Gold FM hosts Tracey Donaldson and Andrew Dickens. Photo montage / Ollie Rusden
More big changes in the radio landscape; Sky loses another top executive; Don Brash buys NZME shares after ad refusal; TVNZ, Netflix and the battle for your homescreen; A carpark missive on media company letterhead; Tinā now in top 10 biggest box-office NZ movies; PRINZ’s 2025 PR awards finalists
Radio station Gold FM is becoming a music-only brand, with the loss of several respected, high-profile hosts, including Andrew Dickens and Tracey Donaldson.
Dickens, who is Gold’s 6am-noon host, will become a fill-in presenter at Newstalk ZB while Donaldson, Gold’s noon-6pm host, will depart the station this week – she has a fill-in role at a sister NZME station, Radio Hauraki, for the next six weeks.
The moves appear to be the latest in a series of cost-saving measures at media company NZME, which also owns the NZ Herald, Newstalk ZB and property brand OneRoof.
In a statement, NZME did not directly address cost-saving questions.
“We’re making some changes at Gold FM with Tracey Donaldson wrapping up her final show today and moving over to cover the Radio Hauraki day show for the next few weeks,” NZME chief audio officer Jason Winstanley said.
“Andrew Dickens will also be moving on from Gold FM in May to join the Newstalk ZB team as a host across various shows.
“With Tracey and Andrew finishing with the station, Gold FM will transition to an announcer-free format.”
Gold FM plays classic rock music across a dozen FM frequencies in New Zealand. Winstanley told staff on Thursday morning that Flava would take two of the 12 frequencies - in Wellington and Tauranga from May 9.
According to the most recent GFK commercial radio survey, Gold FM has a cumulative audience of 75,800, whereas its most comparable MediaWorks competitor, The Sound, has 334,100.
NZME’s shift to an announcer-free station follows the launch of a similar station at MediaWorks, Channel X. It has no hosts and is promoted as a music-only station. It has built a cumulative audience of 194,000 in just under two years.
Gold FM’s sister station, Gold Sport, which has 19 AM frequencies, will be retained under the new moves. It has a cumulative audience of 29,600, and has the likes of live broadcast rugby rights.
As well as Dickens and Donaldson, other Gold hosts are affected.
Gold’s night-time presenter Rick Morin, who was also a Time Saver Traffic host, left NZME last week, while Grant Kereama, who hosts Gold from 6am-noon at weekends, will now revert to his main role of hosting Coast weekends from noon to 6pm.
There have been a range of talent changes across the New Zealand radio industry in the past 12 months.
Simon Barnett joined More FM in February. Initially, MediaWorks promoted Barnett as joining Lana Cochrane-Searle, Adam Percival and Paul Ego on the More FM Breakfast Club for 2025. There are now just two full-time hosts – Barnett and Cochrane-Searle.
NZME’s The Hits – More’s most direct competitor – brought in Megan Papas to its breakfast show last year, adding a third, female voice to the now-established Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce partnership.
The Hits also changed out its drive show at the start of last year, bringing together two highly regarded broadcasters, Polly “PJ” Harding and Matty McLean. Matilda Green is currently filling in for Harding while she is on parental leave.
Manaia Stewart is now paired with Jeremy Wells as the breakfast co-host of Radio Hauraki. Stewart replaced Matt Heath, who has moved into the ZB Afternoons slot alongside Tyler Adams.
There have been changes at other MediaWorks stations, too, most notably at The Sound where Martin Devlin, Robert Taylor and Georgia Cubbon are now hosting breakfast; and at The Breeze, where Robert Scott recently departed as workday host.
“Over the summer I celebrated 40 amazing years in radio, which has given me the chance to reflect on my journey,” Scott said at the time. “As a result, I’ve decided it’s time to take a step back.
“I need to hit pause, take a breath, and think about what comes next. I’ve also faced some health challenges, which require my full attention for a while.”
The head of Stuff’s digital news operation has quit to fill one of New Zealand media’s most influential and important new executive roles.
Nadia Tolich is TVNZ’s new chief news and content officer, an all-encompassing news and programming role on the state broadcaster’s executive team.
As well as ultimate responsibility for TVNZ’s newsroom, she will be overseeing all of the broadcaster’s programming content and international contracts.
Tolich’s new role was announced by TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell on Thursday afternoon, alongside two other executive appointments.
Sky TV is losing another of its top executives, one who is intimately involved in the company’s rugby rights negotiations with NZ Rugby (NZR).
Chief content and commercial officer Jonny Errington – who has been at Sky TV for 13 years, most recently as an executive – has been appointed chief commercial and marketing officer for the New Zealand Olympic Committee.
