The nation's media from A to Z

Will Paul Henry step down from <i>Breakfast</i> to launch a new show? Photo / Supplied

From the safety of the silly season John Drinnan delivers his take on the state of the nation's media - from A to Z.

AVATARS 'R' US

Special effects firm Weta played a big role in Avatar, the Hollywood movie that seamlessly merges SFX with live action. We should all enjoy that whiz-bang technology and our role in creation of the new era in entertainment technology. The grant to James Cameron's Avatar is likely to exceed the $48.6 million given to Peter Jackson's King Kong under the Large Budget Screen Production Grant incentive. Just 10 days after its release the film had grossed US$269 million from United States domestic sales alone.

BAZZA THE BOLD

Rupert Murdoch is making a big push to build a pay wall for online content. His most advanced follower in this country is Barry Colman, owner of National Business Review - who has sights set on the holy grail of adequately monetising online content. Heading into 2010 the question will be whether Bazza can provide content that stands out in the sea of free online material.

CONCERTED CRUELTY

Commercial television shows are showered with indirect subsidies worth millions to make up for the advertising downturn. Yet politicians have looked on as National Radio faces the death of a thousand cuts. The stakes are high. If politicians are not prepared to give more money to stop the rot at National Radio, maybe it is time to sacrifice Concert FM and sell it to the private sector.

DIGITAL DILEMMAS

Digital TV, My Sky IPTV, TiVo, MyFreeview, Mobile TV. Techie geeks think it's great, but for many people the technological revolution is just confusing. Maybe 2010 will be the year the Government provides some leadership with a map to the currently uncharted digital media landscape.

ELLIS IN WONDERLAND

These are hairy days for state-owned media as chief executive Rick Ellis turns TVNZ from public broadcaster into "a digital media company". All the better for National to sell off TVNZ at some point in the future. But as resources are shifted from TVNZ's role as a pre-eminent video content maker to developing its role as a digital distribution company, an important cultural institution is being disembowelled.

FLYING WITH DRAFT FCB

If news media faced a battle in 2009, so too did the advertising agencies, which faced a slump in the money spent on ads. Results ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous but one agency that has survived with a healthy glow is Draft FCB Advertising, which picked up National Bank and Westfield accounts among others. Under chief executive Bryan Crawford, FCB shows signs of climbing out of its small fish image to challenge the Big Three - Colenso BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB.

GRUMPY OLD MEN

Here's to the curmudgeons - Radio Live's Michael Laws, Newstalk's Leighton Smith, the Herald's Garth George et al. Bloggers and the "Great and Good" on the left loathe their irrational attacks and self-confident assertions about what is right and wrong. But the sometimes sour-faced delivery disguises the fact that they strike a chord with a significant minority - or possibly a majority. You might not agree with their take on the world but they ensure that unfashionable views get an airing. Long may that continue.

HARK THE HERALD

The year ended with the editor of the Herald on Sunday, Shayne Currie, being appointed deputy editor, news for the daily Herald. A replacement at the HoS has not yet been named. Is this rearrangement at the country's biggest daily newspaper a sign of more changes to come?

IMPEY OUT, AUDSLEY IN

Chief executive Brent Impey exited after leading MediaWorks through an economic boom that ended soon after Ironbridge took over. Radio assets have stood up better than TV, but with the level of debt on the books staff can expect tough times ahead.

Aussie private equity firm Ironbridge took off some of the pressure by providing a $70 million cash infusion. Now it has hired Ian Audsley - an Aussie with a reputation as a hatchet man - for a 12-month contract running TV3 and C4.

JUMPING FOR JOY

After adopting a bunker mentality in 2009 there was palpable relief at the end of the year with signs that the economy is emerging from a slump and that a leading cause of the media's horror year is on the mend.

KILL HIM

The old days when Kim Hill struck fear into the heart of National Radio guests - earning her the anagram Kill Him - are long gone. Instead her Saturday morning show is a beacon of brilliant broadcasting: intelligent, unique - and, yes, sometimes still annoying. Long may her reign continue in 2010.

LUCKY LAST?

Is this the last of the end-of-year wraps? We grumpy old-timers can remember the days when media would wait until the New Year. Nowadays they start to call a wrap-up in early December. What is that quotation? - The last shall be first.

MUST-SEE MAORI TV

What is Maori TV for? Chief executive Jim Mather has to balance the tensions between promoting the Maori language, while drawing a wider and much bigger audience of urban middle class Maori and Pakeha. If rave reviews were ratings then advertisers would be beating a path to Maori TV doors. Yet Maori TV stands out because it is focused on unique content and not just on chasing advertising dollars.

