AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – OCTOBER 30: Paul Henry speaks about his new multi-platform breakfast show at the  MediaWorks New Season Content Launch 2015 on October 30, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand.  (Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – OCTOBER 30: Paul Henry speaks about his new multi-platform breakfast show at the MediaWorks New Season Content Launch 2015 on October 30, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)

MediaNovember 7, 2016

When Paul Henry let rip that obnoxious Herald rant he was already through with TV3

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – OCTOBER 30: Paul Henry speaks about his new multi-platform breakfast show at the  MediaWorks New Season Content Launch 2015 on October 30, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand.  (Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – OCTOBER 30: Paul Henry speaks about his new multi-platform breakfast show at the MediaWorks New Season Content Launch 2015 on October 30, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)

Former Mediaworks news chief Mark Jennings writes on the background to the departure of TV3’s heaviest hitter, the huge hole it leaves, and the challenge ahead for heir apparent Duncan Garner.

When Paul Henry’s expletive-laden interview appeared in the New Zealand Herald eight days ago it looked like a clear case of presentercide.

By deliberately labelling people as “morons” and suggesting to the Herald reporter that he check out the “perfect titties” of the woman at the next table, Henry was performing a kind of career kamikaze act – openly saying to his bosses at Mediaworks, “C’mon, shoot me now!”.

The fact that they responded with a weak “we don’t condone offensive behaviour” was telling.

They knew, of course, that he was already gone.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - APRIL 07: Social media presenter Perlina Lau, news presenter Hilary Barry, sports presenter Jim Kayes and Paul Henry pose for a photo after MediaWorks new morning show Paul Henry on April 7, 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images the Paul Henry Show)
The old team: Henry with Perlina Lau, Hilary Barry and Jim Kayes in April 2015. Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

It’s dollars to doughnuts that Henry had quit before his verbal rant in the Federal Deli made its way into print.

The signs have been there for some time. Henry, whose reported departure Mediaworks has refused to confirm, has been openly saying he was sick of the early morning starts and wanted his life back. He had no appetite for 7pm either, a slot he once coveted and should have had.

Paul Henry likes life and wants to live it. If he does any TV work in the future it will almost certainly be limited to the stuff that really interests him. He is over doing the hard yards.

Henry’s “I’m out of here” would have caused a lot of angst at Flower Street. His exit is bad news for Mediaworks, its chief news officer, Hal Crawford, and the new CEO, Michael Anderson, both recently arrived from Australia.

Anderson is trying to rebuild morale and get some runs on the board after Mark Weldon, the previous CEO, turned the place upside down. Now he will have to do it without the man who was probably the outfit’s heaviest hitter, its only real game-changer.

Paul Henry – the breakfast show – had become an essential catalyst in Mediaworks’ revival, or at least its attempts at one. Not just because it was one of the few TV programmes that could take on and beat its direct competitor on TV1, but because it was vital to the fortunes of its battling talk station, RadioLIVE.

Mediaworks dominates music radio but in the 10 years it’s been on-air RadioLIVE hasn’t made much of a dent in Newstalk ZB’s market share. The NZME-owned ZB dominates the ratings and revenue in the talk genre.

There is a lot of money to be made out of news and talk radio but so far Mediaworks has hardly pulled in small change.

Henry was Live’s big play, a machine that could take on Hosking, and give the station some badly needed momentum. Better still, the costs could be spread across more than one medium.

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - OCTOBER 30: Paul Henry speaks about his new multi-platform breakfast show at the MediaWorks New Season Content Launch 2015 on October 30, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)
Paul Henry reveals the magic of television at the MediaWorks New Season Content Launch in October 2014. Photo: Dave Rowland/Getty

The show is perhaps the only one of its kind in the world that successfully sits across both radio and TV. The reason this simulcast works is not because the format is fabulous, but because Henry can do what almost no one else can; he turns radio into television and television into radio.

In this sense he is a broadcasting genius.

And there is more – breakfast radio and television are now about the only places in commercial broadcasting that interviews actually happen, and Henry happens to be a bloody good interviewer. These days very few of our interviewers can get the better of a media trained politician, or a top exec from Fonterra or the Rugby Union. Henry can and does.

This interviewing skill and his sense of humour – albeit at times, outrageous, crude and even childish – are major points of difference in a market full of rather bland offerings.


You want more? Try:

Tim Murphy: How I learned to love the Paul Henry show

Michele A’Court: What really gets on my titties about Paul Henry and Max Key

Duncan Greive: The Sublime Mania of the MediaWorks New Season Launch


Henry’s departure will be a godsend for TVNZ 1 breakfast show which has been under the pump. The new combo of Hilary Barry and Jack Tame is not firing. It might in the future – but it might not either.

Barry was a brilliant foil for Henry and is a big talent, but neither she nor Tame can take a scalpel to an interviewee in the way Henry can. Neither can they surprise, delight or bewitch the viewer like Henry.

The show also seems to be struggling with its content. The faces are new but they are doing the same old stuff.

If Henry had remained, MediaWorks would have become a consistent winner in the TV war and a strong contender in the radio breakfast race.

