Gordon Campbell On RNZ’s Morning Report – Flagship, Or Sinking Ship?

No doubt, the government’s plan (a) to make KiwiSaver compulsory and (b) significantly increase the contribution rate required of both workers and employers would end up delivering a desirable boost to savings in future. With a few notable exceptions though, the debate around the proposal has downplayed the affordability of what will also deliver, in the here and now, a sizeable cut in take-home pay.

That’s one reason why the comparisons being made with the savings/contribution rates common in higher wage countries like Australia and Canada seem somewhat facile. Yes, New Zealand may have a lower savings profile and a lower contribution rate, but we also have significantly lower wages. It doesn’t help that the same government that is touting this KiwiSaver plan has made only token increases in the minimum wage, and has actively eroded the bargaining power of labour in the workplace.

Given the climate of labour cost suppression, talking about making it compulsory to save in future seems wilfully short-sighted, given that many people cannot afford to have more of their inadequate earnings diverted into KiwiSaver, during a cost of living crisis. With company liquidations running close to a 16 year high, the same affordability issues arise over the compulsory contribution hike being expected of employers. This savings policy appears to has been created in a silo.

Fun times, not had by all

In times past, RNZ’s Morning Report programme would drive the news agenda for the day, and for much of the week. It did so via a combination of concise, well-researched journalism and probing interviews. The fact that its reputation endured regardless of the turnover in presenters (Lindsay Perigo, Sean Plunket, Geoff Robinson, Kim Hill, Guyon Espiner ete.) suggests that the programme’s success was not reliant on the presenters who came and went. Arguably, it was Morning Report’s news content and reportage that earned it (a) the fidelity of its listeners and (b) its prominent place on the nation’s media landscape.

While islands of quality reportage and analysis still remain, they are no longer the norm. The Morning Report schedule (see below) is being filled with what might charitably be called magazine items, “human interest” clickbait, jousting panellists, and sports coverage that is increasingly making it into the programme proper.

Tonally, the quality of the journalism is being undermined by the waves of chortling inanity that now surround it. Reportedly, the extensive banter between the presenters is mandatory, on instructions handed down by RNZ management Apparently this diktat is based on the premise that hearing other people having fun will be infectious. Sadly, that is not a given. Just as often, hearing other people having faux fun can be really annoying.

Being interviewed on Morning Report used to be seen as an opportunity of mutual benefit. For politicians, there was also an expectation that they should be answerable to the public, via the state broadcaster. However, if politicians now deign to show up at all, their presence is being met with fawning gratitude. Everyone is. Unfortunately, the effusiveness of the gratitude – thank you so much for being here! – erodes the sense of truth being spoken to power, among equals. All of which underlines the programme’s basic identity problem.

What Does Auckland Want?

Short answer: Mike Hosking. I know, I know…complaining about Morning Report is a past-time that’s largely restricted these days to people living south of Auckland. Yet if the breakfast jock patter now in vogue is intended to win Morning Report more listeners and greater relevance in Auckland, that hope is likely to end in disappointment. Why settle for an imitation of ZB Breakfast or Mai FM’s Breakfast Team when you can get the real thing?

This tendency to imitate (not innovate) seems to be part of a recurring pattern. For example: the recent addition to Morning Report of weekly panels of politicians bickering with each other repeats what has long been a ZB staple. In RNZ’s further pursuit of Auckland relevance, there are indications that the reversion to a (new?) solo presenter on the Saturday Morning programme might well also see the entire show being re-located to Auckland.

Chances are, dialling the jocularity up to eleven will succeed mainly in driving away more of Morning Report’s formerly faithful listeners. Unfortunately, this expertise in shedding older listeners will not automatically deliver RNZ a different (younger?) audience.

Earning the trust

On that point, Morning Report’s repeated advertising of itself as “news and information you can trust” feels a bit problematic. Surely, trust is something that’s earned, not proclaimed. Repeatedly telling people that you’re reliable feels like you’re trying to sell them a car. It also evokes a past journalistic rigour that the current managers no longer appear to hold in high regard, as an audience attractor.

