Advertising that hates on other advertising (image: compile)
Advertising that hates on other advertising (image: compile)

MediaMarch 4, 2020

‘The first salvo in a war’: Senior Herald and Stuff editors hit back at RNZ attack ad campaign

Advertising that hates on other advertising (image: compile)
Advertising that hates on other advertising (image: compile)

Senior news executives have reacted with disappointment and anger to a new taxpayer-funded RNZ ad campaign attacking their work and business models, writes Duncan Greive.

RNZ has launched a new brand campaign which takes explicit aim at its commercial competition, attacking both advertising-funded and paywalled news sites. The campaign is running on out-of-home media and as paid posts on Facebook, and has drawn incredulous responses from news executives in the private sector media, which has been dealing with well-documented difficulties due to the dominance of the digital advertising market by Facebook and Google.

The campaign asks “if you think that quality journalism has disappeared”, “if you can’t seem to avoid ads online” or “if you think you have to pay for premium” – what the Herald calls its paywalled stories – then suggests audiences try RNZ.co.nz.

“It clearly pits the government broadcaster against a struggling commercial sector,” said former Newshub head of news Hal Crawford. “That’s shortsighted – it feels like the first salvo in a war that RNZ doesn’t want to be fighting.”

Shayne Currie, managing editor of NZME, owners of the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB, saw the campaign as a direct attack on Herald Premium. The paywall, launched in April last year, is central to its future revenue planning. Currie believes it is inaccurate to imply that audiences did not have to pay for journalism, one way or another. 

“It’s disappointing and disingenuous for taxpayer-funded Radio New Zealand to somehow suggest New Zealanders are not paying for RNZ journalism or journalists,” he said.

The Facebook campaign run by RNZ (image: screengrab)

Of particular concern to Stuff’s editorial director Mark Stevens was where the campaign is running – not just on billboards and bus-backs, but as a series of paid Facebook posts. Stuff itself ceased all paid Facebook posts in the aftermath of the March 15 attacks in Christchurch, which were livestreamed on the platform (as first reported by The Spinoff, a business funded by both advertising and its readers). Stevens said RNZ’s use of the social media giant is disappointing – particularly given that RNZ is entirely state funded.

“Using taxpayer funding to advertise on Facebook is wrong-headed and counter to supporting that plurality of media voices we’ve heard is in such need of protection,” said Stevens. “Especially when the domestic media here would have provided them greater reach than they’re paying a global platform with a questionable moral compass for.”

NZME’s Currie echoed the sentiment. “It’s gutting that RNZ is spending taxpayer money on a Facebook/Instagram campaign, encouraging audiences away from New Zealand-owned and operated media at the very time we are in a fight to sustain our journalism model against social media behemoths like Facebook and Google.”

The campaign is also running in other media formats, including podcasts and out-of-home media – with Stuff’s Stevens shocked to find a taxpayer attack on the advertising-funded Stuff site in the company’s own building.

A digital billboard on display in the lobby of Stuff’s Wellington headquarters (image: Mark Stevens)

RNZ’s campaign comes in the aftermath of a torrid 2019, in which the private sector media pleaded for government intervention to help it navigate to a viable future in the digital media era. MediaWorks put its loss-making TV business up for sale last November, citing the difficulty of competing against the government-owned TVNZ, which last year announced the suspension of its dividend for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile NZME repeated its desire to be allowed to purchase Stuff – which has been for sale for over year by its Australian parent company Nine. A Stuff-NZME merger has been denied through both the Commerce Commission and the courts, seen by some as bitterly ironic, given that just last month broadcasting minister Kris Faafoi announced the exploration of the case for a merger between the government’s largest media entities, TVNZ and RNZ. Each competes for audience – and, in TVNZ’s case, revenue – with the private sector media, and a combined entity would likely be even more efficient at hoovering up news and entertainment audiences.

The RNZ campaign is notably more aggressive than prior work, which was more oblique (“drive, not drivel”, “news, not views”), and has had a far wider distribution. Part of the reason the new campaign caused such widespread disappointment is because it disparages not just the private sector media’s business models, but also its work (“If you think quality journalism has disappeared”). This jars with the much more collegial sentiments frequently expressed by RNZ CEO Paul Thompson.

