Media Matters: the story about Story’s ratings & an exodus of experience from NZME

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Another week, another installment of Media Matters, in which NBR Radio’s Andrew Patterson chats with Campbell Gibson and Nick Grant about the inner workings of New Zealand’s media industrial complex.

First up, Campbell Gibson previews a story he has in this week’s print edition about the latest survey of the local video game industry. One of the surprising aspects is how little interest the government seems to have in providing even the small amount of support necessary to provide a significant boost to a small but successful sector that produces exactly the kind of IP-heavy, weightless exports NZ Inc is constantly extolled to focus on.

Wondering what the story is with the ratings for Story, the new TV3 current affairs show that launched last week? They’re served up with a caution on the side that TV shows take many months to bed in (something MediaWorks’ management no longer seem to understand, given Story is due for an internal review by Christmas), so it’s unfair to judge a new programme a success or failure on the basis of its first six episodes.

Paul Henry’s breakfast TV-radio hybrid, on the other hand, has been on air long enough that meaningful trends can be divined from its ratings. It recently broke into the list of TV3’s five most watched programmes of the day, which is a great achievement for the show – but a disaster for the channel.

Finally, Nick Grant talks about a tip he’s looking into about an alleged exodus of experienced online editors from NZME’s NZ Herald – the vast majority have apparently now left the building, with about half of them snapped by Fairfax’s Stuff website.

As evidence of this he puts his punctuation policeman’s hat on, blithely ignores the glasshouse he’s sitting in and points to a Herald column by Mike Hosking. Posted online on Tuesday, it contained six obvious spelling errors (ironically for a column decrying racism, they were all nationalities or nation’s names) and two egregious examples of apostrophe abuse (pictured right).

Three days later the errors were still all-too evident, despite them being pointed out several times to the media platform’s staff.

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