In fact, the prevailing RNZ managerial sentiment to old school journalism seems more likely to be sceptical: as in, where is the clickbait potential in some downbeat item about income inequality, or water degradation, or the Gaza genocide? It is difficult for RNZ to be a convincing champion of news and information that you can trust, when its managers seem more inclined to believe that serious news and information is more likely to put its listeners to sleep.

For obvious reasons, the public discourse around RNZ tends to focus on the presenters, but the tone-and-content shifts evident of late have had more to do with the perspectives of management. A contributing problem here is that some of the key people hired into managerial roles at RNZ have come from news outlets where the click numbers rule. Given that these suits come from such backgrounds, it is little wonder that success at RNZ is now assessed in terms of a measurable metric – clicks on the RNZ website – rather than on the indefinable quality of a story’s contribution to the national debate. (Being better informed may be valuable but hey, it isn’t quantifiable.)

Arguably though, it was that same indefinable quality that won Morning Report’s its stellar reputation as state broadcasting’s flagship news and current affairs show. Too bad that its resurrection has now been entrusted to people who seem to regard that legacy as a problem to be disguised – or at best, turned into a slogan – rather than a quality to be nurtured from the ground up.

Yes, these days, RNZ does have more rivals out there. Imitating them though, is folly. If RNZ wants to hold its ground and recruit a younger audience, it can only do so by being seen to be taking risks i.e. by being smarter and fresher and harder hitting than the competition.

For starters, that requires investing its limited funds in its staff, and having a higher opinion of its audience. It also means having the backbone to push back against its political paymasters, who have always shown a keen interest in neutering Morning Report.

Footnote. By way of example, consider the ratio of soft magazine items and colour pieces to flagship news reportage on last Friday’s Morning Report schedule:

Footnote Two: Is RNZ truly seeking to attract a younger audience? They say they are. If so, then scrapping the Tahi youth platform late last year was a step in the opposite direction. You can’t credibly claim that you want to cultivate a younger audience, make a token gesture in that direction for a while, fail to promote it and then rationalise canning it on the basis of its low audience numbers. All along, Tahi was a faint-hearted gesture set up to fail.

Footnote Three No doubt, RNZ has a ratings problem. Last year, its ratings improved, twice. But in the first survey of this year, the audience fell back again below 500,000, to only 492,900 listeners. Meanwhile the audience numbers for its commercial news rival Newstalk ZB, rose significantly to 657, 400.

In the same survey, the Morning Report audience fell sharply from 367,700 (at the end of last year) to 336,500 in mid 2026, which is only 3,000 above the programme’s worst recent result, recorded in early 2025.

John Campbell re-commenced work on Morning Report mid survey, on April 13. Future surveys will be looking not only at whether that appointment has helped in the short term to improve on the near rock bottom result announced earlier this month. It will also need to be assessed longer term, on whether the appointment is helping Morning Report to regain (or exceed) the kind of numbers it was achieving late last year.

So far, there is no evidence that the cosmetic changes being made to the tone, and the more substantive changes being made to the content have been of any lasting benefit. In that respect, pointing to the improvement in the RNZ website numbers as a sign of success looks like a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.

Crane Wife 3

Incredibly, it is now 20 years since the Decembrists released their finest track. “Crane Wife 3” jumps in at the end point of a Japanese fable about a man who rescues a crane. On the same day, a beautiful woman arrives at his door. They marry, and the couple rise from poverty to wealth on the back of the beautiful cloth that she weaves in her room – but only on the strict condition that her husband must never enter, and see her at work.

He agrees to the terms. Yet one day, overcome by curiosity, he spies on her – only to discover that she is the crane, and that the cloth is being made from her plucking out her own feathers, leaving her body bare and thin. Distraught at his betrayal, she flies away forever, and the song begins with him wandering the earth mourning his loss, and lamenting his foolishness. The story can be taken as a parable about irredeemable actions within a relationship, and the unsustainable costs of sacrificing oneself purely to the needs of a fallible partner.

There’s a good, glossier duet version by Marianne Faithfull and Nick Cave, but the original cuts to the bone:

And under the boughs unbowed
All clothed in a snowy shroud
She had no heart, so hardened
All under the boughs unbowed