Thompson, formerly executive editor of Fairfax NZ (now known as Stuff), wrote an opinion piece for RNZ in the aftermath of MediaWorks’ putting Three on the market last year, which emphasised the importance of plurality in media, and expressed sympathy for the challenges facing his private sector counterparts.

“Even if a New Zealand media company that relies on advertising or subscriptions executes the perfect strategy faultlessly, they still face big future challenges,” he wrote, also pointing to the importance of having multiple media players, across both public and private sectors. “No people, society or nation are truly independent unless they have access to a diverse range of trusted and relevant news, information and entertainment that is created for, about and by them.

“The essential ingredient is choice.”

The RNZ CEO went further in a 2018 article, where Thompson noted the impact of “the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Netflix”, writing that “in this environment, public service media have a unique responsibility to help their commercial counterparts survive.”

The campaign seems at odds with those sentiments, seemingly sneering at other media outlets for having to make money through advertising or reader revenue. Instead of defining RNZ by pushing its hosts or its values, it instead seeks to denigrate the work and fiscal reality of others in the media.

The timing of the campaign is unfortunate. It comes after a month in which RNZ found itself subject to a media storm of its own, when audiences and its own employees revolted at news it was planning to replace RNZ Concert’s FM frequency with a youth network. After a week of protests, led by former prime minister Helen Clark, RNZ dropped the plans, with government ministers strongly implying that funds and frequencies would be made available which would allow allow RNZ to create the youth network while leaving Concert as it stands. It has left private sector executives with the impression that a minor furore at RNZ draws an immediate government response, while long-running issues in the private sector are ignored. 

The Spinoff approached RNZ for comment about both the campaign, and its usage of the social media giant. “Along with most other NZ media, RNZ uses Facebook to maximise reach to target audiences,” said spokesperson John Barr.

The campaign had been running on Facebook since Sunday, yet the variation which pointedly attacked the Herald Premium disappeared not long after Stuff political journalist Thomas Coughlan tweeted it. Barr denied that it was in response to the storm. “This is one execution of a creative campaign that exists across multiple platforms with multiple tag lines and this particular execution will finish today. It was only ever due to have a short run.”

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Despite the campaign having a relatively brief time on social media, it has left executives in the private sector media deeply disappointed in an organisation which had until recently presented as an ally. After a series of attack ads, the prior feeling of gallows camaraderie has vanished.

“This marketing campaign would have been better spent on actual National Radio journalism,” said NZME’s Shayne Currie.

For more on the chaos of the NZ media, listen to Duncan Greive’s media podcast, The Fold

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MediaMarch 2, 2020

Offer the light: Taking in the last Test overs of Bryan Waddle and Jeremy Coney

Staff Writer
coney-wadds

One of test cricket’s great partnerships has been brought to an end. Alex Braae listens to the last call of Bryan Waddle and Jeremy Coney on Radio Sport.

Watching Test cricket sometimes feels like sitting on the side of a pond on a summer day. Each ball is a pebble thrown into the surface, and you watch to see where the ripples will go. That rhythm becomes even more evocative on the radio. You only hear the splash, and the commentators tell you what it looks like. It’s a remarkably intimate way of following sport, and it lasts for hours.

A strange wander through the human psyche, there is nothing quite like a cricket broadcast. It rarely makes conventional sense, with the conversation progressing at two speeds simultaneously, as gentle voices carry on long conversations punctuated by the events in front of them.

And it keeps you company. With Radio Sport’s Test commentary rights coming to an end with this win over India, the prospect of a five-hour cleaning binge becomes a lot less appealing. Or setting up the transistor radio at a campground, or on the sidelines of a park game. Who knows, the loss of the rights might even show up in diminished confidence in the long-term outlook of farmers. It feels a bit like the last day of the last summer of cricket.

