Numbers, damned numbers…and the smell of gaslighting

Numbers are curious figures: They can be up or down, big or small, true or misleading, good news or bad, welcome or unwelcome.

In the past week or so New Zealand’s media had been enveloped in something of a numerical avalanche about itself, And what was good news for some was decidedly the opposite for others.

But, first, let me get something else off my chest.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ reference to “your Tory owners at NZME” on Newstalk ZB was about as clever as thinking a hand grenade was something you hold after pulling the fuse. It was just plain dumb.

The reference harked back to a previous age and also to another country. In the 1950s – particularly following the 1951 waterfront strike – the term prefaced every Labour or union mention of NZME’s flagship, the New Zealand Herald. The paper supported Prime Minister Sydney Holland’s actions against the strikers. Its editor at the beginning of 1951 was Leslie Munro, a foundation member of the National Party who was said to have played a part in Holland achieving party leadership. On the balance of probability, “Tory” was probably a fair call. The “Tory Press” label, of course, was borrowed from Britain, where newspaper proprietors have been knighted and ennobled for supporting The Establishment.

We’re talking about decades ago. By the time I became editor of the Herald in the 1990s such influences had gone. I received no political direction – or even suggestion – from the paper’s then-owners, Dublin-based Independent News & Media. I wear with considerable pride the title “the Opposition” that was conferred on me by both National and Labour prime ministers.

Now the ownership of NZME is as diverse as any listed company and has major holdings by asset management groups whose only interest is profit, and which chief content officer Murray Kirkness says exert no influence over editorial content. Expat Canadian Jim Grenon’s attempt to rock that boat has yet to manifest itself, and he is only one voice on the newly elected NZME board. He will almost certainly be held in check by the pragmatic and forceful independent board chair Steven Joyce.

Mr Hipkins was engaging in a bit of gaslighting. It was unwise. Worse, it left the impression the Labour leader is rattled.

Now, back to numbers.

Stuff’s publisher Sinead Boucher has a broad smile on her face following the latest monthly Nielsen audience figures (for May) but rival New Zealand Herald must now be feeling panic rising from its corporate stomach.

The numbers show Stuff has significantly increased its lead over the Herald in the battle for audience. Its operations now attract 2,328,000 New Zealanders, which is 574,000 more than the NZME flagship can muster. It is a widening gap – up 13,000 on the previous month.

This is not a monthly aberration. Since last year Stuff has increased its audience numbers from 2.2 million to 2.33 million. In the same period, the Herald has dropped by an even greater margin. It is down from 2.1 million to 1.75 million and, now has RNZ breathing down its neck with a monthly audience of 1.43 million. The state broadcaster’s digital audience rose dramatically by 52 per cent between 2023 and 2024 and has continued to grow.

Expect Stuff’s audience total to grow even further now that TradeMe has taken a 50 per cent stake in Stuff Digital and the publisher has begun to integrate real estate editorial content with its partner. No doubt, there will be a further boost when TradeMe begins to cross-promote Stuff’s website.

Current trends and future challenges must be worrying NZME, and putting the heat on those responsible for attracting audiences.

Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy raised an interesting piece of speculation when he saw the numbers. He noted that the downward trend coincided with the Herald’s decision to use artificial intelligence to curate most of its website’s home page. Great in theory, he said, because the AI decisions should accurately reflect readers’ interests [gathered through online analytics]. However, he went on to say:

“But regular readers might have noticed oddities, including stories lingering in spaces high up on the site, certain themes securing prominence almost irrespective of the news agenda, local yokel articles from NZME papers, and a surfeit of regional crime, court and catastrophe.”

He added that 30 newsroom redundancies this year had resulted in fewer stories being written. The newsroom had also repurposed some of its resources into the new breakfast video offering Herald Now.

He ended his piece by noting that two meetings were scheduled – an all-hands gathering by Kirkness and a quarterly NZME update by CEO Michael Boggs. Numbers, no doubt, figure large.

While RNZ might be pleased with the latest Nielsen digital  survey, the numbers for its flagship radio programme look like they have moved from headache to blinding migraine.

Shayne Currie rolled out a comparison between RNZ’s Morning Report and ZB’s Mike Hosking Show when reporting in his Herald Media Insider column that the long-serving executive editor of the RNZ programme, Martin Gibson, was retiring.

Currie’s report included a graph that charted five years of rivalry between the breakfast shows. From dominance in 2020, Morning Report has become an increasingly poor second. The margin it held in 2020 is now as great, if not greater, for Hosking. Morning radio audiences have been slipping for several years but RNZ’s breakfast audience has shown a greater overall decline than ZB.

I admit that while Morning Report was a crucial start to my day in the past, it is now likely to stay silent while I watch Ryan Bridge’s Herald Now breakfast show on YouTube.

These are numbers that cannot go unheeded. RNZ needs to make significant changes to the programme. As Currie said: “The focus will now be on bosses, including chief executive and editor in chief Paul Thompson, as to whether they have the stomach for a deeper overhaul.”

Ironically, give the numbers confronting Currie’s bosses, the same might be said of NZME.

Shayne Currie’s Media Insider’s podcast has become a must for me (last week’s talk with Great Southern Television founder Phil Smith is worth a listen. You can access it here). A few weeks ago he interviewed TVNZ CEO Jodi O’Donnell who told him the 6pm news had a nightly audience of a million viewers.

He later questioned this number and invoked the “lies, damned lies, and statistics” line. He dug further and produced a range of figures that either supported or debunked O’Donnell’s claim. It all came down to definitions. Nielsen ‘average audience’ measured those who watched an entire bulletin, while ‘audience reach’ measured those who may have watched only part. Reach produced the magic million while ‘average audiences’ were lower. It was an illuminating piece.

Now I am waiting for Media Insider to apply the same rigour to his own company’s readership figures. Last month NZME posted on Facebook about the latest Nielsen Readership results, “highlighting a 108,000 reader increase across NZME’s publishing brands since last year, now reaching 2.48 million Kiwis”. Given what we know about the Herald’s performance, a breakdown of that 2.48 million number – a 52,000 jump on Stuff’s audience numbers – would be as illuminating as the light shone on tv news.