A conversation with the most important person in NZ TV
About the most important day in their year
In the local TV calendar, this time of year is when the action is. We have the SPADA screen production conference, an annual airing of grievances inspiring industry gathering (truly it’s both). We have the TV awards, which are fun and basically the same as the above. There’s an NZ on Air Christmas party, helpfully held the day before they tell you whether you can make your show next year.
And there are the upfronts. This is where the big TV networks gather advertisers to tell them about what they’ll be screening next year, hoping to get them excited enough to make millions of dollars in ad bookings. I had no idea they existed until I started getting invited when The Spinoff began.
Upfronts are fascinating in so many ways, but for Rec Room purposes, they’re the single biggest day for new TV show announcements, as well as a great pulse check for the local TV industry. They used to be insanely opulent parties – one had a drummer rising through the stage of the Civic, and another featured Paul Henry in a pretend car at the Cloud. That’s changed, as has the relative health of our major networks. I’ve dedicated most of this week’s Rec Room to this year’s upfronts.
— Duncan Greive, Rec Room editor
I’ll start with something somewhat chilling: TVNZ’s crosstown rivals at Three aren’t even holding upfronts this year — the first time that’s ever happened, as far as I’m aware. A spokesperson said that the channel is “looking at how best to engage clients in a way which aligns with our digi first strategy”, but a source at Warner Brother-Discovery, Three’s parent company, acknowledged that it’s not just about that. They said that it didn’t feel right to have a big, expensive celebration just weeks after it was announced that The Project would be shutting down.
TVNZ’s upfronts were easily the most pared-back I’ve seen. Split into three identical events to recognise the limited capacity of the venue — their atrium — it was a relatively austere event befitting the tough times in media. It was a far cry from the blockbuster at Spark Arena a year ago, featuring women wearing dresses made entirely from champagne flutes.
It was still an impressive event, and the lineup is pretty strong — especially given that Hollywood’s strikes have just ended, stymying some of next year’s big international shows. Tara Ward and Alex Casey have analysed the slate in an essential blow-by-blow, but I wanted to dig into the weeds of what’s happening at TVNZ, so I spoke with Nevak Rogers. She’s former on screen talent who has risen to become acting head of content at TVNZ and, therefore, the single most powerful influence over what we see on our screens.
Rogers really believes in the power of TV to reflect and evolve this country but works at a company that has had its share of redundancies this year, including a key drama commissioner from her team. TVNZ has also seen some high profile exec resignations, including CEO Simon Power, CFO Ciara McGuigan and her predecessor as head of content, Cate Calver – none of whom has been formally replaced.
This is, in part, the aftermath of the dumped merger with RNZ but also tells a story about an organisation trying to figure out how to digitally transition in an extremely challenging environment for any media business.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity – an extended version will run on The Spinoff at midday today
Duncan Greive: What are you personally most excited about with the new lineup?
Nevak Rogers: The Documentary NZ strand has been a pet project over the last few years. So seeing some of those docos come through – the Dilworth documentary and the documentary following Mana Kura, which is following a bunch of rangatahi from Papakura, where I grew up. So I've got a real affinity to that place and the things that are happening in the communities around ram raids and community based, grassroots level solutions from the mums and the marae.
The Hospital is another piece that I'm really looking forward to seeing come through. Emma Wehipeihana, who is pretty well-known in media circles, is now a surgical registrar based out at Middlemore. Just understanding the pressures, as well as so many of the triumphs, that come through that hospital.
What impact has the writers and actors strike carried on next year's slate? And how have you navigated around that?
It's interesting – we got back from [TV industry sales conference] MIPCOM in London just a few weeks ago. One of the things I probably hadn't fully appreciated was the impact that the writers' strike is having, not just in the US, but also that there were a number of UK productions that had either writers or actors who were from the States attached to those projects. A lot of those have been paused or cancelled.
It's a really big kaupapa that they're grappling with. So I'm really thrilled that they’ve made some progress. In some instances, that will mean potentially the show is delayed, and in others, that might be a shorter run of some of those series. And some may not have a season up in the new year. So we're just working through all of that at the moment.
The After the Party story feels closed – but are you working with that team again? Is there room for a spiritual, if not literal, sequel?
We are having talks. Whenever a show comes in, we're always looking at okay, so is it returnable? Nothing to announce yet, but we are definitely having talks.
This time last year, the whole organisation was set upon the merger with RNZ. How difficult has unpicking that work been?
