Warner Bros Discovery New Zealand and Australia head of networks Juliet Peterson. Photo / Michael Craig
She’s overcome cancer, won three Commonwealth Games medals, and developed a high-flying media career. As the new boss of TV3, Juliet Peterson is facing another massive challenge – stemming a run of big financial losses. The former sharpshooter talks about her new targets. Shayne Currie reports.
Juliet Peterson has what she describes as two lives.
The one she lives now as a high-flying media executive, leading a new-look, slimmed-down and repurposed Warner Bros Discovery, owner of TV3 (Three). The other as a former sharpshooter, winning medals for New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games.
“I call it my other life,” laughs Peterson of her gun-toting exploits.
Competing under her maiden name, Juliet Etherington, she won bronze in Manchester in 2002 and bronze and silver in Melbourne in 2006. She’d have likely made the Olympics in the same era, if it weren’t for the sexist fact that only men could compete in her specialist event, the 50m rifle prone.
Regardless, her 20 years as a competitive shooter have certainly helped her attain success in her other life, as a career-focused television programmer, content director and media executive.
On the surface, they both involve targets – one literal, on the shooting range; the other more symbolic on the balance sheet, and strategically.
At a deeper level, though, she has brought the discipline she learned on the range into the C-suite and workplace.
“I don’t like guns,” she says, surprisingly, revealing how she came to love the broader principles of the sport after giving it a crack at a Girl Guides’ Jamboree in Morrinsville when she was 12.
“I didn’t grow up with guns, that’s not my gig. It’s the focus of it – it taught me a lot about discipline that I bring into my professional life.”
She says shooting helped her develop relationships and understanding of other people. Travelling around the country and world, she met and spent a lot of time with others.
“I was never overtly a running and jumping kind of sporty person,” she says.
“But there was something about the repetitive nature of [shooting], the real focus needed – you’ve got a magnified sight and as an international discipline, you’re shooting 50m and hitting something the size of my small fingernail.
“There’s wind involved and all those sorts of factors. For me, through a lot of training and coaching, I learned how to get into a state of flow, which is such a satisfying thing.
“I can still take myself back to the match in Melbourne when I won my individual silver. Sometimes I do this in my professional life to try to get in the zone and remember that feeling of controlling what you’re doing and being at one with the activity.”
After a second of reflecting, she adds: “That’s quite weird, isn’t it?! I think just the satisfaction of that ... like most people you’re driven by success, right?”
Peterson has had to engage her “state of flow” a lot in the past year or so, professionally and personally.
“There’s no backing down from the fact that the word I’ve heard the most, certainly in the last few months, is ‘challenging’ and I think I’m never one to shy away from a challenge.
“Being able to get into that space and deliver consistently is what this business is all about really at the moment.”
After a handover period, Peterson officially took the reins as WBD’s New Zealand and Australia head of networks from Glen Kyne in early July, the day after the company’s Newshub news operation closed down.
Peterson, who has had long stints at TV3 and TVNZ over more than two decades, inherits a new-look company, one that has been through the wringer, having lost almost 300 staff.
Earlier this month it announced a $138 million loss for 2023, including a $79.5m impairment.
As well as rebuilding the balance sheet and a new culture - there are still about 130 staff in Auckland and about 20 in Sydney - Peterson has her hands full moving the company into a digital-first mindset amid an existential crisis for traditional television transmission, and big economic headwinds.
She’s also keeping a close eye on the new-look ThreeNews, which has been outsourced to Stuff, and she and her team are considering and developing a new slate of entertainment shows in collaboration with production companies.
The challenge on the latter point is finding new funding mechanisms – WBD has said it can no longer fully fund local productions such as The Traitors NZ and Married at First Sight NZ.
Peterson, nevertheless, is feeling “positive”, both personally and about the future of the company in New Zealand despite its American giant parents, once again, committing to a minimum 12 months’ further financial assistance – the future of the company after that may well rest on whether its new strategic direction is working.
It’s been a consistent statement in its financial reporting in recent years, as executives work to get the company back to profit.
Peterson says WBD sees a lot of “potential in the New Zealand market ... and across the ANZ market as well”.
“I took this challenge on because I really believe in this business. Lots of people asked me, ‘What was I thinking?’
“I believe in the people. I believe in the role that this company has in New Zealand.
“I think we have an important role to play as a non-government-owned entertainment entity. We talk about our content proposition being gutsy and that’s an attitude and a driver that we’ve actually expanded across the whole business.
“It makes me a bit goosebumpy if I’m honest.
