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OPINIONMediaMarch 30, 2023

The shutdown of Today FM is Mediaworks admitting its best days are behind it

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The station was a bold, future-facing investment to diversify revenue streams. Yet internal opposition has broken the brand, writes Duncan Greive.

The text read, “Hey – tune into Today FM now if you can”. It came from a senior staffer there, and the omens were not good. It turned out that the following 30 minutes were the last moments of the station as originally conceived. It has now been summarily executed in an act of stunning brutality from the new regime at Mediaworks.

The station was launched amid a blaze of publicity a year ago, with the megawatt stardom of Tova O’Brien the heart of the campaign, leading a deep bench of veteran media talent, including hosts like Duncan Garner, Mark Richardson, Rachel Smalley, Leah Panapa and Lloyd Burr. Just as key were seasoned executives, including former ZB lead Dallas Gurney and Carol Hirschfeld and her decades of experience at the highest levels of impactful current affairs. The vision was to create a new talk and news brand that would over time give Mediaworks space in a whole new market, and allow it to imagine a future beyond the slow value decay of its radio assets.


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Now it’s gone, detonated within days of the departure of Cam Wallace, the CEO who placed the big bet on Today FM diversifying Mediaworks’ radio brands from the fading music stations into a serious play into news and talk. Acting CEO Wendy Palmer reportedly told staff that Today FM was losing around $1m a year on current revenues. If correct, that makes the decision even more mystifying – for a company at MediaWorks’ scale that is a trivial sum for the promise of a major new platform (and represents brilliant work from Today’s sales team). “Betrayal” is what Duncan Garner called it, and while it’s natural for hosts to be emotional while losing their jobs live on air, the shoe fits.

Rivals have talked up the low audience numbers, which is exactly what rivals are meant to do. But it’s worth remembering what was said when Wallace announced Today FM way back at the start of 2022. He told the Today FM team not to even look at ratings for two years, and always emphasised that this was a long-term, strategically motivated play to expand the range and scope of what Mediaworks stood for. It asked everyone from the company’s owners to staff working on other brands to trust that in a decade’s time this would all make sense, and that the dividends of a digital-forward brand which cut through into news and politics would echo throughout the business.

Former Mediaworks CEO Cam Wallace (Photo: Supplied)

It always was a tall order – the best way to have a successful talk radio brand is to have launched one decades ago. But the whole point of having a CEO is to allow them to lead. Multiple sources at Mediaworks have made it abundantly clear that at least one senior executive led a year-long campaign to undermine the station, using all his talent and energy to destroy something his colleagues were desperately trying to make work. He has won that battle, but the cost to Mediaworks will be very high.

It now is married to its music brands, which despite having dozens of brilliantly talented people working on and off air are showing signs of age. Music has been brutally disrupted by social and streaming, and an over-reliance on it is riskier than it might seem. More than that, any media company, even in radio, requires an adroit and open leadership to navigate this very different era. The 2021 Dew report into workplace culture has its echoes in Today’s axing. It revealed appalling behaviour, yet only on-air personalities ever wore the consequences for that. 

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Duncan Greive
— Founder

Radio is a very specific microclimate within media. Parts of it want to pretend the party will never be over, and that this internet thing is overblown. The way its brands keep ageing up – playing older and older catalogue music – reveals the lie at the heart of that proposition. Younger audiences, ie the 50%+ of the population under 40, have long since been lost to everything from podcasts to TikTok to YouTube. 

If you want to have a business which is not happily heading into the sunset, you need a plan. Today FM was that plan – an attempt to create a new multimedia brand from a standing start. It was always focussed on creating a layered content experience, with podcasts, adroitly-clipped TikToks, fired up opinion pieces and a real emphasis on video, all wrapped up in a beautifully expressed brand. The intention was to create sustainable long-term attention which would ultimately be monetised in a fundamentally different way from the music radio approach. That relies on dozens of small-town offices, many with their own hosts and sales teams, which historically made radio the small business miracle it has always been.