So who will replace Henry? MediaWorks has really the one option: Duncan Garner. Garner, who has been groomed for the job and wants it, is smart, hardworking and already one of the country’s best broadcasters.

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That infamous Paul Henry interview, and the heir apparent, Duncan Garner

He will also have good rapport with his two mates, Jim Kayes and Ingrid Hipkiss. They all respect and like each other. And if the talented Sarah Bristow, Henry’s executive producer, stays on this will be a major plus for Garner.

But the dual radio/TV format is very tricky and Garner is replacing a man who was probably at the peak of his powers.

Garner’s elevation to the key breakfast slot also robs RadioLIVE of a top performer in the afternoon drive time slot – after breakfast this is the most important radio timeslot. There is no obvious replacement.

Mediaworks will shuffle the cards and try and stay in the game, but without the joker in their pack that game just got much harder.

Keep going!
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MediaNovember 6, 2016

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website.

Scotty Stevenson: 48 hours drinking with rugby’s greatest losers

“I walked into the sheds soon after, to sit and drink with losers. I walked down the long concrete corridor under the main stand, past the North Harbour changing room. Inside they were belting out ‘We Are The Champions’. I opened the door to another scene entirely, one in which perspective and pain existed. What an honour to have been handed the key.”

Sumo somehow manages to look worse for wear than a bloke with a busted eye socket. (Photo: Scotty Stevenson)
Sumo somehow manages to look worse for wear than a bloke with a busted eye socket. (Photo: Scotty Stevenson)

Hayden Donnell: Oh no: Is National reverting to its terrible old ways on public transport funding?

“Before this year, the National government had a five-step approach to funding sensible public transport projects in Auckland.

1. Trash project
2. Let several years go by
3. Delay project
4. Let several years go by
5. Fund project”

Duncan Greive: The Naked and Famous by Numbers

By Numbers is a new regular feature examining a musical artist and their work as a business through a series of numbers. First up: The Naked and Famous.

Madeleine Chapman: The conviction of teenager Losi Filipo is nothing to celebrate

“People were getting riled up and loving it. So riled up that when the principal of St Pats Silverstream, where Filipo attended college, acted within the Catholic values of the school by refusing to disown Filipo, people called for his resignation. It’s so ridiculous you could almost laugh, except it got worse.”

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Toby Manhire: A few early thoughts on Gareth Morgan’s new political party

“Morgan joins a litter of rich-white-guy party-starters who sought to claw their way to power – from Bob Jones to Colin Craig to Kim Dotcom. Some will say recent similar failures suggest a cat in hell’s chance, but as an economist he will hope an apparent rush to join the party is more than a dead cat bounce, and proves a stroke of genius.”

Chessie Henry: ‘How can I explain what you gave me?’ On family, and the unexpectedness of love

“The incubator is a slap that reverberates; you feel it between your ribs. Everyone said you would love him, but you’ve been caught unawares – you don’t know how to love him. He’s not who you thought he was. But no time for that, its time for this; the jargon. Chromosome abnormality, incomplete morphogenesis. Then, labels you recognise: hearing disorders, sight disorders, infertility. An intellectual disability. The words spill across the room like a broken glass.”

The author and her brother Rufus as children
The author and her brother Rufus as children

Laura Irish: Where art thou women? On the Pop-Up Globe’s regressive casting decisions

“Guys. All male casts were sooooo ’90s…. 1590s, that is. And if you are planning on an all-male cast to be authentic, you’d better not cast any lads over the age of 19 to play the ladies. Authenticity would dictate that your age range would have to be 13-19 year old boys and preferably those whose voices hadn’t dropped yet.”

Michele A’Court: What really gets on my titties? The idea that Paul Henry, Max Key and co are ‘just saying what all guys are thinking’

“With every step forward – men speaking out against family violence, corporations endorsing policies of inclusion, the Icelandic government pledging to close the gender pay gap by 2020, your partner doing shit around the house without making a song and dance about it – just when you think, ‘We’re getting somewhere!’ some numb-nut grabs you by the pussy and pushes us all 50 steps back.”

Ben Thomas: Not corrupt, just idiotic: Why the Saudi deal report is still terrible for Murray McCully

“The focus on corruption seems very unfair to McCully. For one thing, it means media ignored all the other criminal offences that he had also not been accused of or found culpable for. More comprehensive reporting may have also noted the report found no evidence he was guilty of arson, livestock theft, poisoning or blasphemous libel. Happy days for the Beehive indeed!

Only one (1) MP in New Zealand history has ever been convicted of corruption in a public office, so this seems to be setting a new bar for Prime Ministerial tolerance, as John Key has signalled he retains full confidence in his non-corrupt, non-firestarting, non-blaspheming friend and colleague.”

Helen McNeil: The town that nearly died: A brief history of Kawerau

“My dad was a proud union member. I still have his membership ticket to the carpenter’s union in Dundee. He carried it all the way to New Zealand. Up until the early 1990’s union membership in NZ was compulsory. He grumbled about the strikes, for all his working man’s sensibilities, and in the 1970s there were a lot, short ones and long ones. In 1978 the mill closed for 35 days, in 1983 for 50 days. Outsiders started calling Kawerau ‘strike town’.

In 1986 a 42-day strike almost killed it.”