executive from camera company Canon presenting prizes of a video camera to school competitions for the best mock ad. Fair Go insists there was no ad deal with Canon. If that is the case Canon did very well getting a free plug on New Zealand's premier consumer show in return for a a couple of $800 cameras.
A FILMMAKER WRITES
Producers for the estimated $15 million UK-New Zealand co-production Dean Spanley have taken umbrage with the column item "New Zealand millions support British Film" published last week.
Producer Matthew Metcalfe said: "Dean Spanley is a shining example of what New Zealanders can achieve (and Kiwis had all the best roles) and is something that we should be celebrating not bringing down.
"I am incredibly proud of this movie and of what the New Zealanders who worked on it have achieved," he said.
The New Zealand Film Commission contributed $3-4 million to the $15 million movie and Metcalfe said the amount spent on New Zealand facets of the movie matched New Zealand's share of the budget.
The movie is set in Edwardian England and stars Sam Neill, Bryan Brown and Peter O'Toole.
Another Dean Spanley producer, London-based expat Alan Harris, has also communicated through his lawyers Wiggins of Piccadilly. The article questioned New Zealand Film Commission funding for the movie which tells a British story but includes investment from New Zealand taxpayers and features Kiwis in key creative roles.
The adviser to the commission's Film Fund, David Gascoigne - who was quoted in the article - was also unhappy.
