RNZ hosts Corin Dann and Ingrid Hipkiss and Stuff journalists - and soon-to-be-mums - Amelia Wade and Tova O'Brien.
Minister raises a number of performance points with RNZ, including Māori content; RNZ pauses contentious app plan; Tova O’Brien and Amelia Wade celebrate pregnancies; NZME advocacy ad review; Agency spreads its wings with global management move.
RNZ has amended its 12-month performance plan after the Government sought - and received - “more ambitious” targets from the public broadcaster around trust metrics.
In a letter to RNZ chairman Jim Mather in May – in response to RNZ’s draft statement of performance expectations (SPE) for 2024/25 – Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith said he expected RNZ to “continue to focus on preserving and enhancing trust metrics and high editorial standards”.
“Trusted content, trusted organisation and balanced reporting measures and targets should be more ambitious than currently presented to ensure that they drive performance improvement year-on-year,” Goldsmith wrote in the letter, released to the Herald under the Official Information Act.
He also said greater qualitative detail about the broadcaster’s performance measures “would assist the public to better understand what success looks like for RNZ”.
And he also wanted RNZ to show how its performance compared with that of private sector organisations including in audience reach, content and costs.
Goldsmith said the Government acknowledged challenges within the media sector, but wanted to ensure that RNZ reviewed its strategy and SPE to ensure they were aligned with the broadcaster’s charter.
“For example, the SPE currently states that one of RNZ’s long-term goals is to ‘embed the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi’,” he wrote.
“I suggest that RNZ is more specific and practical in describing in its SPE how that relates to its charter. I also request further clarity on the 50% target of internal commissioning investment in Māori content and how it relates to the Government’s separate investment in Te Māngai Pāho.”
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson told Media Insider that, as was normal with the SPE process, the organisation sought feedback from the minister and officials.
After discussion with the RNZ board, its statement was amended from an initial draft to include a new financial efficiency measure on cost per capita comparison; it inserted direct language from the charter on reflecting culture; and it added more language related to growth.
It also increased the trust target - lifting it five percentage points.
By June 30, 2025, the percentage of the population that agreed RNZ was an organisation you could trust - as measured by survey work - was now targeted to be 50% (up from 45% in 2022/23) and the percentage of people who agreed RNZ provided fair and balanced information was now targeted to be 52% (up from 47% in 2022/23).
Longer term, Thompson said, RNZ was also working to achieve the following by 2027:
The confirmed SPE also reinforces the long-term goal of embedding the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Part of this is by ensuring appropriate investment in Māori content, it says. The SPE notes that RNZ does not have enough “internal capability” to meet its charter requirements in this area, “therefore it needs to commission external expertise”. It aims to spend 50% of its external commissioning budget this year on Māori content.
Two weeks ago, Thompson also came under scrutiny from opposition MP and former Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson.
Jackson described Māori programming on RNZ as minimal – Thompson countered that with examples of Nathan Rarere on Morning Report and, shortly, Mihingarangi Forbes on Saturday Morning.
He acknowledged more work needed to be done to retain Māori journalists at RNZ.
His exchange with Jackson became pointed at one stage.
Jackson: “Are the Māori programmes just on the weekend? Is that what you’re saying?”
Thompson: “What do you mean just on the weekend? Weekends are really important for us.”
Jackson: “I would have thought Monday to Friday was more important. And I would have thought primetime was important.”
Thompson: “I’m aware of your position. We are continuing to develop our rautaki Māori [strategy]. You can hear reo on all of our programmes. We are covering those stories, you just need to listen to...
Jackson: “No, I listen all the time, Paul. It’s actually not good enough. The reality is you’ve got no Māori in primetime, still, after all these years.”
Thompson spoke of rich Māori perspectives coming through some of RNZ’s other channels, including podcasts and digital text stories.
“Can we do more? Absolutely. And thank you for your challenge.”
In his letter in May, Goldsmith said shareholding ministers were supportive of RNZ and TVNZ sharing resources where feasible, “including working together to develop digital investment capability”.
TVNZ has embarked on a new “digital first” strategy - it will spend up to $100 million on new technology and a massive internal cultural shift - to ensure it has doubled digital audiences, trebled digital revenue and built a sustainable and profitable future business by 2030.
Meanwhile, RNZ has pushed pause on a somewhat controversial plan to create a new app that would strive to attract the same news audiences as the NZ Herald and Stuff.
Instead, says the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, it will look to improve its existing website and app.
The Herald revealed last December that RNZ was developing “a new digital experience” targeting 30- to 49-year-olds - putting it on a likely collision course with commercial media companies in a strategy that appeared to contradict earlier promises about how it would spend a $25 million annual boost in public money.
The broadcaster had been planning a special mobile app with a new brand name and an extension of its existing website
An internal RNZ document said the new digital experience was “intended to sit somewhere between Facebook ... and Stuff”.
A design of how the app could look featured in the document.
It would have offered “additional value by being free of advertising, which enables a calmer and less ‘busy’ experience with none of the toxicity present in social media comments”, said the document.
RNZ went to market to find a technology partner to help build the digital experience.
