Agent says infomercial queen's attempts to repay Rawaka creditors not helped by intrusive publicity
Talent agent Karen Kay has blasted media for reporting Suzanne Paul's lack of progress paying creditors of the failed Rawaka Maori cabaret tourist venture.
Paul's longtime agent and friend says Paul is working hard and is desperate to pay back creditors
But six years after Rawaka Ltd went into liquidation
- and despite reassurance that she would deliver - liquidators said yesterday they had not received any extra money and did not expect to.
Paul's agent says the former infomercials queen is doing her best but media coverage is harming her attempts to create a new money-earning venture.
"She is living on the bones of her arse - literally earning enough money to survive," Kay said.
She said Paul was living in the leafy North Shore suburb of Greenhithe. She had sublet so she could pay the rent.
"Every time the media do stories like this she loses whatever funding she has got together."
Kay pointed out that Paul could easily have called time on Rawaka.
She criticised the media for articles that depicted Paul as struggling financially.
Her winning Dancing With the Stars in 2007 was a glamorous PR coup, as was the release of her book But Wait There's More in 2008.
But Kay said she had promoted Paul's role in the TV show to get her back and make her feel good about herself.
"The fight of that lady - she is knocked down and she comes back up.
"Just because people have a media profile, just because they get down to the bottom, it doesn't mean they do not have a right to get back," she said.
Asked how Paul's financial status had affected their own financial relationship, Kay said: "I care about Suzanne enough that I do not care about her money."
Distinct from the Rawaka liquidation, Paul has paid some of the money owed to personal creditors.
NEW ERA BEGINS
Two new directors for Radio New Zealand signal the Government is demanding changes at public radio.
It could mean an attempt to make much-needed improvements to the ailing state broadcaster, which has suffered under funding cuts and needs to inject vitality into a tired format for National Radio.
There are, however, dangers that rather than creating a renaissance the Government will push to commercialise and ruin RNZ's unique place as our only non-commercial broadcaster.
Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman yesterday announced the appointment of Richard Griffin and Josh Easby as his hand-picked talent to a board that has clashed with the Government in the past - resisting calls for new thinking and opting to stick with slow and relentless cuts to quality.
While initially they are the only new members, it is widely expected that the present chairwoman, Christine Grice, will not stand when her term ends in April next year.
Some expect Griffin to take over as chairman, though an existing board member, former National Cabinet minister Paul East, might fit that role better.
Staff approached by the Business Herald welcomed the appointment of Griffin to the board.
He is a charming presence in the murky limbo between politics and journalism. He has direct experience as former political editor of Radio New Zealand and was chief press secretary to the Jim Bolger National Government.
He counts Bolger as a personal friend, but has been a master at being mates with politicians of many hues.
A regular panellist on Jim Mora's afternoon show, he has said he will give up his role as a political pundit.
Charming - with friends including Paul Holmes, Bill Ralston and Winston Peters - he has shown a remarkable ability to please many political camps.
The other new appointee, Easby, is another media man with experience in journalism and who has run a swathe of commercial stations.
Coleman signalled the move towards change: "They both have a major contribution to make in helping Radio New Zealand develop a plan for sustaining its services into the future."
Inevitably that will mean questions about sponsorship of Concert FM, but maybe also at an editorial level balancing the liberal-left bias of the broadcasters.
The dangers of that rebalancing act are obvious enough - with the likes of Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully critical of the broadcaster in the past. One of the big questions in the future is how management will cope with an activist board.
The Labour Government tried a similar activist role at TVNZ and that ended in disaster, with politicians dabbling in company affairs and management.
The key figure at Radio New Zealand is the chief executive, Peter Cavanagh, whom the former Labour-appointed chairman Brian Corbin reappointed for a second five-year term before the last election.
National was furious at the appointment by an outgoing chairman.
Under chairwoman Grice and the past board, Cavanagh has had largely free rein with few questions about direction despite increasingly glaring problems.
He enjoys a mixed reputation with staff and many believe the energy for change at Radio New Zealand will have to come from staff, and not senior management.
TANGIBLE EXPAND
SHB Media - the company that publishes Idealog and Good magazines among others - has been folded into up-and-coming niche publisher Image Centre Group.
HB Media founders Vincent Heeringa and Martin Bell will be shareholders of the expanding Image Centre Group, which trades as Tangible Media and includes Dish and Real Groove Magazine among its titles.
Image Centre executive director Mike Hutcheson was upbeat about the latest expansion.
He said he had a good rapport with Heeringa from when he worked at the Independent in the Warren Berryman days and he was looking forward to the new arrangements.
The merger is part of a prolonged period of growth at Image Centre, a printing firm that merged with its client Jones Publishing, setting it on the path to be a media company.
While the firm's roots in print proved valuable in tough economic times for media, the success of that arm will no doubt be built around the expertise of Hutcheson and Roger MacDonnell, arguably New Zealand's most brilliant adman.
MacDonnell, a former longtime chief executive of Colenso BBDO, joined Image Centre as a director last year.
WASTED DAYS
Broadcasters are dipping a toe into the toxic wasteland that surrounds the receivership of Wellington television production company Ninox.
David Baldock - a key player in the company that broke up last year over a clash between directors - confirmed that he was producing a new emergency services programme for TV3 through Sauce TV, a Wellington post-production firm in which he has a 25 per cent stake.
The Business Herald was told in an anonymous letter that Baldock was developing a version of Location, Location, Location for TVNZ but he said that was not the case.
Squabbles over Ninox are part of a sad episode in New Zealand television where one of our most successful commercialTV production companies has gone belly- up.
Last year TVNZ lost more than $200,000 because of the dispute between Baldock and other directors John McEwen and Gary Hannam.
Ninox's receivership was followed by the failure of the TV series Double Lives.
Taxpayer funding agency New Zealand on Air gave Sauce TV $123,000 for a new series of Invisible Force, a documentary programme.