Errington has been in the thick of Sky TV’s negotiations with NZ Rugby for the renewal of the TV broadcasting rights for the next five years.
Errington, who has previously worked at Warner Bros, Xerox and Spark, will leave Sky in three months, giving the company extra impetus to strike a deal with NZR before that.
He is the third top Sky TV executive to leave recently, following the departures of chief financial officer Ciara McGuigan after less than a year in the role, and chief customer officer Dan Kelly.
A Sky spokeswoman said Errington’s new role was a great career move for him.
“We’re delighted for him. We will miss his experience, diligence and passion at Sky, but we know Jonny will be a great asset for the NZOC team, particularly as they plan for next year’s Winter Olympics in Italy and Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and lay down the framework for the Summer Olympics in LA.”
She said Errington would be with Sky until July.
“There’s no impact on his role on our negotiating team for the rugby rights at this time.
“Given that timeframe, and noting that this is still fresh news, we have plenty of time to confirm the plan for filling Jonny’s role.
“We have an excellent team of leaders on the Sky exec and while the CFO and CCO are interim appointments, both bring a wealth of experience.”
She said they were doing “a superb job”, supporting chief executive Sophie Moloney’s leadership.
That was demonstrated, she said, by this week’s “successful delivery of our satellite migration project in highly challenging circumstances”.
New Zealand’s spy agency investigated the actions of an RNZ journalist whose edits of foreign news stories came under scrutiny in 2023, it has been revealed.
The journalist, Mick Hall, complained to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security that he had been unlawfully investigated by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) and that the agency had improperly shared information about him.
He complained that the SIS had “briefed the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Office on the situation and gave them information about myself based on an investigation”.
The NZSIS concluded that Hall was not engaging in any form of state-sponsored foreign interference.
NZME’s annual shareholders’ meeting is still some 47 days away, but there’s already one new high-profile, albeit minority shareholder who’s invested in the company so that he can be heard.
Unhappy that a full-page Hobson’s Pledge advertisement, earmarked for the NZ Herald, was rejected by NZME last week, former National Party leader Don Brash has bought shares in the publicly listed media company.
The Hobson’s Pledge lobby group ad took aim at Prime Minister Christopher Luxon over the Treaty Principles Bill, with a Photoshopped image of his fingers in his ears.
Brash, spokesman for Hobson’s Pledge, plans to be at NZME’s annual shareholders meeting on June 3. That’s where Auckland businessman Jim Grenon is seeking to overhaul the existing board.
Brash said Hobson’s Pledge would continue to try to place advertisements in the Herald but he told The Platform’s Sean Plunket this week that he was also hopeful a new-look board might produce a “fundamentally different approach”.
“I bought a small number of shares in NZME myself last week because I am going to protest at the annual meeting,” Brash told Plunket.
In the first of a series of Media Insider pieces delving into the Government’s media reforms, and the industry’s reaction, we look at the battle for your homescreen.
TVNZ wants its TVNZ+ app to be automatically installed on the homescreens of smartphones, smart TVs and other portable electronic devices.
Warner Bros Discovery, owner of TVNZ’s major local competitor Three, says it would be happy to see the Freeview app, which carries TVNZ, Three and other local content, as the automatically pre-installed app for devices. That would be an “elegant” solution, it says, and would avoid the perception of the Government “playing favourites”.
But Netflix and other international streamers say any such rules would give TVNZ and other local operators an unfair advantage – “identifying one group of businesses and providing them with a legislated benefit is inappropriate”, says the Australia New Zealand Screen Association.
Meanwhile, NZME and RNZ have urged the Government not to ignore radio and audio brands in the mix, either.
The Government is planning a range of reforms to help the domestic media and screen sector. There are five key elements to the proposals:
On the issue of prominence, TVNZ said the Government should “mandate specific and genuine prominence”, including that tiles were preinstalled on relevant devices’ homescreens.
“TVNZ’s position is that there must be a single tile for each qualifying local content delivery service visible on the primary user interface,” says the TVNZ submission.
“Tiles ... must be located ahead of tiles for international content providers (ie, top four tiles reserved for local content).”
TVNZ also wanted the definition of a device broadened, beyond smart TVs. It said for the proposed reform to “support New Zealanders to easily find and engage with local services and local content”, it had to embrace the many ways Kiwis were accessing that content, beyond traditional devices.
“We know that audiences consume content (especially news content and including longform content) on phones and portable electronic devices.
“All major phones now come with preinstalled audio-visual apps and the same themes apply to portable electronic devices such as tablets and laptops.”
TVNZ also wanted a new definition for those eligible for the prominence initiatives.
