“The bird is staying!” Keane, who was appointed RNZ’s first chief audio officer last year, taking up the role in mid-October, says.
“I will say that I did get a call from [chief executive] Paul Thompson one morning when I made changes – I can’t actually remember what happened to the bird, whether we talked over it or whether we just didn’t play it accidentally, but the bird is sacred.
“And John loves the bird – it’s one of his favourite parts of the programme.”
Morning Report hosts Ingrid Hipkiss and John Campbell.
John is indeed John Campbell, now nine shows into his new role.
Keane, who worked directly with Campbell as his executive producer on TV3’s Campbell Live and then again on RNZ’s Checkpoint, is abuzz about the new host and what she describes as a vibrancy and energy that he is already bringing to the show and the organisation.
“He did say he is f***ing loving his job. He knew I was doing an interview with you, and he said to tell you he’s ‘f***ing loving it!’”
She says early audience feedback to Campbell and co-host Ingrid Hipkiss has also been positive. “They’re getting really strong listener feedback. The audience likes the lighter tone that John’s brought and the humour, the banter.”
Campbell’s appointment as Morning Report co-host has been one of two big strategic plays in the past six months – and since the release last year of an RNZ-commissioned report by Richard Sutherland, in which the former RNZ news boss made several scathing points about the state of RNZ’s radio performance.
The storyline is now well known: RNZ radio audiences have fallen steadily between 2020 and early 2025, before an uptick in the two most recent listener surveys, including the most recent last December.
But while RNZ’s total audience has moved back over 500,000 (beating RNZ’s own deadline to get there by late 2026), there is still a lot of work to be done for it to once again get past commercial rival Newstalk ZB (owned by NZME, the publisher of the NZ Herald) and several music radio stations.
RNZ chief audio officer Pip Keane. Photo / RNZ
The other big strategic play is the appointment of Keane herself. She has been with RNZ since 2015, and is one of New Zealand’s most experienced broadcast leaders and producers. As well as a long working relationship with Campbell, she’s also worked closely in the past with Marcus Lush at Radio Live and Paul Holmes on TV.
She is a news junkie at heart and a renowned handler of talent, with a close ear on the speakers.
“I’m listening to everything as much as I can throughout the day. Obviously, a very big part of the job is actually having an ear on the radio.”
She’s obviously read the Sutherland report – which went so far as to suggest some people’s voices weren’t up to scratch and they should be taken off air and that the Morning Report team should be relocated to Auckland, from Wellington – but isn’t keen to cross old ground.
It’s clear she’s implementing her own strategy.
“I always like to look forward and not back,” Keane says.
“The changes to Morning Report were already underway. I had been working on that in my former role, making those changes to the clock,” she says, referring specifically to changes between 6am and 7am, an hour that had sometimes been weighed down by a rather constant diet of dire world news.
She’s also helped introduce new voices, including regular appearances by the likes of Nathan Rarere and Susan Edmonds. She’s also thrilled that Corin Dann – who she said she was gutted to lose from Morning Report – has become RNZ’s business editor.
She adds: “We were already talking about moving people to Auckland and having people all in one space in preparation for moving to the new building [RNZ is about to move into the TVNZ headquarters in central Auckland].
“[On] voice training, we’ve worked through our audio plan, in terms of getting everyone up to scratch.
“There were people who were on air – the odd person, it wasn’t anyone’s fault … they started, they were keen as mustard to do a story and their voices went to air.”
She says she hasn’t taken anyone off air as the Sutherland report recommended. “I don’t think that was the right way to go about things. We just worked really hard to get everyone confident.”
Campbell has also revealed he’s been working closely with Morning Report executive producer Annabel Bania on shorter, more precise interviews – one way to help build the pace of the show.
There’s no set time locked in for each interview but, by and by, five minutes is generally a yardstick, Keane says.
“We actually talked about it in the morning debrief this morning, and we thought one of the interviews that we did could have been shorter. You know, if you’ve run out of things to ask someone, then it’s time to wrap it up.”
All these changes are designed to continue rebuilding listeners.
Morning Report currently has a cumulative audience of 352,200, compared with 424,300 for Mike Hosking’s Newstalk ZB show.
Keane is a self-described numbers person who focuses heavily on the regular GFK radio survey results, down to each hour. The next results are due out next month.
“I want to grow the audience. We’re very fixated on that.”
She won’t go so far as to engage with a question of whether Morning Report can move ahead of Hosking and ZB again. “I’d like to grow the audience – that’s all I’m going to say.”
On the matter of the Act party refusing to come on Morning Report – a longstanding policy from leader David Seymour, who says he has found them historically rude to deal with off air – Keane says he’s always welcome to come on the show. “I respect David Seymour. We all respect David Seymour, and we’d love to have him on Morning Report, but that’s his choice.”
The Morning Report changes have been all-consuming in the first few months of Keane’s role, but she is taking a broader look at the RNZ National line-up.
She and RNZ announced today that Kim Hill would be back for a new podcast series, scheduled for later this year – a video interview series with more details to come. “The audience loves her. We’ve got a loyal audience that really loved her. They were asking for more. We wanted to deliver.”
Kim Hill will return to RNZ for a new podcast series. Photo / NZME
Keane has also reinstated Country Life in a 7am Saturday timeslot, and she’s sat down with those involved in 14 different shows across the week.
The next set of GFK ratings will give her and recently appointed executive editor of news programmes Sarah de Croy guidance on future changes.
“I’ll really have the time now that Sarah has started … to actually sit down with all of the teams.
“We’ll dissect those GFK results, and we’ll look at where we’re tracking. What shows need to make changes, and which ones don’t need to make any changes.
“We’ll slap each other on the back if we need to and say we’re doing well here and we’re doing well there. But I think our audience needs to know that we’re open to change.
“If things need to be changed, they will be changed.”
For Keane, her role is now balancing her listening duties and news junkie approach with the responsibilities and roles of an executive – moving, she says, from a “do-ey person” to a “do-ey and a hui” person.
“I feel very privileged about having this role and also excited about what I can do.”
Editor-at-large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including managing editor, NZ Herald editor and Herald on Sunday editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.