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The heroic Gothenburg restaurant overlooking the Waikato River
The heroic Gothenburg restaurant overlooking the Waikato River

MediaApril 13, 2018

Wintec Press Club is dead, long live Hamilton Press Club

Books Editor
The heroic Gothenburg restaurant overlooking the Waikato River
The heroic Gothenburg restaurant overlooking the Waikato River

In which Steve Braunias announces the resumption of New Zealand’s most famous free media lunch extravaganza on the banks of the Waikato River in Hamilton.

And on the fourth day Press Club rose again. A kind of resurrection story was played out just before Easter. On the Monday, some guy from Wintec phoned me and said the Wintec Press Club was no more, that funding had ceased, that it was dead, over, finis. As life president of the Wintec Press Club, I saw my life presidency flash before my eyes, and did what anyone in my shoes would do: I took to Twitter. I announced its passing. I thanked Wintec for its 15-year support of a unique media lunch extravaganza, held three times a year in Hamilton on behalf of the j-school students, with guest speakers and all sorts of well-known New Zealanders who travelled far and wide to eat a free lunch. I said it had a good run – I staged 21 lunches since 2010, when I was appointed editor in residence at Wintec – and it was fun while it lasted, and anyway, goodbye. By the Thursday, it was back on again.

To be precise: Wintec Press Club is dead, long live Hamilton Press Club. As soon as I tweeted the news on the Monday, a group of forward-thinking, can-do types leapt into action, made calls, arranged meetings, shook hands, and did something fast and good and amazing – the Hamilton Press Club was created, and the unique media lunch extravaganza lives again.

Wintec have rather looked a gift horse in the mouth. Its their loss. Press Club gave the j-school national recognition, and provided invaluable introductions for numerous students. But Hamilton knows its horses, and creative, innovative people – there is no shortage of these kinds of people in the Fountain City – stepped in to save the event. The prime mover and shaker of this little miracle is Hamilton legend Chamanthie Sinhalage, who now works in the office of Wellington mayor Justin Lester; and the hero of the hour is Brian Squair, managing director at Hamilton architecture firm Chow:Hill, who has committed to underwrite the expense.

I had a cup of tea with Brian last week. For a Scotsman, he was surprisingly easy to understand. I said, “Why are you doing this?”

He said, “It’s good for Hamilton. It’s great for Hamilton. Plus I want a free lunch.”

Fair enough. And so the first Hamilton Press Club of 2018, that is to say the first Hamilton Press Club ever, will be held at the awesome Gothenburg restaurant overlooking the Waikato River, on Friday, May 18, with guest speaker Alison Mau.

“I was delighted to hear this event had been saved, and now reborn as the Hamilton Press Club,” said Alison. “I feel honoured to be asked to speak at the relaunch event.

“I’ll be talking about why there’s a need for #metooNZ, the response we’ve had to the launch of the investigation, and the insights we’ve garnered from the hundreds of people who’ve got in touch with their stories.

“And so I’ll talk about just how bad it gets for survivors who do make a complaint. I’ll reveal the worst industries in New Zealand for sexual harassment. And I’ll ask, ‘What needs to happen next?'”

When I gave thought to asking who to speak at the inaugural Hamilton Press Club, Alison Mau was my first choice. As life president at the Wintec Press Club, I’d quite often engage speakers only after my first choices didn’t work out. Last year for instance I confidently rocked up to Toby Manhire on the campaign trail, asked if he would speak at the next Press Club, and in between eating free food and drinking free beer at a National Party event, he replied: “God, no.” So I asked Sean Plunket. Anyway it’s awesome that Alison has said yes. Her #metoo project with Stuff has the potential to achieve very good, very important journalism – and very good, very important journalism is at the heart of Hamilton Press Club.

Hamilton Press Club is also about Hamilton. Holding a Press Club in Auckland wouldn’t have the same sense of adventure, or fun. One of the stars these past years of the Wintec Press Club has been the Waikato River; the lunches were held at a venue on the banks, and the river flowed past, wide and deep and beautiful, mesmerising. Hamilton’s a cool place and many drinks have flowed after the Press Club events up at Little George, where the craft beer is so good that its pale amber tastes a bit like Lion Red.

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The after-match drinks will continue. The free lunch will remain in place. The programme of three lunch events during the year has remained intact. The guest speakers will be of the same caliber as Wintec Press Club speakers such as Mihi Forbes, Patrick Gower, Paula Penfold, Jacinda thingamajig, the late Greg King, the late Paul Holmes, and, well, you know, actually she was certainly memorable, Rachel Glucina. The guest list will remain invite-only, and come in at about the same number of 100-120 people, and will continue to feature journalists, editors, TV showponies, entertainers, politicians, Dr Jarrod Gilbert, prominent Hamiltonians, j-school students from Wintec, and others who either practise journalism or are the subjects of journalism.

