So: an unalloyed win? Yes \u2013 with caveats. Campbell is a superb broadcaster, but one with an unambiguous point of view. That\u2019s well aligned with much of RNZ\u2019s staff and more of its audience \u2013 but for a public broadcaster, any perception that his beliefs colour his on-air performance could provide near-existential risk for RNZ. This is because, despite persistent grumbling, it has never become the live political target that institutions like the BBC, ABC or NPR have in other countries.<\/p>\n
Campbell is hardly chilling out as he ages, and notably wrote a series of scathing essays<\/a> in the aftermath of the 2023 election, accusing the coalition of \u201crecolonising\u201d, and alluding to its \u201cheart of darkness\u201d \u2013 all before a law had been passed. If Campbell is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as proving too sympathetic to the left, or hostile to the right, it\u2019s easy to imagine Act or NZ First elevating critiques to a \u201cdefund\u201d setting. As a result, no single appointment has a higher ceiling, nor more perilous basement.<\/p>\n A few years ago, the major free-to-air broadcasters announced their upcoming year\u2019s programming with elaborate set pieces known as \u201cupfronts\u201d. They wheeled out talent, rented top-tier venues and had fairly eye-opening stunts, like women wearing dresses made of champagne flutes, all in the aid of getting advertisers to spend large. This season, in a stark reflection of shifting economic power, pay-TV giant Sky is the only one hosting an upfronts (or the only one inviting media).<\/p>\n Sky\u2019s confidence is understandable after an extraordinary performance in 2025, one that saw it deftly navigate satellite issues, re-sign its most important sporting contracts on more favourable terms, as well as picking up Three and ThreeNow for $1. Yet its ability to bask in that afterglow is limited, as both NZ Cricket and NZ Rugby have an air of chaos about them<\/a>. Both are without CEOs after protracted wrestling with stakeholders, while NZ Rugby took the extraordinary step of firing the All Black coach after an indifferent review. It shows that while Sky is in a strong position, it remains exposed to the performance of its suppliers. And right now, they look shaky.<\/p>\n Will TVNZ follow Netflix into podcasts \u2013 or user-generated content?<\/p>\n One of the biggest trends in recent years has been YouTube\u2019s transformation into television, in part by its creators figuring out what it\u2019s for faster than a commissioner ever could. Hence it becoming the biggest podcast platform in the world, without even really trying. Netflix noticed, and is really trying: it has inked a partnership with The Ringer<\/a> to switch its pods from YouTube to Netflix, as well as commissioning some \u201cvideo-only\u201d podcasts (surely more accurately described as \u201cTV shows\u201d) from the likes of Pete Davidson.\u00a0<\/p>\n The local podcast market remains fragmented and sub-scale \u2013 but TVNZ has in Nadia Tolich a new head of content who is very familiar with the form, having previously headed up audio for Stuff. Will she make a play to follow Netflix into this realm? \u201cNothing to announce, but we\u2019re watching this move with interest,\u201d a TVNZ spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cPodcasts are increasingly consumed in video format; the data is compelling.\u201d Translation: they\u2019re waiting and seeing, but this is one content trend they have a chance to get out ahead of and own locally.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s juiciest media saga was the hostile campaign of maybe-billionaire<\/a> Jim Grenon to remodel NZME\u2019s board. He acquired a 10% stake in the company, went to war with its CEO and chair, before suing for peace and ultimately being invited on to its board, with former senior National minister Steven Joyce installed as chair. Over time, Grenon increased his stake to nearly 20% \u2013 all without having much obvious impact on the editorial product.<\/p>\n The big question: is Grenon satisfied, or just drawing breath? He and other shareholders aligned with his views appear to have the means to launch a full takeover, especially if they were to carve off OneRoof. It\u2019s a delicate situation for all concerned \u2013 and while it\u2019s all quiet for now, there is no guarantee it will stay that way.<\/p>\n Will Trade Me take all of Stuff, and where will that leave mastheads?<\/p>\n The most interesting media investment of 2025 was Trade Me\u2019s buying into Stuff Digital. It was a tantalising prospect: its technology, user base and matchless knowledge of what New Zealanders buy and sell, married to Stuff\u2019s huge audiences. So far, there is little public-facing to show for it, but an integration at that scale naturally takes time. A Stuff Digital spokesperson said the investment was \u201cprogressing extremely well with some exciting new product opportunities under way together in 2026\u201d.