I’m not going to dance on its grave. No one should rejoice when people’s livelihoods are on the line. But the station’s failure comes as no surprise.
It was conceived and born in unpropitious circumstances. Its progenitor was Magic Talk, which had grown out of Radio Live.
Remember Magic Talk? That’s the MediaWorks-owned station that got rid of John Banks after he appeared to agree with a caller who described Maori as a Stone Age people.
As I wrote at the time, that statement offended a lot of people. Being offended is one of the prices we pay for living in a free society, but the woke Left were outraged and demanded Banks’ head.
He was soon gone. MediaWorks chief executive Cam Wallace, freshly arrived from Air New Zealand and presumably keen to make a big impression, boasted that the former cabinet minister and Auckland mayor wouldn’t be back as long as he was in charge.
We learned from that episode that former airline executives aren't big on such nebulous values as free speech. Bums on seats is what they understand. MediaWorks quickly buckled in the face of boycotts by major advertisers Vodafone, KiwiBank and Spark, who weren't interested in free speech either.
Sean Plunket was the next to go. He too was targeted by vindictive woke zealots. Peter Williams lasted a few months longer. He walked because he felt his position had become untenable due to pressure over his stance on Covid and vaccine mandates.
By the end of 2021 Magic Talk had cleared the decks of its embarrassing conservative hosts and MediaWorks was ready to rebrand the station (at a reported cost of $9 million) as TodayFM, with a glowing roster of politically more acceptable hosts that included big names Tova O’Brien, Duncan Garner and Rachel Smalley.
Unfortunately it’s been pretty much downhill ever since. By the end of last year, TodayFM’s ratings had tanked to a derisory 1.4 per cent share of the market. Martyn Bradbury called it the worst result of any talkback station in New Zealand radio history.
Meanwhile, Sean Plunket had responded in the most effective way possible to his falling out with MediaWorks: namely, by setting up The Platform, which appears to have thrived in inverse proportion to TodayFM’s headlong decline.
But even as TodayFM’s ratings agony continued, it appeared to have learned nothing. It required its hosts Leah Panapa and Miles Davis to make an on-air apology and submit to a humiliating ritual called Rainbow Tick training after they offended the wokerati by making the outrageous suggestion that only women could get pregnant.
That sent a resounding message to the station’s dwindling audience, who would quite reasonably have wondered why a radio station should expect loyalty from its listeners when it showed none to its hosts. The punishment of Panapa and Davis would also have signalled that TodayFM was more concerned with pandering to carping objectors than with providing daring, stimulating and entertaining radio.
At that point O’Brien, Garner et al must have been feeling cold shivers, yet as far as we know they did nothing to support their colleagues. It now seems clear they would have had little to lose by taking a stand, since the whole shebang was obviously on the skids anyway.
By then Wallace had fled back to the airline business. He was followed by the wunderkind Dallas Gurney, MediaWorks’ director of news and talk – the guy who made Panapa and Davis walk the plank. Now, only two weeks later, the whole ship has sunk.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that MediaWorks didn't deserve to run a talk station in the first place. Even before it launched TodayFM, the company clearly had no respect for the idea that controversial and provocative ideas should be freely aired and debated in an open society, which is the very essence of talkback.
Another lesson might be that no talk station can survive by trying to ingratiate itself with people who never listen to the radio anyway. As the saying goes: “Go woke, go broke.”
Footnote: RNZ has gone big on the TodayFM saga but has been strangely reticent about another radio story of public interest - namely, the unexplained absence for the past few weeks (unconnected, according to the New Zealand Herald) of two of its most popular hosts, Jim Mora and Karyn Hay. Listeners' curiosity can only have been heightened by the PR smokescreen emanating from the RNZ head office, which seemed calculated to deflect attention from the subject of the paper's inquiries. Whatever the explanation, they are two of RNZ's most likeable presenters and I look forward to their return.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.
As I wrote at the time, that statement offended a lot of people. Being offended is one of the prices we pay for living in a free society, but the woke Left were outraged and demanded Banks’ head.
He was soon gone. MediaWorks chief executive Cam Wallace, freshly arrived from Air New Zealand and presumably keen to make a big impression, boasted that the former cabinet minister and Auckland mayor wouldn’t be back as long as he was in charge.
We learned from that episode that former airline executives aren't big on such nebulous values as free speech. Bums on seats is what they understand. MediaWorks quickly buckled in the face of boycotts by major advertisers Vodafone, KiwiBank and Spark, who weren't interested in free speech either.
Sean Plunket was the next to go. He too was targeted by vindictive woke zealots. Peter Williams lasted a few months longer. He walked because he felt his position had become untenable due to pressure over his stance on Covid and vaccine mandates.
