Ian Fraser, the invisible man

Ian Fraser transformed from a crusading journalist to a hidden presence presiding over the TVNZ old-boy network. Picture / Martin Sykes

Throughout Ian Fraser's reign at TVNZ he communicated with his troops via monthly video updates.

While his old colleagues of the '70s and '80s sweated it out on the second floor pulling in around $80,000 a year Fraser, who was paid $600,000, linked with them over their PCs.

"One of the newsreaders asked the questions and he gave the answers," says one insider.

"It was called The Fraser Feature. We could send questions in, but no one dared to ask what we all wanted to know, which was, 'Why don't we see more of you Ian? Why is Judy Bailey on $800K?' "

Fraser worked on broad ideas, philosophies on how to run the charter. "He gave speeches but we rarely saw him on the work floors. He didn't stroll round, enthusing the troops."

"Inspirational? Hell no!"

At 57 Ian Fraser plainly didn't need his job at TVNZ. One of the first media people to slide between journalism, public relations, advertising and business, he has amassed a substantial fortune.

His economist wife, Suzanne Snively, is a senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Wellington. They own a large, piano-studded, home in Talavera Tce, Kelburn, another in St Marys Bay and a couple more houses and a big dairy farm in the central North Island.

They have three grown children, Olivia, Mira and Daniel, to whom, says a friend, Fraser is a devoted, involved, father.

A soft man who is good with both men and women in the charming gossipy sense, Fraser has that rare gift, says TV veteran Catherine Saunders, "of making you feel like you're the only person in the room".

Born in Dunedin, he plays the piano to professional standard, acted at Wellington's Downstage and delighted in the garden parties he and Snively gave with Erich Geiringer and his wife, Carol Shand.

He also made his name as a talented television interviewer. Between 1974 and 1984 he worked on numerous current affairs shows.

His interviews with people including Leonard Bernstein, Danny Kaye, Sir Robert Muldoon and Ben Couch are still considered some of the best.

After that, Fraser did the then-unthinkable and joined the "dark side" of public relations as account director and chairman of Consultus. He also became the face of a lucrative Bank of New Zealand ad campaign.

Next came stints heading New Zealand's Expo projects in Brisbane and then Seville, followed by his appointment as chief executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

The NZSO was struggling and even Fraser, despite his ability to fill auditoriums, could not drum up enough funding from the private sector. But he did thaw the frosty relationship between players and the board.

Around 2000, Fraser threatened to close the orchestra.

He scored a $3 million Government injection, plus $1.4m annually, from Arts Minister Helen Clark.

Then in April 2002, Fraser moved to TVNZ. It was a tricky brief: to keep the firm profitable while implementing the Government's charter, but Fraser thought he was up to it.

Some thought otherwise. Fraser's friend Tom Scott said he might be too fragile. Others labelled him a work-shy hypochondriac who vanished when the going got tough.

Once installed, Fraser hired Bill Ralston for his "mongrel" qualities and marketing expert Annemarie Duff as head of programming, and the great crusading journalist of the '80s became the invisible man.

Paul Holmes, one of the first casualties under Fraser, says he cannot describe his leadership style because "there wasn't any ... I saw Ian once or twice in three years".

He described Fraser's defection as "akin to a commander deserting his fleet during the heat of battle".

Today an old-boy network seems to pervade at TVNZ. Former political editor Mark Sainsbury, Mike Valintine and Ewart Barnsley, who worked with Fraser and Ralston in the '80s, are rising fast. Ralston's wife, Janet Wilson, recently got the job of producing Sunday. But other women appear to be losing out.

There is also talk of a climate of excess. The strange thing is, Fraser, the renaissance man, wanted to be part of it.