It was and remains effective in that narrow space, but has high fixed costs and very little opportunity to grow beyond that base, and reach that vast segment of the market which wants news, information, analysis and debate across multiple platforms. Today FM has been scuttled, with an almost gleeful speed long before its owners had anything like enough data to know whether it was working, or ever likely to. 

Those who had worked to undermine it from the start will be feeling triumphant right now. They hit play on an old Naked and Famous song after finally prying O’Brien and Garner from their electric closing minutes. ‘Young Blood’ was an irony-drenched choice, given the deliberately retrograde decision shutting Today FM represents. But in some respects it’s apt – a banger from the GFC era, the last time that any legacy media forms felt like they still owned the culture.

Once the redundancy payments are swallowed, there’s no doubt Mediaworks will be able to bask in a few quarters of profitability again. But the bill will come due over time. Try recruiting anyone interesting when they know this is the kind of stickability you show as an organisation. Try telling a story about growth when you’ve deliberately chosen to retreat. 

Most of all, imagine looking back on this decade from 2030, with your AM/FM networks, and trying to get excited about another batch of outrageous stunts to gin up the numbers for survey week. There were no guarantees with Today – but at least it was a big swing to build a bridge to the future. Its summary execution leaves Mediaworks marooned in the past.


Follow Duncan Greive’s NZ media podcast The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.


Declaration: The Spinoff has a small content sharing agreement with Today FM. It absolutely had no influence over this column.

Keep going!
Tova and Duncan
(Image: Tina Tiller)

MediaMarch 30, 2023

‘This is betrayal’: Duncan Garner and Tova O’Brien taken off-air as Today FM faces chop

Tova and Duncan
(Image: Tina Tiller)

The broadcasters let rip live on air ahead of an all-staff meeting at which the shutdown of the year-old station was announced.

“It looks like the end of us,” said Duncan Garner shortly before 9.30am this morning on Today FM.

“We’re being pulled off-air right now. Without even being given a chance,” said Tova O’Brien.

That exchange seems set to be the last heard from either of the two high-profile broadcasters on the station. They told listeners that the fate of Today FM appeared sealed – and they weren’t inclined to go down quietly.

At the start of Garner’s show, O’Brien arrived in the studio accompanied by her news team. “What’s the deal?” said Garner.

“It sounds like it’s over,” she said. “We haven’t been given a chance. We’ve been on air for just a year. We were told we had the support of everyone, from the chief executive through to the board, and they have fucked us. And we’re all going to lose our jobs. And the station is coming off air.”

Garner said: “This is betrayal.”

Shortly before 9am, O’Brien had told her audience that the show, and the station, were at risk: “We came into this organisation with this promise of a long-term strategy. We were going to go for at least five years and that’s when we were going to start seeing results. They had our back, from the CEO, to the executive to the board. And when I met with the acting chief executive I could not get that same assurances.”

She said: “We don’t know anything. We’ve gone off-piste, we’re hoping we’re not going to be dragged out of here by security guards because we’re supposed to be doing debate club right now but we thought it was important to share with you what’s been going on for us behind the scenes.”

After O’Brien joined him on air, Garner said: “This is going to be over pretty quick… we’ve been instructed to play music. I don’t think anyone is going to let Tova and I keep just gobbing off here.”

Producer Tom Day said in a tweet: “Mediaworks said Today FM was a five year plan. They have completely lied”.

A Today FM source told the Spinoff that O’Brien had led a delegation into the office of Wendy Palmer, interim chief executive, at the end of the breakfast show. There were high emotions at the meeting, with Palmer saying she could not discuss the decision until an all-staff meeting was held. That meeting, originally scheduled for noon, was brought forward to 9.30am. “There are a lot of very upset people,” said the source. “It’s off I’d say.”

According to Day, tweeting following the meeting, the Mediaworks board had approved a proposal to “shut down Today FM”. Staff have been given until this afternoon to make submissions in response.