By the end of 2021 Magic Talk had cleared the decks of its embarrassing conservative hosts and MediaWorks was ready to rebrand the station (at a reported cost of $9 million) as TodayFM, with a glowing roster of politically more acceptable hosts that included big names Tova O’Brien, Duncan Garner and Rachel Smalley.
Unfortunately it’s been pretty much downhill ever since. By the end of last year, TodayFM’s ratings had tanked to a derisory 1.4 per cent share of the market. Martyn Bradbury called it the worst result of any talkback station in New Zealand radio history.
Meanwhile, Sean Plunket had responded in the most effective way possible to his falling out with MediaWorks: namely, by setting up The Platform, which appears to have thrived in inverse proportion to TodayFM’s headlong decline.
But even as TodayFM’s ratings agony continued, it appeared to have learned nothing. It required its hosts Leah Panapa and Miles Davis to make an on-air apology and submit to a humiliating ritual called Rainbow Tick training after they offended the wokerati by making the outrageous suggestion that only women could get pregnant.
That sent a resounding message to the station’s dwindling audience, who would quite reasonably have wondered why a radio station should expect loyalty from its listeners when it showed none to its hosts. The punishment of Panapa and Davis would also have signalled that TodayFM was more concerned with pandering to carping objectors than with providing daring, stimulating and entertaining radio.
At that point O’Brien, Garner et al must have been feeling cold shivers, yet as far as we know they did nothing to support their colleagues. It now seems clear they would have had little to lose by taking a stand, since the whole shebang was obviously on the skids anyway.
By then Wallace had fled back to the airline business. He was followed by the wunderkind Dallas Gurney, MediaWorks’ director of news and talk – the guy who made Panapa and Davis walk the plank. Now, only two weeks later, the whole ship has sunk.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that MediaWorks didn't deserve to run a talk station in the first place. Even before it launched TodayFM, the company clearly had no respect for the idea that controversial and provocative ideas should be freely aired and debated in an open society, which is the very essence of talkback.
Another lesson might be that no talk station can survive by trying to ingratiate itself with people who never listen to the radio anyway. As the saying goes: “Go woke, go broke.”
Footnote: RNZ has gone big on the TodayFM saga but has been strangely reticent about another radio story of public interest - namely, the unexplained absence for the past few weeks (unconnected, according to the New Zealand Herald) of two of its most popular hosts, Jim Mora and Karyn Hay. Listeners' curiosity can only have been heightened by the PR smokescreen emanating from the RNZ head office, which seemed calculated to deflect attention from the subject of the paper's inquiries. Whatever the explanation, they are two of RNZ's most likeable presenters and I look forward to their return.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.
7 comments:
That's the ONLY good thing about the woke brigade. Even in the face of their own destruction, they persist in pushing their ridiculous agenda.
They seem to have lost that basic survival instinct.
Good news for the rest of us and some consolation for all the shit we're having to put up with.
Having seldom had much time for television, I used to listen to radio - a lot! Not any more, and certainly not commercial radio, so I have little idea of what TodayFM sounded like, and I have lost not a minute of sleep over it.
I have to chuckle however at the item about the two RNZ presenters Hay & Mora (not that I have listened to RNZ for at least two years now). Reading the word salad from RNZ spin staff, there is repeated reference to "stable of presenters". Horses are well-known for emitting vast amounts of hot air - the imagery is almost too much.
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. That suggests, i.e. the dwindling ratings, reflect the public's rejection of wokeism?
So that bodes well for election day when the Wokey Labour/Greens government is for once, accountable.
I listened to the final minutes of TodayFM on You Tube yesterday, It was the first time I had ever tuned in to them and obviously I had not missed very much.
I am very concerned about Mora and Hay. jim was about the only announcer who maintained a degree of objectivity on most subjects. And Karyn is intelligent with a most delightful sensuous chuckle. Great company in the late hours.
I wonder if they have rejected te reo, gloriously lacking from most of their programmes, and a huge factor in their popularity.
Curiously, despite the TVNZ merger being canned, supposedly forever, RNZ still seems determined to reduce listener numbers as was presumbly their ploy to increase the case for a giant merged maori dominated empire.
One bit of possibly good news, the ultra fawning te reo babbling Mani Dunlop with her infuriating marae derived mmm, mmm, mmm is to go from RNZ Midday. She was masterful at encouraging and leading maori propogandists. The worry is where she might re appear.
So not sorry Karl, must admit I did a little dancing albeit on the inside but on the proverbial grave. I really don't know howTodayFM was born but someone hat I know lost their job at Magic Talk I presume others did too all at the same time. Was it to make way for T.FM? That's show biz.
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