Author: Gavin Ellis

Gavin Ellis is a media consultant, commentator and researcher. He holds a doctorate in political studies. A former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald, he is the author of Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights (London, Palgrave) and Complacent Nation (Wellington, BWB Texts). His consultancy clients include media organisations and government ministries. His Tuesday Commentary on media matters appears weekly on his site www.whiteknightnews.com

Radio and television will follow Marconi and Baird to the grave

This country needs to be at a watershed when NZ on Air asks Where are the audiences? in 2025.

The trends in its latest biennial report, released last week, suggest that by the time it next surveys New Zealand audiences we will have reached a point where traditional institutional concepts of media are no longer sustainable.

Between now and 2025 we need a fundamental rethink of media business models, organisation, and regulation. And the thinking will have to have been translated into action if we are to avoid systemic failures.

The Where are the audiences? survey has been monitoring media use since 2014, mapping trends that have seen the rise of competing digital services and the steady decline of traditional broadcasting. You can access the 2023 report here.

Along the way there have been numerous crossover points but the latest survey notes what may be the most significant crossover in the nine year history of the research. For the first time, broadcast television no longer commands the majority of viewers in prime time between 6 pm and 10.30 pm. Also for the first time, New Zealanders overall are spending more time using digital media than traditional media. Continue reading “Radio and television will follow Marconi and Baird to the grave” →

New Sky Box leaves a trail of frustration and a broken promise

New Zealand Herald sports columnist Chris Rattue called the new Sky Box “an absolute dog” but I think that is highly disrespectful to our canine companions. I’ll dispense with the metaphors and simply call it what it is: A complete disaster.

In short, the box is a product still in development and it should never have been released until its manifold software and design shortcomings had been fixed.

If Sky had labelled the box a beta version, customers would have been able to make informed choices on whether to take on the new equipment now or to wait for the ‘gold’ release version. That didn’t happen.

The warning signs were there: It was promised, then pushed out, promised, then pushed out. Finally, it was released when the delays were starting to raise questions in the marketplace.

A month before its release, The Spinoff’s Rec Room editor, Chris Schutz, was given a box to trial and his verdict after two weeks was that “it still doesn’t feel ready for release”.

Yet, in April it was released, accompanied by a statement from Sky chief executive Sophie Moloney that it was “so great to have our cool boxes in customers’ homes”. She added: “It’s been quite the journey with a few challenging obstacles along the way.”

If she thought the obstacles had been cleared away, she could not have been more wrong. The bugs and operational shortcoming of the new Sky Box were soon obvious to anyone – me included – silly enough to opt for the new kit. Continue reading “New Sky Box leaves a trail of frustration and a broken promise” →

Cartoons: High octane humour politicians love to hate

Works by four cartoonists hang on my study walls: Hogarth, Rowlandson, Minhinnick, and Emmerson.

Rod Emmerson has just marked twenty years on the New Zealand Herald, and he deserves his place in my mini gallery. He may be an adoptee from across the Tasman, but he ranks as one of the finest cartoonists this country has called its own. He has won awards internationally and in New Zealand and Australia, and his work has been published globally through the New York Times Syndicate.

He certainly deserved the double-page spread that the Weekend Herald devoted to his two decades of drawing for the newspaper. His work embodies in abundance the three attributes of an outstanding political cartoonist: graphic talent, keen perception, and wicked wit.

The English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley described caricatures as the most penetrating of criticisms. That is because they give the cartoonist multiple shots at the target. Continue reading “Cartoons: High octane humour politicians love to hate” →

There’s a kind of hush all over the Digital News Bargaining Bill

New Zealanders can be forgiven for being unaware that their government had made good on its plan to make social media and search platforms pay for the news they use. The proposed legislation caused hardly a stir when broadcasting minister Willie Jackson introduced it to Parliament last Thursday.

Only Businessdesk’s media writer, Daniel Dunkley, provided a summary of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. His story rated a brief in Shayne Currie’s Media Insider column in the Weekend Herald and the same day The Post acknowledged the Bill with a highly critical commentary by Dr Eric Crampton, chief economist at the free-market thinktank The New Zealand Initiative, who called it a “shakedown racket”.

The subdued reaction may reflect a view that the Bill will die with the current Labour-led government. That was the view of Newsroom co-founder Tim Murphy when I polled media leaders on the introduction of the proposed legislation. The only other media boss to respond was Radio New Zealand CEO Paul Thompson, who sees the Bill as a sound approach that will benefit a number of outlets. However, he doesn’t see it becoming law “any time soon”, nor as a panacea for all the news industry’s problems.

For all that, the Bill deserved a far better public airing than it has so far received, not least because it also announced an end to direct public funding of private sector news operations. Continue reading “There’s a kind of hush all over the Digital News Bargaining Bill” →