Sean Plunket and Wayne Wright jnr during an interview on The Platform in 2024. Photo / YoutTube screengrab
Sean Plunket takes full control of The Platform as rich-lister exits: “This has been a great ride.”
Rich-lister Wayne Wright jnr has exited as majority owner of The Platform online radio station, with host and co-founder Sean Plunket becoming 100% shareholder and sole director.
Wright told Media Insider that he had sold his 75% shareholding to Plunket for a confidential sum. It had been a “great ride”, but he had found media to be a “high-risk, low-yield space”, and it was time for the now self-sustainable media business to find new and additional investment.
In a statement, Plunket described the exit of Wright as “planned” and said financial details of the transaction were “commercially sensitive“.
“I cannot truly explain my gratitude to the Wright family for what they have done for journalism and me personally over the past four years,” Plunket said.
“Their courage, particularly that of deeply missed Chloe, and their commitment to the principles of free speech and editorial independence have been vital in establishing The Platform as a source of robust and open debate in New Zealand society.”
Businesswoman and philanthropist Chloe Wright - the wife of Wayne Wright snr - died in September 2023.
“We have moved to the next chapter,” Plunket told Media Insider. “They were always in it to get me set up... and move on to other things they are expert at, and good at doing.
“It’s a private transaction between me and the Wrights, but we part as very good friends.”
The Platform was established in September 2021, backed by the Wright Family Trust.
The trust ended its start-up funding arrangements in March - at the same time, Wayne Wright jnr personally purchased the trust’s shares. Until this week, he owned 75% of the company through related parties, with Plunket owning the other 25%.
Wright told Media Insider today that the investment over the past four years stemmed from a mix of business opportunity and “also an ideological view that the New Zealand media landscape needed a bit of a shake-up”.
Plunket said in a statement that The Platform was set up “during dark times in New Zealand journalism”, asserting “the state exchanged control of public narrative for cash and public confidence in media integrity was at all-time lows”.
The Wright family’s funding had helped The Platform move from an initial start-up phase to a “self-sustaining media company”.
Wright and Plunket said in July that The Platform now operated on advertising and subscription revenue, donations and merchandise sales, although both spoke of the challenges in the current media landscape.
“I would have to say that as a business, it’s walking a very fine line,” Wright said in July. “It’s a tough industry... We struggle month to month, but we have survived on our own, if you will, since March.”
Wright said today that it had dawned on him, especially over the past year, that the media industry was a high-risk, low-yield space.
“As we look at the state of The Platform now - and it is bubbling along as self-sustainable - it’s pretty clear that for it to advance in this industry, it’s going to need additional investment for brand recognition, product range, content range, perhaps the range of hosts that it has.
“And we’re just not prepared to do the additional investment that it takes to do that... and so if I remained as a majority shareholder, or more broadly, if the Wright family remained with a financial interest in The Platform, it really cuffs Sean’s hands in being able to bring on new investment.
“However, with him owning 100% of it, he can now be in a much stronger position to give away or sell parts of that ownership for investment. It was really a strategic decision based on the best opportunities for The Platform to grow.”
Plunket said in his statement that the work was not finished. “It remains important that The Platform expand its range of content and brand awareness, and this will require further investment.”
Plunket said he would “explore additional investment opportunities; unfettered by the Wright family majority ownership and financial governance”.
Wright said of all of his business investments and commercial projects, The Platform had been “by far the most exciting, entertaining, [and] greatest learning experience”.
It had also given him “the greatest access to other decision makers and leaders”.
“This has been a great ride. I think Sean and I made a really good team, between my commercial experience and his obviously extensive journalism experience.
“I think we’ve been a really good team in getting a company off the ground that a lot of our early critics said would never last.”
That included, he said, getting it to a point where it was a real company that employed people. “It’s not just Sean in his living room giving a podcast.”
Plunket said the company had about eight fulltime staff, as well as some part-timers. Other hosts include Michael Laws and Leah Panapa.
The Platform has endured a fair share of controversy, sometimes arising from the social media comments of Plunket himself.
He found himself the subject of a backlash in some quarters following a social media post on X in July in which he wrote, “I’m really concerned about the mass outbreak of anorexia in Gaza.”
Write David Farrier, who first revealed on his Webworm platform in July that the Wright family had stopped funding The Platform, said at the time: “His post has been viewed over 67,000 times – it’s popular. And it is an objectively heinous thing to write as infants, children and adults starve to death.”
Wright said today: “I’ve been tested a few times along the way.
“That Palestine anorexic quip that Sean made on X... you know, I struggled with his take on that. But I made it clear - and to everyone I responded to - that that is Sean’s right to say. I don’t agree with it... [but] that’s just the cost of free speech.
“Deep down, I truly believe that people should have a right to say what they want to say, and short of inciting violence or any untoward activity like that, I really defend people’s right to say their piece.
“Standing beside people when the times are tough, when you’re at opposing views but still defending their right, I truly believe in that. I would like to think that history will show that I stood by that ideology.”
Today’s statement said Wright had resigned as a director of The Platform, “proud that he and Sean were able to create a standalone media business during a challenging time for the media industry”.
Wright has previously declined to say how much the Wright Family Trust had poured into the venture in its formative years.
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.