“But if we haven’t had that attitude with this group of people, we wouldn’t have got through this year and we wouldn’t be here at the starting line. We’ve baselined everything, looking at how we can grow.”
She says she feels the support of her Apac and American giant overlords. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t – I’d just be setting myself up to fail.”
A lot of Peterson’s positivity stems from a close call with her own mortality.
Next month, Three will screen Live and Let Dai, outlining the emotional health journey of comedian Dai Henwood, who has been diagnosed with stage-four cancer.
It holds personal significance for Peterson: She was awaiting her own cancer diagnosis when she read the proposal for the Henwood documentary last year.
“You asked me before what my attitude was and I said ‘positive’. And that’s because when I read that prop, it was all about Dai and his positivity.
“I had bowel cancer last year and I didn’t know where I was at [with the diagnosis]. I read that, it was extremely meaningful for me.
“I took that attitude when I was diagnosed. I had a hemicolectomy and I didn’t need chemo. I was very lucky.
“I was only just stage one. I got it early. My big message is if you have any symptoms, please go and get checked. I was incredibly lucky.”
She noticed bleeding from the bowel during a trip to Sydney. She returned home, saw a doctor and was immediately referred to a specialist for scans. Surgery followed equally quickly.
“Had I not, it would be a different story. It was a very aggressive, fast-growing tumour.”
For the next five years, the 45-year-old will be regularly checked, with six-monthly blood tests and scans.
Recently, she took some time out in Taupō with her husband and children, aged 12 and 9 – five days at the end of the school holidays. It was a rare break after a tumultuous period.
Her family and her health battle have given her perspective over the past 12 months, through all that she and her colleagues have endured.
“Resilience factor really high,” she says. “It puts a lot of things in perspective.”
Recently, she and the leadership team watched a promo for Henwood’s show. It left her in tears.
“It will be so powerful.”
There’s been a lot of debate and discussion about when traditional TV broadcast transmission will switch off completely, so that we’re only watching channels and shows via a streaming channel or satellite.
Linear television is still popular, it’s just that we’re watching it on different platforms (such as Three Now and TVNZ+ on mobile devices, laptops and smart TVs, and through Sky’s satellite channels).
TVNZ is working to a timeframe of a traditional terrestrial transmission switch-off in five years; WBD has been more bullish, thinking it’s two to three years away.
WBD overhauled Three’s streaming site ThreeNow last year and Peterson played a massive role in the project.
ThreeNow has enjoyed substantial growth since its relaunch and was up 50% in the first half of the year compared to the previous period. It now has a weekly reach of 585,000.
Peterson reiterates there will still be local shows on Three and ThreeNow. There are about 50 shows under consideration for the production slate right now, she says.
“This is something that I think got lost, or misconstrued, as we went through the changes, but we are still absolutely dedicated to local content. That is our DNA. It’s who we are and it’s who we need to be when we look at our place in the media ecosystem.
“The reality is, though, that we – and to be fair, others in the industry – can no longer fully fund shows as we once did.”
Let’s take, for example, the Paul Henry-hosted The Traitors NZ, the critically acclaimed second season of which has just been released.
WBD funded the show in its entirety, in the hope it might generate a return with advertising. But, of course, the bottom has fallen out of the television market – TV advertising revenue was down 13% in June, compared with the same month in 2023, according to SMI data.
WBD says it can’t fully fund a show like The Traitors NZ again. It can contribute some funding, Peterson says, but it would need to be significantly less – well below half – of what it paid this year.
“We try to get a return commercially. We can have sponsorship pieces, we can have pieces of integration which can contribute to our revenue but fundamentally, the revenue is largely driven for something like that from advertising.
“As it was, even before the advertising market started to fall through the floor, it was touch and go, the whole industry has been operating with loss leaders in local content for a long time.
“That makes a lot of sense. When you’re in an industry and you have a financial position that can sustain that, then that’s great.
“But things have happened – the cost of production and content has gone up, the expectations that the audience has on quality have gone up, the new formats that are working have necessitated more and more production and more cost, at the same time as the revenue is falling.
“We’ve just come past that tipping point now where it just doesn’t work and none of us can really sustain it.”
She says production company South Pacific Pictures needs to come up with a funding plan. That might involve a mix of sponsorship, integrated content, and perhaps some international assistance, given the ongoing success of these global formats.
“People who own the IP have to invest more in the local formats,” says Peterson.