At the meeting, Palmer told staff that since the end of last year the company had confronted “a massive block in terms of revenue”. She indicated that Today FM was likely to be a net annual cost to the company of more than $1 million. “The decision around Today FM that the board have come to is that we will close Today FM,” she told staff, adding that the digital division would remain intact.

In a statement to the Spinoff, Palmer said: “This morning at the MediaWorks Board’s request, we have taken Today FM off air while we consult with the team about the future of the station. This is a difficult time for the team and our priority is supporting them as we work through this process.”

The development comes after the resignation of chief executive Cam Wallace, who championed the station as an important new part of the radio mix in Aotearoa, and is on his way to a role at Qantas. That was swiftly followed by the announcement that Dallas Gurney, director of talk, would be departing.

Garner said this morning: “Dallas is a brilliant radio man. I think you’re right, Tova, there is something going on. We’re exposed, we don’t have a line of defence any more.”

The launch of Today FM, just over a year ago, was delayed following an employment dispute between O’Brien and Newshub, where she was formerly political editor. The station has struggled to make an indent in audience ratings.

A MediaWorks source characterised Today FM as having been hamstrung due to internal opposition from at least one senior executive, saying that the project had required nerve and tenacity.

At the end of O’Brien’s show, during the “debate” segment, Garner said: “Do we have to do a show at 9?” O’Brien replied: “And tomorrow and the next day and the next day because we will keep fighting for what we believe in at Today FM. We’ll keep fighting for our whānau, for our newsroom, for our teams.”

“People who own companies are brutal,” Garner. “If they need to make cuts, they’ll make cuts.”

O’Brien: “We’re talking every morning when we come in, what’s it going to be, what’s going to happen. We’ve not been able to get those assurances. What’s the board looking at? Are we coming back, are we the one?”

O’Brien said she remained optimistic. “We have to be because they will see sense,” she said. “People have to see sense. We are, as far as I know, the books are pretty good for us, the numbers they tell the story. And hopefully that is the story. Money! And there’s you. You, our listeners. I have every intention of staying here, and staying on air, but we really felt it was important for us to disclose what’s been going on here behind the scenes. We’ve tried to be professional and come in here every day, and enjoy it and we’re still enjoying it now.”

Garner announced he’d just received a text message from CEO, reading, “Could we have a catch up when you get off the air this morning please? Just pop into my office.”

O’Brien said: “That’s a few of us now who have been summoned into the chief executive’s office, the acting chief executive, and when I asked her last week for an assurance about …”

“Your job?”

“Our jobs. Our station, I couldn’t get anything,” said O’Brien.

“That’s a pretty unsettling text message to get three minutes before you’re going on air, isn’t it?”

“I’m hoping she’s calling us in to tell us we’re getting that assurance.”

“‘We think you’re doing really well, we’re gonna extend your contracts.’,” imagined Garner, sardonically.  

“In no reality that I live in do we go from getting 100% support of everybody for a long-term plan to lights out, so I can’t believe that anyone would be so short-sighted and so brutal and so ruthless, but …”

“Badly. Trust me, we’ve seen this before. It’ll play out badly.”

“We’ve all experienced it before.”

“In any universe, we’re buying quite a fight with certain sections of society.”

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Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large

O’Brien said: “We’ve broken from regular programming, we’re hoping we’re not going to be dragged out of here by security guards, because we’re supposed to be doing Debate Club right now but we thought it was important to share with you what’s been going on for us behind the scenes. So whatever the decision is, hopefully a good one, nobody is going to be blindsided by it in our Today FM community.”

Addressing Garner and newsreader Carly Flynn, she said: “We love you guys, we love our newsroom, I love you two …”

Flynn said: “We love what we get to do here. It’s always such a privilege to get to talk to New Zealanders and share stories of cool Kiwis and what they’re doing, and I’m so proud of what we achieved in this last year.”


Follow Duncan Greive’s NZ media podcast The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.


This post was updated to include breaking news.

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