Steven Joyce may be just what NZME needs

The impending appointment of Steven Joyce as chair of NZME may be the best thing that has happened to the media company in quite some time.

The former National government minister has a background that is eminently suited to recharging a board that has been at a strategic low ebb.

Joyce’s political past will doubtless give rise to criticism from the Left that he is a Capital-C-Conservative ‘plant’. He is certainly no Keir Hardie but nor is he hard right.

I admit that my perceptions of Steven Joyce changed after he left politics. Like many, my view of him had been based largely on media reports. I thought he was hardline, doctrinaire and sometimes brutal. That changed after I had read his autobiography On the Record and had a long conversation with him over lunch.

Joyce is not the man I had imagined. And his political leanings are more small-c-conservative than I had thought. Witness this line from his book when he is deciding which party he might join at the start of his political career: “While I was attracted to some of ACT’s policies, it could be a little uncompromising and doctrinaire, and in my experience the world was a little more complicated and nuanced”. So is Steven Joyce.

I do not expect a Joyce chairmanship of the NZME board to be defined by his political past. I expect it will without doubt be defined by his knowledge of the media scene and his strategic and governance skills.

Joyce’s association with media began in student radio at Massey University in 1984 and grew to the point where he was a major player in the formation and operation of RadioWorks (later the radio arm of MediaWorks). Along the way he had been a programme director, station manager, and breakfast show host. He was managing director of RadioWorks when it was finally acquired by Canadian media company (and TV3 owner) CanWest in 2001. He played pivotal roles in the expansion of commercial radio.

It was obvious during our lunch last year that he had kept abreast of the industry during his political interregnum and, while I won’t disclose the substance of our conversation, it was abundantly clear that he was still thinking strategically about where the industry should go.

Of course, NZME is not only a radio owner. The revenue from its publications – in print and online – continue to outstrip its broadcast revenue. And the OneRoof real estate platform is a diva in waiting.

However, lack of publishing experience should not have too great an impact on his stewardship of the board. Joyce demonstrated, during his tenure of a wider range of ministerial portfolios, that he has a capacity to rapidly understand what is confronting him.

He was known as the National Government’s ‘Mr Fix-it’ and, in many of the diverse challenges thrown at him, was able to follow through.

He is a pragmatist and during his career has shown few if any signs of being driven by sentiment. An episode in his time as a minister illustrates that the radio side of NZME should not expect any favouritism from him.

In 2011 MediaWorks went cap-in-hand to the Key Government because it could not afford its frequency licence fees. Joyce states in his book that, as Minister for Information and Communications Technology, he turned down their request that the government itself pay the fee. He thought it was “a bit of a try-on” but Prime Minister John Key, fearful that half the country’s commercial broadcasting could come to a grinding halt, opted for a scheme that gave broadcasters financial relief. However, Joyce took the fallout: Media reports accused him of conflict of interest, given his previous association with RadioWorks.

On the Record recounts numerous episodes where ‘Mr Fix-it’ was called in to handle everything from the broadband roll-out, through the disastrous Novopay system for teachers’ salaries, to overseeing the creation of an uber-entity – the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

However, it will not be the present-day practical problems confronting NZME where he will prove his worth, but in the strategic thinking he will bring to the wider issues that the company faces. Joyce is not an ideologue, and his concern will be for the future financial health of NZME. However, he has a track record of not only strategic thinking but implementation. He knows how to get things done.

He will also have a vital governance role in ensuring that incoming board member Jim Grenon does not exceed his remit and attempt to use the board to direct the editorial content of NZME’s publishing and broadcast outlets.

The ex-pat Canadian rich lister started his bid for NZME influence with a hiss and a roar, promising a clean sweep of the boardroom and hands-on ‘improvements’ to editorial quality. ‘Improvement’ has a multitude of possible meanings in that context.

Some adroit manoeuvring by the NZME establishment, and the surprise candidacy of Steven Joyce, has more than pared back Grenon’s ambitions. He will have a seat on the board, but he certainly will not have a puppet chairman. Steven Joyce has left little doubt – in the past and now – that he is his own man. I can see him reminding Jim Grenon of his minority stake in the company.

And Joyce understands the concept of editorial independence. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald last week he was asked specifically about editorial independence and stated: “The way I look at it is – and this has really been through my media career as well – the job of the board and actually the CE, of course, is to focus primarily overall on shareholder returns, and the performance of the company and the rest of it falls out of that.” A bit circuitous, perhaps, but I’m fairly sure he means directors have no role in the newsroom. And I have found no evidence of him interfering in editorial matters during his time with RadioWorks.

The announcement by NZME last week that avoided an unseemly battle at its upcoming AGM, also confirmed the company will proceed with an editorial board “to assist and advise the editorial team”. One of Joyce’s first tasks must be to ensure this group – the makeup of which is unknown – cannot become a trojan horse that determines the editorial direction of its outlets, and what can or cannot be covered. The incoming chair has the intelligence and experience to know the full cost of undermining the journalism on which – like or not – NZME still depends.

Stablemates

Predictable accusations of merger by stealth followed the announcement that RNZ is to move its Auckland operations into TVNZ’s Victoria Street headquarters. The accusers are getting ahead of themselves.

There are pragmatic reasons for the move: RNZ’s Auckland premises might be charitably described as old and tired, and TVNZ has room to spare after some swingeing cuts. Co-location makes sense.

Merger is a dirty word because the previous Labour government led a maladroit attempt to amalgamate the two state-owned broadcasters. That plan, which lacked governance and ‘cultural’ safeguards, was an early casualty of the change of government. It was justifiable euthanasia.

Many (me included) did not oppose the concept of a merged entity but objected to how it would be done. Opportunities continue to exist for bringing the two organisations – or parts of them – together.

Once RNZ and TVNZ are in same building, it would make sense to share services and some back office functions. That’s not merger but simple common sense. Budget constraints may make such prospects quite compelling.

Current trends suggest those financial constraints will worsen over time. Auckland may become the catalyst for further change.

I foresee a time when the RNZ and TVNZ newsroom operations are merged. In order to prevent the culture of one subsuming the other, the best solution would be the creation of an independent entity providing news services to both. Co-location in Auckland would be an ideal opportunity to identify and reconcile operational and ‘cultural’ differences in advance of the creation of a single news provider.

A successful merging of newsrooms could then pave the way to full integration on better terms than were proposed by the previous government. Non-commercial and commercial imperatives can be accommodated if there is a will, and forms of governance are available that guarantee the independence and integrity of an organisation with even greater reach.