Tag: NZME

Business at 6.30am: Good move but watch for knock-on effects

NZME’s latest video venture, Herald NOW Business, had a solid launch yesterday into an uncertain world strategic environment. It also raises some strategic questions for the media company itself.

The 6.30 am business programme, available on the Herald app and streamed through ThreeNow and YouTube, is anchored by the thoroughly professional Garth Bray. He was an obvious choice and represents some of the greatest depth of television talent within NZME.

A former London correspondent for TVNZ and then a stalwart of the (sadly, axed) consumer show Fair Go, Bray is already a regular on the new programme’s companion show Ryan Bridge Today. His professional ‘home’ is the NZME-owned BusinessDesk.

Herald NOW Business (let’s abbreviate that to HNB) could not be described as innovative. It follows the familiar look and content of morning business programmes elsewhere. That, however, is not a criticism: Why change an established formula just for the sake of looking different? Continue reading “Business at 6.30am: Good move but watch for knock-on effects” →

My feeling of dread can reach biblical proportions

Three short words fill me with a sense of dread when they are linked to the media industry – private…equity…company. Collectively they represent a form of enterprise that never peers over the top of a sterile balance sheet.

Their sole purpose is to provide the best possible return for their investors. There is nothing inherently wrong it that goal, but the single-minded pursuit of profit makes them manifestly unsuited for ownership of companies providing social, cultural and democratic services to the public.

Media companies that produce or carry news and information services have impacts on society that were once recognised as imposing inherent obligations on the organisation.

In the past, owners accepted forms of cross-subsidisation without question. They funded journalism that was important, but which may not have attracted audiences as readily as the salacious or merely entertaining. They sent journalists far afield following politicians, when reporting a rugby tour was arguably more popular. They did so because one of those inherent obligations was holding power to account.

Some owners continue to shoulder those obligations and long may they continue to do so. However, for every organisation that continues to meet social and civic needs, there is another that has been decimated in the name of ‘return on investment’.

The latest manifestation of private equity bitemporal hemianopsia (I chose this form of tunnel vision because it doesn’t just affect the periphery but half of what we see) is what has happened to MediaWorks at the hands of Sydney-based private equity firm Quadrant and the New Zealand media company’s previous owners. Continue reading “My feeling of dread can reach biblical proportions” →

How crunchy are the Herald NOW numbers?

Let me say at the outset: I like NZME’s video breakfast show Herald Now.

It has the hallmarks of a serious news programme designed to inform me at the start of the day, and the relaxed manner of its host Ryan Bridge belies his skill in asking questions that put interviewees on the spot.

It has the ability to attract newsmakers from the Prime Minister and former judges to sports stars and social workers in Gaza. Its rotating list of panellists spans a useful social spectrum.

Ryan Bridge plays a key role in the show’s success but, even when he is not there, the format retains its appeal. Last week, seasoned television journalist Garth Bray (now with NZME’s BusinessDesk) was a quality stand-in who maintained the same pace and inquisitive style.

So, I was not surprised when NZME crowed that the show has attracted 2.4 million views in July. Well, that was the number from one survey source but it could include double-ups  where the same people watched on different platforms. By another measure, the programme has a million ‘unique viewers’ a month.

Herald Now screens on the Herald’s digital platforms and on YouTube. I watch it through the latter on the tv set in our lounge. And that is what roused my curiosity over the audience statistic proudly announced by NZME. When I logged onto the programme on YouTube one day last week it told me there were 407 other viewers. On another day, the number was about 1400. That suggests that the vast majority view it on the Herald’s platforms.

Fair enough, but what does either Herald Now audience survey number actually tell us? Continue reading “How crunchy are the Herald NOW numbers?” →

Far-reaching consequences of cloaking this man’s past

New Zealand’s Supreme Court last week re-affirmed the absolute right to a fair trial. In the process it denied citizens another fundamental right in an attempt to hide the past from jurors.

The court handed down its decision in an appeal over a takedown order that required Herald publisher NZME and other media to remove all stories relating to the previous convictions and character of a man now serving his second open-ended sentence of preventive detention.

The takedown is now moot because Damon John Exley (pictured above) has already been convicted and sentenced in the case during which the take-down order was made and then successfully appealed by NZME. Exley (also known as John Douglas Willis) was granted leave to take the matter to the Supreme Court, which elected to continue the appeal because it “raised a point of public importance”.

That process meant a takedown order remained in force during his trial on charges of rape, assault with a weapon, and abduction while an escapee from Rimutaka Prison where he was already serving a term of preventive detention. However, the jury was aware of some of his past convictions because the Crown had been given leave to introduce a list in what is known as propensity evidence.

Last week the Supreme Court found in Exley’s favour and said the Court of Appeal had been wrong to quash the takedown order. It found that the was “a real risk to Mr Exley’s fair trial rights if the material was accessed by a juror”.

The judgement has far-reaching effects because it found the right to a fair trial is absolute and the test to be applied “does not involve the balancing of the right to a fair trial against other rights, including freedom of expression”. It overturns the previous two-step test that first assessed whether continued publication represented a real risk of prejudice to a fair trail, but which then asked whether a takedown order would be a reasonable limitation – set out in Section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act  – on the right to freedom of expression. That limitation requires that it be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”. Continue reading “Far-reaching consequences of cloaking this man’s past” →