NOOK OF NICENESS

Some praise. Lynne Freeman made the arts accessible on Natrad, Sunday News had a good year of news scoops, TV3 hit the funny bones with its Friday-night comedy Seven Days. Greg Boyed and Miriama Kamo were the star duo of TV news. The Documentary channel on Sky Television provided intelligent fare that free-to-air TV ignores at its peril.

OH HENRY!

Will Paul Henry step down from Breakfast with his new show planned for 5.30 weeknights and expected to start in May? Tim Wilson - whose personal take on the US for TVNZ news was heartfelt but redundant - is favoured by news bosses, but he will have a tough job matching Henry and delivering TVNZ the shock jock publicity stunts that boost ratings.

PVR PARADISE

With Sky Television in nearly 50 per cent of homes the new advanced personal video recorder (pvr) TiVo has a limited market. It is late to the market yet early to attract an audience who want to use its advanced internet capabilities to start downloading programming directly to the television screen. TiVo's arrival has sidelined the impact of Freeview. But it will keep Sky honest and slow the natural inclination of a monopoly to overcharge.

QUESTION

Lisa Owen has proved herself to be a star reporter at state television - not least for her independence in asking awkward questions about TVNZ's own handling of the Tony Veitch saga. Why did state television do so little to retain the services of Owen, who was told her job would not be kept for her while she joined her TVNZ reporter partner on assignment overseas?

REALLY OUTRAGEOUS

The Parliamentary press gallery thought Hone Harawira had been tamed and seemed shocked by his email outburst referring to white motherf*****s raping Maori lands. A One News reporter even thought it was "outrageous". Is it really shocking that a long-time Maori activist such as Harawira has strong views about Pakeha? More outrageous is that TV journalists at both TVNZ and TV3 present views on news events and that One News should introduce an opinion into such a racially charged issue.

SAATCHI SURPRISE

Saatchi & Saatchi enters the New Year at a pivotal point as chief executive Andrew Stone - aka Rocky - and executive creative director Mike O'Sullivan (Mike O) are leaving the firm to set up their own agency, with Air New Zealand expected to be among clients.

Rocky's recent replacement, Nicky Bell, is searching for O'Sullivan's replacement. But 2009 offered an odd spectacle - one of the country's leading ad agencies ending the year in a state of flux.

TOPPS MOVIE

Linda and Jools Topp starred in the country's most successful documentary that may wind up as one of the most commercially successful movies (based on the return on investment). Obviously that is down to the Topps, but applause must also go to producer Arani Cuthbert and director Leanne Pooley.

UNDER THE RADAR

Deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Economic Development is a report to Cabinet that will decide the relative strength of free and pay television. The report recommends the future for UHF TV frequencies used by Sky analogue channels that will close down early this year. If - as expected - they remain with Sky, the Government will once more be favouring pay TV and delivering another blow to free-to-air TV and Freeview.

VINTNER'S DUCK

Director Niki Caro's version of the Elizabeth Knox book The Vintner's Luck worked neither commercially nor artistically. The world's best directors have produced dogs of movies - that is the high-risk game of movie production. But millions of dollars of public money was pumped into this movie set in France. Did the New Zealand Film Commission ensure oversight of Caro's vision?

WITI WARS

One of the country's leading authors, Witi Ihimaera, was discovered to have plagiarised content for his latest book. The result? Initial denial from publishers at Penguin books and concerted support from Professor Ihimaera's employers at Auckland University. Some writers spoke out but overall the literary community wound up concluding that plagiarism didn't matter - so long as it was "unintentional".

XT MARKS THE SPOT

Mobile newcomer 2 Degrees delivered an ad campaign featuring Rhys Darby which was a masterfully understated response to the high tech trickery of the old Vodafone and Telecom mobile phone duopoly. Colenso BBDO's "Fold" was beautifully conceived but the TV campaign for XT has an element of "same old, same old".

Was this the reason that Saatchi boss Kevin Roberts - a director of Telecom - made such a radical change to the New Zealand agency?

YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY

2009 was the year of the advertorial in some media, ads disguised and dressed up or camouflaged as editorial.

Advertiser products got editorial plugs and under-resourced media more easily accepted PR puffery. News websites unquestioningly repeated press releases as bylined news items while in-house magazines - such as Telecom's - stridently trumpeted themselves as independent. One view is that this is the evolution of media.

The argument is that all information is good information and consumers are smart enough to recognise paid content.

Another view is that the accelerated blurring between advertising and editorial undermines both.

ZAPPED

Government telecoms and transmission firm Kordia is earmarked for potential privatisation or part privatisation. That might be a good idea so long as it is not bought by Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra Clear. Consumers would lose a valuable independent body servicing the digital economy and keeping the big boys honest.