She’s still hopeful The Traitors NZ won’t be banished. She’ll be doing her “darndest” to try to help save it and other shows. “It’s amazing – the best reality TV made in New Zealand.”
More broadly, she says WBD remains “incredibly agile” in partnering up with others for local content.
“We are not just rocking up to NZ on Air every round looking for handouts, that’s not how we roll. Of course, we’ll contribute and participate in that process. We’re also absolutely active with a number of projects that are under the Film Commission’s screen production rebate.
“We have partnership content. We have commercial content [such as] On The Ladder supported by Kiwibank, which is being produced currently.”
WBD also has a new partnership with Stuff, the traditional print and digital company is now producing the 6pm TV news for Three.
It’s performed creditably in its first month, with ratings starting to edge up again in the past week after a softer period.
External factors such as the Olympics and school holidays won’t have helped but the reality is that TVNZ’s 1News at 6 had to contend with these as well, and grew its lead over ThreeNews in both the 5+ and 25-54 age groups.
Peterson says she has faith.
“We are certainly not panicking and I never had any intention of making any judgment this close.
“Most things, particularly when they are a long-running, everyday deliverables like that need several months. I think they probably need a little bit longer if they’ve been through a period of instability and viewing behaviours, like we’re seeing of the scale of the Olympics.”
She said the bulletin had started strongly, and there had already been improvements.
She likes the virtual set and the more up-close, relaxed and personal style of weekday newsreader Samantha Hayes and weekend newsreader Laura Tupou.
“We had to make sure that we kept enough familiarity that we didn’t alienate too much of the audience, but there was enough newness that this was something different because we were never trying to replicate Newshub.
“That would be absolute idiocy.”
She says comparing the bulletin with the better-resourced TVNZ is never going to be fair.
“It’s about running our own race, doing our own thing and working out something that works for other viewers.”
She also says it’s too early for any official reviews and won’t say when that will happen. There is no deadline.
“There’s no timeline on it. Maybe this kind of news doesn’t live forever. Probably not. But there’s no fixed end date. There’s no kind of, ‘Right if it’s not working in a year, that’s it’. This is a commitment and we think it’s the right thing to do for our platforms.”
On the day that the Herald visited, Peterson and her staff – WBD’s team now covers sales, content, product and data, business management and other support services – had been through an Olympics-style team-building exercise. It featured cornball, Jenga and sausage rolls. But no guns or shooting.
Peterson put her rifle away years ago, to focus on her career and family. But she never forgets the support she received from TV3 initially and then TVNZ as she competed in her sport - training up to 15 hours a week, driving out to Ardmore early in the morning, and then returning to the city to start work.
After winning medals in Manchester and Melbourne, she also competed at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. By then, many of her competitors were fully professional, and the Ardmore shooting range had been reclaimed for the Army.
“I had nowhere to live fire. I had an electronic target but I didn’t live somewhere that had 10m down the hallway. So I went to my sister-in-law’s. When her child had gone to bed I shot down her hallway so that I could train.”
As she now leads her own staff in 2024, she is proud of the way they have handled themselves through a tricky and sad transition, losing almost 300 people, while trying to retain morale.
“From the get-go, we were very, very focused on culture. It’s the underpinning principle that I’ve shared with the team here now – people genuinely are the absolute most important thing.
“We’re really proud of how we managed the transition of such a large amount of our workforce out. None of us wanted to do it, obviously, but we feel like we did our very best. By and large people have left in as good a space as we can get it.
“That was important for those people remaining in the business as well because we needed to honour them and be mindful that they were also going through their own trauma and grief.
“And then we’ve been really conscious since the ‘leavers’ have left the building, how do we actually create engagement and meaning for the people who are here?”
It must have also been a shock for some of them to see just how big the financial losses were for last year.
Peterson reiterates a line her team had sent me earlier: “These statements are not a complete and accurate assessment of the business in New Zealand, but rather a local statutory reporting view. Warner Bros. Discovery does not comment on individual entity performance, but we do recognise the business in Aotearoa has faced significant challenges, largely as a result of the macro-economic and advertising environment.”
Peterson adds: “We are on a mission to radically improve profitability.”
That includes delivering a profit on the areas she is accountable for, well within five years.
Is America breathing down her neck?
She laughs.
“My view is that we are really lucky to be part of a global entity that has a lot of structure, a lot of experience and that we have really good leadership across that. My leader is president of Apac and he is incredibly supportive and always there. But he also lets me get on with running the business and that’s my job.
“We know that we have a plan and that if we execute and deliver to that plan, then we’re all good.”
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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