There was a significant amount of work that happened alongside our peers at RNZ. So when that was cancelled in February, we had to have a look at our strategy in terms of what could be retained. I feel like over the last three years, we've done a lot of work alongside our production partners, particularly in the local space, to have a look at, you know, our purpose and values and how we show Aotearoatanga, how we look at our Mana Reo or how we look at Kia Māia – those three value sets.
So, I feel like a lot of work has already been done prior to ANZPM [the name for the merged organisations]. It's just been a matter of tweaking that and looking at how we can continue to do that without any government support in terms of putea.
In terms of your own team, you've lost a commissioner for drama [John Barr] recently, and the workload doesn't look like it's any smaller. What impact is the difficult commercial environment having on your team and TVNZ more broadly?
That's the piece that keeps you up at night. Looking around at media organisations around Aotearoa, it's no different. We're all small margins; we're in a country of only five and a half million people. I think the Love Local campaign that [screen production guild] Spada is spearheading to try and lobby to have the streamers taxed – I think that will go a long way. So potentially providing a new form of income, a new form of putea, that's going to make it easier for us to continue to grow our local sector here in New Zealand.
We're really having to reduce costs and live within our means. It's been some really tough decisions. Steve [Barr, the outgoing drama commissioner] is still with us for a little bit longer, but we did have his farewell last week, and it was pretty emotional. It's hard to lose good people.
* Allow me one nitpick out of an otherwise impressive event. TVNZ and NZME are the most digitally adept of the big media companies – yet no space was given to Re: News, TVNZ’s youth-focused news brand, which had a huge night at the Voyager Media Awards earlier in the year. There was a lot of talk about digital transformation – but to do that, you need to nurture your green digital shoots more closely than the organisation has recently – or historically.
Want even more? I did a monologue on The Fold talking through the showcase – and an extended version of the above interview runs on The Spinoff at midday.
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Quick pop culture hits
A “low stakes true crime podcast”, Prank of the Year, sets out to solve a niche scandal that briefly enveloped Telecom in the mid-90s. The trailer is intriguing – episode one drops today.
One pod opens, another closes: The Real Pod announced that it was ending. Me, Alex, and Jane have made over 400 episodes, and I’m somewhat emotional, tbh.
Tara Ward reviews the new Robbie Williams docuseries, in which the singer “spends most of the documentary lying on his bed wearing nothing but a singlet and undies”, which is a choice.
I was tempted to go and see The Corrs at Spark – Alex Casey’s hilarious review of the Christchurch show made me curse holding back.
This reads like AI made an Alex Casey story: an academic who’s also a former Bachelorette is holding a Taylor Swift symposium next year.
Tom Sainsbury’s partnership with the FMA attracted some probably deserved criticism. On the brighter side, he revealed himself as a massive and cute normie in his My Life in TV.
Best show title of 2024: “James Musta-a-pic His Mum a New Man”
CTI 2023 winner James Mustapic has long been a fave of The Spinoff (check his magic series Repressed Memories from a few years back), and he made a scene-stealing cameo at the TVNZ showcase – I’m handing over to Alex Casey to explain why we’re so pumped about his new show.
“Fans of Mustapic’s YouTube days and stand-up will be familiar with his mum, Janet, who appears to have a near endless tolerance for James’ shenanigans. Now, it seems he’s looking to find his Mum a love match in this original dating show. “From blind dates, clairvoyants and ice baths with the Bachelor Art Green, no stone is left unturned in the search for love,” the synopsis reads. “After all, James might get himself the father figure he’s always wanted.” Shoot it into my veins!”
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The Killer is chilling, stylish and very compelling
I did find time for one non-TVNZ watch this week. David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) is part of that tiny club of directors who get to make high budget movies outside the franchise/sequel system. The Killer hit both cinemas and Netflix a week ago, and I just adored it. The film follows a working assassin who botches a kill, which sets off a bizarre and bloody series of recriminations.
The assassin genre is fairly familiar territory and can be pitched up (In Bruges, Léon: The Professional) or down (The Crank and Mechanic series, presumably some non-Jason Statham movies) with satisfying results. The Killer follows a spellbinding, Smiths-obsessed Michael Fassbender for its whole runtime and is alternately kinetic and moody but never less than riveting as it moves around the world in highly stylised chapters.
For everything else: check out Sam Brooks’ essential “new to streaming” for the week.