<\/p>\n News also broke last year that Stuff\u2019s mastheads business, which was \u201cconsciously uncoupled\u201d from its digital business, had been in talks with NZME for acquisition (this despite furious denials to The Spinoff that the uncoupling meant anything at all). Those talks were broken off during the Grenon affair, but his period of being boring and normal (with one major exception<\/a>) might eventually open the door to renewed discussions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stuff understandably had nothing to say on the matter, beyond that its \u201csuccessful subscription business is going from strength to strength and has a number of highly valuable products\u201d. It\u2019s still unlikely to go to NZME, on balance, but a lot of unlikely things happen in the media nowadays, so it cannot be written off entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cWho will buy Paramount?\u201d was an epic media saga that ran for years. With that settled, it\u2019s been replaced by \u201cwho will buy Warner Brothers?\u201d The famed Hollywood studio\u2019s current owners picked Netflix, much to the fury of its other suitor, Paramount\/Skydance. The latter is driven by David Ellison, son of Oracle founder and occasional world\u2019s richest man Larry Ellison. The Ellisons are not giving up the bid for WB without a fight, but with Netflix upping its offer to all cash just this week, it remains favourite to win the battle.<\/p>\n That would give it a huge trove of brands and IP, with significant potential impacts to New Zealand\u2019s media, most notably Sky, which currently houses many Warner Brothers shows and movies, particularly through its Neon streaming service. Yet because it\u2019s such a vast, complex and still unresolved transaction, it\u2019s possible \u2013 even likely \u2013 that it could be the end of the decade before the full ramifications are felt here. Of more pressing concern: a potential sequel to the debilitating Hollywood strikes that ran through 2023 and may yet reappear this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is our government going to keep watching Australia for ever, or will it act?\u00a0<\/p>\n All the above sits downstream from policy or regulation changes, which so far remain largely conceptual \u2013 at least on this side of the Tasman. Australia has hard quotas for free-to-air, a huge ad-free public broadcaster, laws to keep major sports accessible and provisions to protect media and production baked into their free-trade agreements. We\u2026 don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n So it remains: Australia leads the world in activist legislation addressing technology, media and society, including its pioneering news bargaining law, a social media ban for under 16s and a new law requiring streamers to spend a portion of their revenues on local productions (something New Zealand\u2019s production guild SPADA is pushing strongly for here). So far, we wait, and we watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n I approached the offices of Paul Goldsmith, our media minister, and Erica Stanford, the education minister overseeing consideration of the social media ban, to see whether there was any movement towards actually doing something.\u201cThe government is still\u2026 evaluating how Australian legislation plays out,\u201d said Goldsmith in a statement. The most doomed seems the news bargaining bill: \u201cIt is important we\u2019re cautious in how we proceed. The global political climate is just one of the factors we have to consider.\u201d Translation: we\u2019re too scared of Trump\u2019s tariffs to move on big tech for news or entertainment.<\/p>\n The social media ban is much more in motion, and more comprehensive \u2013 a word used three times in a brief statement. \u201cWe are considering all options to reduce online harm for children,\u201d said a spokesperson for Stanford. \u201cWe have developed a comprehensive work programme that will likely be split into two parts. Stage one will propose to include an age restriction for social media, with stage two involving a much more comprehensive children\u2019s online safety package. A comprehensive response is being considered as the AI landscape is moving at pace. We need to be able to respond to the harms caused by other sources, such as highly sexualised AI chatbots, on children.\u201d<\/p>\n If only other work were moving so purposefully. A spokesperson for TVNZ might have spoken for the whole sector in saying of Australia \u201cwe\u2019re watching with envy\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duncan Greive runs through the big storylines of the year in local media \u2013 and imagines how they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8133,138,492,117176,121110,1073,143603,111,143604,139,69,26263,45,19346,143582,6445],"class_list":{"0":"post-245573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-comments-enabled","11":"tag-jim-grenon","12":"tag-john-campbell","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-morning-report","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-new-zealand-rugby","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-nzme","20":"tag-rnz","21":"tag-stuff","22":"tag-trade-me","23":"tag-tvnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}John Campbell (Photo: Supplied)
\nCan NZ Rugby arrest its slide into chaos (or has Sky bought a big problem)?\u00a0<\/p>\n(Photo: Getty Images)
\nIs Jim Grenon done with NZME?<\/p>\n(Image: The Spinoff)
\nWill the Warner Brothers acquisition go through, and how will that impact us here?<\/p>\nEducation minister Erica Stanford (Photo: Mark Mitchell\/NZ Herald via Getty Images)<\/p>\n