Plunket licked his wounds, located a backer in Wright, and created a media brand devoted to being able to say almost anything and talk to almost anyone. Now he has total control over the venture, as well as total responsibility for its financial viability.<\/p>\n
The transaction has been in the works for a while, as the Platform has come under mounting financial pressure. It parted company with popular sports talk host Martin Devlin a year ago, after the Wright family started winding down its funding, and cut it off completely in March of 2025. Devlin had earlier attracted a major corporate sponsor in One NZ \u2013 ironically one of the same companies (when known as Vodafone) which had previously left Magic Talk in protest<\/a> at its content.\u00a0<\/p>\n This reveals a meaningful change in the commercial environment for The Platform. \u201cThose first few months we couldn\u2019t give away our advertising,\u201d Wright recalled to Plunket on the station\u2019s third birthday earlier this year. \u201cEveryone was afraid of so-called cancel culture.\u201d Not any more. Along with One NZ, The Platform\u2019s YouTube clips have Spark ads running as mid-rolls. It shows the more permissive media environment we operate in now, a move away from a period when blue chip advertisers attempted to distance themselves from content considered objectionable.\u00a0<\/p>\n The station is part of a clutch of new digital audio startups that have been built around characters coming out the other side of mainstream broadcasting, including a revived Sports Cafe, the Dom Harvey Show and Reality Check Radio. All have created significant new enterprises from scratch, despite employing some hosts who exited mainstream organisations under various shapes of cloud.<\/p>\n A new, unmediated media<\/p>\n Their success shows that mainstream and regulated media has to obey a set of rules around content which are quite different to those which governed radio in previous eras \u2013 and different again from the more libertarian era of social media we live through now. MagicTalk was overseen by the BSA; The Platform answers to no regulator. The combination of wide social distribution through TikTok and Instagram and massive platforms like YouTube and Spotify has proven the audience for shock jocks and unbridled talkback never went away \u2013 it just moved.\u00a0<\/p>\n Video, which generates huge engagement and wide distribution, is a major part of this movement \u2013 both short clips on social media and longer forms on streaming platforms. These new startups can generate engagement that dwarfs more buttoned down content from larger outlets.<\/p>\n The Platform exists within this loose group, but also connects more directly to mainstream politics and culture. It has hosted Chrises Luxon and Hipkins, former All Black coaches Ian Foster and Steve Hansen, along with internationally infamous figures like Candace Owens and Posie Parker. It has persistently positioned itself as the only honest and uncompromised media outlet in New Zealand, and invites a wide variety of guests, though gives them quite different hearings.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a persistent troll \u2013 weather is called \u201cclimate change\u201d, brought to you by Kiwi Fertiliser \u2013 but not completely incorrigible, as they pronounce te reo place names correctly within. Plunket is still brilliant at times. Just this morning he opened with an arch critique of Luxon\u2019s announcement of Ikea\u2019s opening day, which he framed as a distraction from the Amazon data centre debacle<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s not investing in New Zealand,\u201d he said of Ikea\u2019s debut, \u201cit\u2019s opening a shop.\u201d His interview with Ray Chung was a masterclass<\/a>, as Joel MacManus noted at the time.<\/p>\n The Platform has also, inevitably and intentionally, attracted its share of controversy, much of it of Plunket\u2019s own making and fairly despicable. In 2023 he baselessly claimed that Stuff was underwritten by the Ngai T\u0101hu iwi. In 2024 he referred to endangered M\u0101ui dolphins as \u201cthe Down syndrome kids of marine mammals. They\u2019re cross-bred and they deserve to die.\u201d He called for a \u201cpogrom\u201d of appointees from the previous government, in an interview with David Seymour. It\u2019s not just on air. Last year he acknowledged \u201cappalling\u201d behaviour<\/a> in an employment tribunal hearing involving former Platform staffer Ani O\u2019Brien. Then there was that tweet about Gaza, about which more later.<\/p>\n If Plunket has a favourite drum to bang, it\u2019s critiquing his former employers. He was a mainstream media lifer, and some consider him among the best hosts Morning Report ever had \u2013 but his view has markedly soured in recent years. Now media criticism is a major part of his beat. In one of the Platform\u2019s most-viewed clips<\/a>, he talks about \u201cwatching the bribe in action\u201d on TVNZ\u2019s Breakfast, while another popular clip<\/a> is entitled \u201cSean Plunket explains to Stuff how journalism works\u201d. Just this morning, he was meant to interview Stacey Morrison, at her request, as part of a forthcoming Te M\u0101ngai P\u0101ho-funded show for TVNZ, entitled I\u2019m Not Racist, But\u2026<\/p>\n He had been hyping it, and was furious when it was cancelled less than 24 hours out, with the production citing it having not gained the necessary permission from TVNZ. The state broadcaster told The Spinoff in a statement that \u201cwe\u2019re keen for Stacey to promote the show, we just want her to do that when she can tell people how and when they can watch. Our view is that any interviews have been delayed rather than cancelled. We\u2019ll support the media she wants to engage in when it can help viewership.\u201d<\/p>\n Plunket\u2019s big opportunity to talk with a beloved household name about such an inflammatory subject (\u201cI don\u2019t know why they\u2019d want to talk to us about that\u201d, he said, implausibly) had been dashed, but it was all just more content. He ridiculed TVNZ to open his show this morning, and decided to pointedly replace Morrison with a return visit for Julian Batchelor, the Christian evangelist who leads the Stop Co-governance movement.<\/p>\n A new era, with a new kind of media backer<\/p>\n Wright Jr funded The Platform due to his dissatisfaction with mainstream broadcasting in the aftermath of the pandemic, and its paranoid thesis is made clear in the statement establishing a change of ownership. \u201cEstablished during dark times in New Zealand journalism where the State exchanged control of public narrative for cash and public confidence in media integrity was at all-time lows, the Wright Family funded The Platform from initial startup to a self-sustaining media company to confirm the viability of an unbiased non taxpayer funded new media enterprise in New Zealand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This has not been uncomplicated for the Wright family. Wright Jr boasted in an earlier interview with The Spinoff that \u201cthey can\u2019t cancel me<\/a>. When people come and rattle their sabres at us, we can say, \u2018well, tomorrow is another day. Good luck with that. And by the way, you could buy one of our things over here. Stay in a hotel we own\u2019.\u201d Yet that has not been entirely true.\u00a0<\/p>\nSean Plunket during his interview with Ray Chung. Photo: The Platform.<\/p>\n