In other news, Chamanthie Sinhalage, who moved and shook to create Hamilton Press Club, is getting married next weekend in Sri Lanka. Her husband is Stuff journalist and Wintec j-school legend, Dileepa Fonseka. To the happy couple: the Hamilton Press Club wishes you an awesome wedding, and looks forward to your company on May 18. Let’s get this thing started.

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tvnz_1

MediaApril 13, 2018

An Australian TV exec tells New Zealand what is (badly) wrong with its television

Contributing writer
tvnz_1

Hal Crawford is the head of news at Mediaworks, owners of Three and RadioLive. He has been here for two years and still has no idea why our TV is such an absolute mess.

TV in New Zealand is odd.

It’s odd in a whole lot of great ways – Hunt for the Wilderpeople-style – but it’s also dysfunctionally weird. The biggest TV station is commercial and its only shareholder is the New Zealand government. This TV station, owned by the people of New Zealand, has no charter or set of rules that requires it to service those people in any way.

On the contrary, it’s there to make money. TVNZ inherited its infrastructure, staff, and audience – all the ingredients of its success – from various government-owned and non-profit seeking predecessors. TVNZ is underwritten by the nation. To say that the TV ad market is a level playing field is like denying the incline of Ruapehu. A government-owned commercial TV company is a big distortion in a small market.

I work for Mediaworks – its direct competitor – so this argument probably feels like a bit of a whinge. That doesn’t make it wrong. But let me move beyond that.

I moved here from Australia two years ago, and what strikes me forcefully as an outsider observing the broadcasting scene in New Zealand is how poorly the set up has served the audience.

Elsewhere in the world public broadcasters have become the champions of free speech, and bywords for quality. The BBC, the ABC, and CBC are loved and respected. Each has a slightly different model, but each has a charter or mandate. Their charters, which on first glance seem like constraints, are in fact protections and guiding lights for organisations which have been able to build audience trust over decades.

There is no public broadcaster in New Zealand making digital, radio and true TV content – no single source for all platforms. Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran identified the missed opportunity and believed that pushing RNZ into TV was the solution.

Curran may not want to go there anymore. After the Carol Hirschfeld shemozzle those three letters, RNZ, probably provoke a reflex wince in the Minister.

But the reason RNZ+ was a bad idea had nothing to do with inappropriate meetings. The proposal for the radio broadcaster to make television was an awkward work-around, and what it was working around was TVNZ.

Television is an expensive game. A bit like medical equipment, the price of broadcasting infrastructure seems to have been set in a parallel universe where the global trade miracle never happened. A single studio light will set you back $10,000. The pedestals that studio cameras sit on cost as much as some houses (as long as those houses are not in Auckland). Pack a studio full of those things, hire a few household names, and transmit the lot live, and you are talking tens of millions of dollars, literally just to keep the lights on.

To try and cut costs significantly in this world is to invite a shoddy product. If you want to feel like “real TV” and not a zero-cost, zero-cut-through Facebook Live stream, you need to invest.

TV news has particularly steep set-up costs, because you need a national network of cameras, feed points, and live networking equipment. There is also the crucial question of know-how: you need staff who know how to make TV.

All of this exists already at TVNZ.

Minister Curran said the primary obstacle to taking TVNZ1 and making it a public broadcaster was cultural – TVNZ is intractably commercial. She also said splitting up TVNZ1 and TVNZ2 was practically impossible.

That’s wrong. The prize is a broadcaster that over decades could become a national treasure, provide a deep sense of identity and continuity and be sheltered from the vicissitudes of business. The cost is… some unpleasant conversations? A bit of media heat from one TV station? All change is hard work, but this doesn’t seem nearly as hard as, say, ending fossil fuel exploration – which this government proved itself willing to do just yesterday.

Yes I am Australian. I probably shouldn’t have the temerity to tell New Zealand what to do. Yet I’m making an observation that is widely shared: by the government, the opposition, and just about everyone else who takes notice. All say publicly or privately that the current situation is a mess – yet despite that there remains, in the assets of and goodwill towards TVNZ, a unique opportunity to create a true national broadcaster.

Hal Crawford is Chief News Officer at Mediaworks

The Spinoff has a content sharing arrangement with Mediaworks and is producing a television show for the network later in 2018. However this piece was commissioned separately to that arrangement.

This section is made possible by Simplicity, New Zealand’s fastest growing KiwiSaver scheme. As a nonprofit, Simplicity only charges members what it costs to invest their money. It already has more than 12,500 plus members who, together, are saving more than $3.8 million annually in fees. This year, New Zealanders will pay more than $525 million in KiwiSaver fees. Why pay more than you need to? It takes two minutes to switch. Grab your IRD # and driver’s licence. It really is that simple.