But the plan has been put on hold.
“As part of our strategy, we have prioritised improvements to our audience’s digital experience on our existing apps and website and on social media,” said RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson.
“We are also focused on transformational projects to introduce an updated website content management system and a new editorial production system. We expect to provide a new audio-playing experience and podcast section on our website later this month.
“This prioritisation means we have paused work on the new digital experience.
“At this stage, we don’t have a firm timeline for when work on it will resume as this will depend on the speed with which the transformational projects can be implemented and bedded in.”
It wouldn’t be a surprise if the whole plan is ditched altogether. It certainly seemed a provocative move, especially RNZ is partly tasked with serving under-served audiences, not simply replicating the efforts of existing commercial companies.
In a Media Insider survey last December, Stuff chief executive Laura Maxwell cited RNZ’s plans as a major issue.
“The leaked document you reported on in this column ... outlines RNZ positioning themselves to invest their funding into creating a digital proposition somewhere ‘between Stuff and Facebook’.
“Whilst I’m flattered by the imitation .. this flies in the face of their position in May where they stated they wouldn’t be replicating Stuff or NZ Herald’s online platforms.”
NZME is continuing to review its policies on advocacy advertising following a controversial front-page advertisement on the front page of last Wednesday’s NZ Herald.
As Media Insider reported yesterday, a group of more than 170 legal academics and lawyers say the advertisement for the Hobson’s Pledge lobby group was “abhorrent” and likely to “mislead, deceive or confuse customers both explicitly and by implication, ambiguity, exaggeration and false representation”.
But Hobson’s Pledge is standing by the ad, inviting opponents to outline exactly what they have got wrong – trustee Don Brash claims there is nothing untrue and that opponents are attempting to suppress political discussion and dissent.
In the meantime, NZME, which is now caught in the middle of arguments from both sides, has rejected a second ad that the lobby group wanted published in the Herald today.
“We are reviewing our policies and processes around advocacy advertising and we have advised Hobson’s Pledge that we will not be running their advertisement,” said an NZME spokeswoman.
I suspect part of the solution lies in the placement of advertising. Like the CTU’s attack ad on Christopher Luxon on the front of the Herald last year, the Hobson’s Pledge ad has generated fierce debate, and criticism.
As some other commentators have opined, part of the solution may be having a policy that allows advocacy ads that meet advertising standards to run inside the newspaper.
In the crazy, wild changes in the media world, former Newshub colleagues Tova O’Brien and Amelia Wade have become workmates again, at Stuff.
Now they both have their biggest assignments to look forward to by the end of the year - motherhood.
“It’s hard to imagine being any happier,” O’Brien told Media Insider.
She is due in December.
“[Partner] Cam and I are still pinching ourselves - though my suddenly very prominent bump leaves absolutely no room for doubt that it’s really happening!
“I definitely need more time to make sense of this flatpack nappy changing table but we can’t wait to meet our little one - our all-dancing, pineapple-craving, long-legged, not-so-little little one.“
Wade is due a month earlier, in November.
“Exactly a week after we found out about Newshub’s closure, two lines appeared on the pregnancy test,” says Wade.
“In disbelief that such a thing was possible during so much stress, I took the test in a supermarket toilet on the morning walk to Parliament. But miraculously it had happened - the pregnancy very much planned, the redundancy less so.
“In a state of shock the first person I told wasn’t my partner, but the IRD in a panic about maternity pay. A lovely woman reassured me that you only have to work 26 weeks across the year to the baby’s birth date to be entitled (just in case anyone else is redundant and pregnant!).
“My new bosses at the Sunday Star-Times have been incredibly supportive and my other half and I can’t wait to meet our little boy in November.”
Congratulations to them both.
And another good news story to round out the weekly Midweek Media Insider column.
Brand experience, PR and social agency Darkhorse is well and truly developing its global roots.
Fuelled by “substantial growth” in its Auckland, Sydney and Singapore offices, the agency is announcing today that co-founder Mike Hewitt will take on the Sydney-based role of Darkhorse chief executive, and business partner Francesca Kelly becomes managing director NZ.
Supporting them is co-founder and executive creative director Liam Taylor, “who continues to play a key role in the agency’s executive management and global expansion”.
The moves follow Darkhorse Australia winning several high-profile accounts including Sephora, and extended work with existing clients Jaguar Land Rover and Pernod Ricard.
“My family and I are pumped to move to beautiful Sydney and I’m excited for this next step in our agency’s ambitious plan to harness and export the magic of Darkhorse around the world,” says Hewitt.
“Project Worldwide acquired Darkhorse in 2018 with the aligned aspiration for it to be a true global agency. Supercharged by Project’s alliance of 15 agencies, 42 markets and 2000+ teammates, we have big plans for both our growth and our client proposition.”
Kelly said: “These changes are not only exciting for our agency’s trajectory but they strengthen our offering to existing clients such as BP, Pernod Ricard and L’Oreal, who are looking to leverage our footprint across Australia, New Zealand and beyond.”
The agency’s stable covers specialists across strategy, creative, PR, influence, content, digital, social and events.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
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