“The definition of services should be refined to protect New Zealand content providers, ie to ensure that the definition does not allow overseas-based media platforms to establish prominence rights simply by including New Zealand content within their offering.
“That could be via a minimum local ownership threshold, or, to align with requirements for local media operators/PSBs in other jurisdictions such as the UK and Australia, a more appropriate requirement would be for services to carry local news in order to be considered as a ‘local content service’).”
Warner Bros Discovery said legislating for the Freeview app to have prominence would be the “most elegant solution”.
“This would avoid a situation where the Government is perceived to be ‘choosing favourites’, instead boosting the entire country’s sector.”
Manufacturers were also more likely to follow the mandate if they were asked to carry only one app.
“New Zealand lacks the market scale to enforce major TV manufacturers to include multiple local platforms; doing so could potentially run the risk of major manufacturers simply pulling out of the market altogether.”
Netflix, meanwhile, said it did not support the prominence requirements.
It said it understood the need to ensure a degree of prominence for public broadcasters who were obliged to deliver on public interest goals, such as providing news and local content to New Zealand citizens.
“This is the position we took in Australia, supporting a ‘must carry’ approach for local broadcasters (including commercial and subscription broadcasters) who have obligations to make local Australia content.
“New Zealand operates under a different framework, where currently only public broadcasters are required to provide a certain amount of local content, including news, current affairs, and culturally significant programming.
“We would support prominence requirements for these broadcasters, so long as a future prominence framework is designed in a way which respects consumer choice, competition and innovation ...”
However, it said it could not support the introduction of prominence requirements for “local services”, as proposed.
“The definition of ‘local services’ is too broad and would include commercial broadcasters who do not have public interest obligations. There is no reason competing services like commercial television apps should be unfairly advantaged against SVOD [subscription video on demand] services like Netflix. It would distort the competition that enables New Zealanders to access a range of diverse and quality offerings.”
The proposal would also conflict with the Government media reforms paper’s objective of ensuring “all media are on equal footing”.
From a practical viewpoint, it also warned of how consumers might react.
“For example, a consumer who predominantly uses their smart TV to access fitness apps or podcasts is unlikely to appreciate the mandated, prominent placement of a free-to-air television broadcaster’s app on their UI.”
It also did not want to see any reforms interfere with existing international contractual agreements.
“SVOD services like Netflix have invested significant time and resources in developing relationships with consumer electronics partners.
“We invest to ensure the best possible performance of devices and spend time and resources developing and certifying technologies with our partners to ensure excellent technical functionality and a seamless consumer experience.
“Hyper-nuanced, country-specific regulation would create a significant compliance challenge that would have a negative impact on innovation and the consumer experience.”
Screen Association’s views
The Australia New Zealand Screen Association says the Government’s media reforms package “misdiagnoses the problem”.
“All traditional services providing access to curated, professionally produced content are facing the same challenges, irrespective of whether they are local or global media businesses,” its submission says.
“The internet has created an abundance of choice for consumers, with UGC [User-Generated Content] services by far the biggest disruptors, uploading hundreds of millions of hours of video each year at no upfront cost to these platforms.”
NZME, RNZ’s positions
NZME said it had “serious concerns” about the plan to exclude radio prominence.
“Radio remains a strong and valued part of the New Zealand media landscape and is an essential part of New Zealand’s emergency management and response infrastructure,” NZME said in its submission.
It said radio broadcasters were faced with “intensifying challenges” from changing audience habits, technology and rising costs. While audience numbers were still strong, it was not immune to cost pressures.
Ensuring strong local content on radio should be prioritised alongside initiatives that benefited other platforms.
”The massive surge in the use of connected audio devices has changed how people listen to radio. The problems identified by the Ministry [for Culture and Heritage] as underpinning proposal 1 equally impact the New Zealand radio industry.
“In the same way that local TV broadcasters have concerns about the prominence of their services on smart TV home screens, local radio broadcasters have concerns about prominence and accessibility of local radio and related applications on smart speakers and information (infotainment) systems installed in vehicles imported into New Zealand.”
NZME said it “firmly” disagreed with the ministry’s suggestion that radio prominence issues appeared to be “less developed” than TV prominence issues.
“The fact other jurisdictions have explored and implemented requirements related to the prominence of local radio services on connected devices shows that the issue of radio prominence has developed to a point where government intervention is appropriate, in the same way it is for TV.
“Put simply, if the issue has developed enough to be addressed by other governments, it has developed enough to be addressed by New Zealand’s government.”
RNZ said there was little in the media reforms proposals of “direct benefit” but a “large risk” if it were not included in the prominence/must carry provisions.
“The consultation document consistently refers to ‘local TV services’. It seems somewhat blind to RNZ as a digital public media entity, which produces highly NZ-rich news and content.
