As Newshub enters its final week, reporter Adam Hollingworth looks back at its battle to beat TVNZ. Where it succeeded and where it failed.
From the first to the last, TV3's bulletins were made with fierce competitiveness and big hearts Photo: Supplied Photo: Supplied
This is the second and final episode of The Detail's two-part podcast. Part one can be found here.
In 2013 things were going well for 3 News. It was performing strongly in the Auckland market, often beating TVNZ in the key 25 to 54 demographic.
There were signs that it was also making progress with audiences in Wellington and South Island. Then came a body blow.
A relatively new board at TV3 decided it had to do something to rid itself of expensive and onerous contracts with Hollywood studios. It decided to put the company into voluntary receivership which allowed it to exit the contracts.
Executives were tasked with renegotiating deals for programmes considered vital at the time, like Home and Away. The Aussie soap was in its most popular phase and was giving 3 News a stronger lead-in than One News had. Lead-in programmes were still seen as significant factors in the news battle and TV3 had suffered for years with multiple programmes failing to fire in the 5.30pm slot.
Unfortunately for TV3 Home and Away slipped through its fingers and into the hands of TVNZ.
3 News had lost its lead-in and the network had lost the most profitable programme in its history.
The then-Head of News at TV3 and now co-editor at Newsroom, Mark Jennings, says the loss of Home and Away was a huge shock and setback for the network.
"Unfortunately that was probably the start of many problems that led right up to today."
A short time later the board appointed a new CEO, Olympic swimmer and former boss of the NZX, Mark Weldon.
"Weldon was different, he was a McKinsey consultant, he was head of the NZX, our New Zealand stock exchange, he had no media experience," Jennings says.
According to Jennings, Weldon had good ideas but failed to, or didn’t want to, understand editorial independence, and this put him on a collision course with the TV3’s newsroom.
"He used to tell me he was a friend of John Key's, we had a board who had directors on it who were aligned with the National Party. In the end they did not like our current affairs journalists, they saw them almost as the enemy and Mark Weldon really wanted to bring change there," he explains.
A slew of executives, including Jennings, left TV3. Longform current affairs was abandoned and journalists laid off.
Melanie Reid was one of them, and she describes the Weldon era as 'odd'.
"Some great people left, we were all seeing this great corporatisation of the media - well that's what it felt like at least - and then we had Weldon who didn't make any secret of the fact that he didn't like journalists, so we were really in trouble" she says.
A host of other big names left around that time as well, including Hilary Barry and John Campbell. The exodus led former NZ Herald editor, Tim Murphy to comment, “to lose one superstar is misfortune, to lose eight or 10 could be seen as carelessness.”
Senior producer Angus Gillies stayed, but says news staff came to dread Weldon's presence.
"When Weldon walked into the newsroom it was like Darth Vader had just strolled in, the vibe just changed and you wondered if at any moment he was going to reach over and start lifting you up and slowly choking you, he had that kind of vibe," he says.
Things reached boiling point, and in what one person called the 'colonel's coup', senior staff went to the board one by one. One of them was current Newshub presenter Mike McRoberts.
"I said, I want Weldon gone and so I set about doing that by writing an email to all the board members. I wanted to make it not an emotional email but one that was based on fact, the turnover that we had of staff - which was up at around 35 percent - the fact that morale had dropped through the floor," he says.
On the first night of meetings the board declared they still had faith in Weldon, which was a blow to staff. But then a few days later news broke that he had handed in his resignation. The Weldon era was over.
Weldon was approached to comment for this piece. In a written response he defends his actions, saying that the company had lost millions in revenue prior to his arrival and staff were unwilling to change or recognise the need for change. His full response is in the episode.
Newshub's final bulletin is set to air this Friday, before the reins are handed over to Stuff which will be replacing the 6pm bulletin with Samantha Hayes presenting on her own.
But Mike McRoberts is moving on.
"I think that last show is going to be hard, it's been such an honour over the years to represent everyone and their mahi for the day and it's such a thrill, and ka mua, ka muri, I'll look back to look forward and when I look back it will be with great pride and admiration."
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