Media Matters: Ad blockers and redundancy rumours

In this instalment of Media Matters, NBR Radio’s Jason Walls chats with Campbell Gibson and Nick Grant about the inner workings of New Zealand’s media industrial complex.

Ad blocking has been a serious concern for the media industry for some time, Mr Gibson points out, but really hit the headlines last week thanks to Apple allowing ad blockers on to its mobile Safari Web Browser.

For those who came in late, ad blocking is third party software that’s used to eliminate most advertisements on websites, effectively starving websites of that revenue.

It has risen to popularity for a number of reasons, including people becoming annoyed with pop up ads and wanting websites to load faster.

After Apple updated its iOS software, ad blockers quickly climbed the ranks to become the most popular paid apps of the world’s most profitable company.

The concern for advertisers is that mobile, which is the fastest growing advertising channel, had previously been largely untouched by ad blockers.

The software is most popular with young, tech-savvy people (in other words, one of the most attractive demographics for advertisers) but some fear that the recent surge in media interest will attract the attention of those not previously aware of it and prompt them to adopt it too.

MSM companies beset with challenges

The uptake of ad blockers is just one aspect of the rapidly evolving environment that’s bedevilling mainstream media companies at the moment, Mr Grant notes.

Last Wednesday NZME – the assets of which include the NZ Herald, The Radio Network and GrabOne – announced that its answer to addressing these challenges was to bring its “print, digital and radio news teams ... together in one integrated, multi-platform, 24/7 operation.”

By last Friday this grand vision had been swamped by fear-and-loathing inflected rumours of “a bloodbath” at the Herald as a result of the integration.

A number of high profile staff members and contributors were said to be entering into a “consultation process” with management that many assume is code for “redundancy.”

That process is expected to take a while yet to run. In the meantime, one of those tipped to be on the way out – columnist John Roughan – has reportedly been confirmed as staying, while an official announcement has been made about the impending departure of NZME chief operating officer Phil Eustace.

Mr Eustace will be leaving the company at the end of the year, the statement said, although he’s agreed to provide consulting services to NZME after that.

Meanwhile, Mr Grant has been interested to note that in addition to the material featuring Breakfast host Newstalk ZB Mike Hosking and the recent glut of opinion pieces by Rachel Smalley, another NZME radio ‘star’ in the form of Polly Gillespie appears to have been given a regular column on the NZ Herald website.

Why, wonders Mr Grant, is the increasingly integrated media company’s cross-promotion only running one way? Surely there are many Herald journalists who'd be much more fluent on radio than various DJs are in print?

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