“As it stands, the consultation refers to smart TVs having to give prominence to ‘local TV services’. It risks ignoring that the screen is now a delivery platform for all types of content – including audio and other video.
“Our preference is to secure a footprint within the overall plan and for RNZ public media content to have an opportunity for prominence.”
Like NZME, RNZ pointed out there were no proposals for prominence on audio devices. “We recommend prominence for public media content on devices like digital speakers and in-car apps. Underpinning all of this is not only RNZ’s Charter obligations but its role as a lifeline utility.”
In upcoming columns, Media Insider will analyse the industry response to other aspects of the Government’s media reforms package.
As if NZME didn’t have enough to deal with, with the likes of a proposed board takeover and recent cost-savings moves, it’s now facing questions about a missive scribbled on a company pad.
The note in question was left on a car in Wellington, specifically taking aim at the decorations on the vehicle.
The car, which is owned by beauty salon owner Georgia Prince, is adorned with fake eyelashes over its headlights and pink sticking plasters on its bumper.
The note says: “Dear Beetle owner. I don’t enjoy seeing your silly car with its silly eyelashes and pink sticking plasters. It looks like a car version of Nicki Minaj.
“Please refrain from parking here, there is a Wilson Parking nearby, or other options. Yours sincerely. The residents of Te Aro.”
Prince posted the note on the Vic Deals Facebook page, describing the note writer as an “absolute nerd”.
“Babe, if you’re allergic to fun and personality, just say that!!”
She told Stuff that when she saw the note, “I was like ‘Oh somebody must have seen it’ [the car], or ‘Oh my god you are so beautiful I am going to take you out for dinner’. That’s what I thought in my head when I saw it, and then when I opened it, I never expected this.”
The note was written on a page from an NZME-branded notebook.
It’s been the talk of the Wellington NZME office, but no one there knows who wrote it, or even if it was a staff member.
Those pads are, apparently, distributed fairly broadly to company contacts and at events. It could be anyone! It could be a set-up!
An NZME spokeswoman said: “We’re so generous in giving out our branded stationery, so sadly we can’t confirm the identity of this mysterious parking vigilante.”
Kiwi film Tinā continues to be a massive hit at the box office, now entering the top 10 highest-grossing New Zealand movies of all time.
The film has now surpassed $5 million in box-office takings in its seventh week of release. Tinā has earned $5,030,777 to date, with more than 321,952 ticket sales.
Tinā also set a record for the widest release of a Kiwi film, screening across 128 locations in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa.
Tinā follows the journey of Mareta Percival, a Samoan teacher struggling after losing her daughter in the Christchurch earthquakes. She reluctantly takes on a substitute teaching role at an elite private school.
New Zealand Film Commission chief executive Annie Murray said the sustained interest in Tinā demonstrated a desire from audiences to see themselves reflected on screen.
“The record audience numbers who’ve shown up for Tinā prove there’s very real affection and support for well-crafted and authentic stories from our homegrown filmmakers. The film’s success is a compelling case on how investing in stories which reflect who we are, leads to both critical and commercial success.”
Film director, writer and producer Miki Magasiva said: “No words, just gratitude, thank you Aotearoa, this is a massive honour for us. A wonderful surprise and huge vote of confidence for our entire team, fa’afetai tele lava!”
The top 10 highest-grossing NZ movies of all time:
Between Two Beers podcast collaborators Steve Holloway and Seamus Marten have created a new business arm, called Reflections.
It is set up to help Kiwi families tell and share their “most treasured” stories, giving them the opportunity “to capture and preserve the stories of their whānau and loved ones for generations to come”.
They have paired up with seasoned journalists Suzanne McFadden (Newsroom, formerly NZ Herald) and Mark Stafford (SENZ, former face of TAB) to work with families, researching their subjects’ lives, and crafting an engaging, insightful two-hour recorded conversation.
“We’re all on life’s conveyor belt, and we’re all a bit bloody fascinating. But currently, unless a family has its act together, it’s often only the stories of the famous that endlessly stay around. This is where Reflections is set to change the status quo,” says Holloway.
Marten says: “When we pass, so do our stories – leaving gaps in family understanding that can never be filled. Addressing this for Kiwi families feels like our most important work yet.”
The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) has unveiled 50 finalists for its annual awards on May 28.
PR Consultancy of the Year – Large – Finalists
PR Consultancy of the Year – Small to Medium – Finalists
PR In-House Team of the Year – Finalists
Sally Logan-Milne Young Practitioner of the Year – Finalists
Campaigns up for awards (in alphabetical order):
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.
Auckland professor's final post accuses political parties of threatening his prospects.