I know, that’s wildly melodramatic. There’s still more international cricket to play this summer, and NZ Cricket have made every assurance that there will be some form of audio commentary next season too. Who knows: it might all continue much as it has, just on another frequency. But don’t feel bad about indulging that feeling. For me at least, cricket on the radio has been part of my life forever. Pretty much all of that has been on Radio Sport, or, before that, Sports Roundup. In fact, it’s probably one of the few things that has never changed across the entire lives of many. Letting go of a defining version of that is hard.

There are two names that are linked to the Radio Sport call above all else. Bryan Waddle and Jeremy Coney. Coney and Wadds. You wonder if they’d be good company in real life. They’re almost an archetypal odd couple – tall and short, colour and crispness, comments like a crafty wrist-spinner and skiddy, direct conversational snorters. Sometimes their pairing threw up astonishing pieces of cricket coverage, even in the most throwaway moments like the end of a washed out game.

As Blundell and Latham accelerated towards the target this afternoon, the other commentators took a walk through the life of Jeremy Coney. They covered his teaching career, how he got the “Mantis” nickname, his dislikes and disappointments, and every biographical detail that attempted to explain how such a voice came into being. What could never be captured was Coney’s uncanny knack for the compelling and meandering mid-innings anecdote, that for the longest time felt like was going absolutely nowhere in the most pleasant way, before being resolved with a genuinely thought-provoking punchline.

He didn’t really get much of an innings at the last – the Black Caps’ batsmen didn’t give him the time. Of all things, the pair of them had to talk about the cricket in front of them. They took a few consolation wickets and bemoaned the state of the batting across the game. There was a nice chuckle for them right at the end when Jadeja’s presumptive wicket was overturned by a no-ball. The win came a few balls later, Bryan Waddle’s voice rising an octave to bring it home.

“Wadds has shown great alacrity to get down there,” said Daniel McHardy as Bryan Waddle dashed on to the field for post-match interviews. Jeremy Coney noted his friend’s increased fitness, and there was a touch of sadness when he mentioned how much more time he’d have now to work on it. “Terrific,” he concluded with a faint and affectionate chuckle. McHardy got one back at Coney, too, with a reminder that he was there on the wrong side the last time a team lost two Tests in a row by 10 wickets. It didn’t even happen today, but for a time it looked like it might have.

And McHardy didn’t hold back in his praise for both of them, and his many associates across the decades of test cricket in a final monologue of gratitude. The pair were gently roasted while being held up as an integral part of what made summer what it was. And McHardy thanked those that had kept the commentators company around the country for all that time too.

With a partnership like Coney and Waddle’s for Radio Sport coming to an end, it’s easy to forget that moves will be under way all over cricket broadcasting. When broadcast rights change hands, it can be an opportunity for younger commentators to come through. Scotty Stevenson left Sky when Spark nabbed the Rugby World Cup, and fronted their whole package. Previously he had primarily been a Super Rugby commentator, carrying it off with the sort of comfort and ease that allowed him to pick a word on Hauraki Breakfast during the week, and then drop it in a call on the night.

Not only will the Radio Sport version come to an end, the Sky Sport one will too. Spark Sport will be taking on the domestic TV rights. There are a whole lot of good commentators who could now be in the mix for either.

Speculating is largely useless, but it would seem certain that someone will try and keep the likes of Lesley Murdoch and Brendon McCullum in the mix. The underrated Mike Hesson and beloved Ian Smith will be staying with Sky. On the radio, Daniel McHardy leads an enormous cast across international and domestic cricket, including some pretty handy commentators who only get a run when a domestic game is in their region. Coney and Waddle themselves might go another round. Hell, you could do a lot worse than keeping Mark Richardson around, too. And behind the scenes, an army of ultra-professional broadcast workers will be moving to something new.

So probably, little will change in the rhythm of the summer, for those who accept the new changes and move with them. The tuning button on the radio makes it pick up a different frequency, and one of them will probably have a game on. It might be better, even. We don’t know, that pebble hasn’t been thrown.

All innings end. The Radio Sport team brought theirs to a close with a win, after helping some many fans through so many losses. But like all cricket, victory is always bittersweet. In this case it was knowing that it was brought to a close early, by a full two and a half precious days. Summer always seems to finish just before you’re ready.