Radio New Zealand’s board members must have rubbed their hands in collective glee when Peter Cavanagh hove into view as a potential successor for Sharon Crosbie. Affable, urbane, regarded as a champion of public broadcasting across the Tasman and a reputation for being popular with staff.
Evidently, they rushed him off the plane and into meetings so fast that he didn’t even have time to listen to an RNZ programme. He knows of New Zealand’s public broadcaster by reputation – excellent, according to him – rather than experience.
Cavanagh starts this week, after Crosbie agreed to step down a month early so that he wouldn’t be confronting empty desks in the New Year when many staff will be on holiday. Don’t expect immediate dramatic changes. He has a simple philosophy. RNZ’s news must be timely, accurate and sought after, its programmes must reflect the society it serves and it should set an agenda for thought-provoking, edgy, intelligent programming.
There’s nothing magical in that prescription. It’s enshrined in the charter, which says the broadcaster must “provide innovative, comprehensive and independent broadcasting services of a high standard”. The argument is about how the broadcaster achieves it. And that last phrase may send shivers down the spines of RNZ’s more conservative loyal listeners, and surprise those who regard the broadcaster as a staid old cardigan with holes in the elbows.
Public broadcasters must take risks, says Cavanagh. It’s incumbent on them to develop new programmes and new audiences, unrestrained as they are by the expectations of shareholders.
“I think SBS [public broadcaster Special Broadcasting Services] was regarded as being at the cutting edge of Australian TV,” says Cavanagh, who was head of television at SBS. “It was the market leader in a whole range of programmes. It was seen as a risk-taking organisation with a reputation as innovative and intelligent.” In contrast, commercial broadcasters worldwide have become increasingly risk-averse. “No one wants to take a risk with a product that hasn’t been tried. Public broadcasters have an obligation to take risks and often they will see their good ideas being copied by commercial broadcasters. It’s about encouraging a culture where you have to be prepared to try some things that won’t work.”
His reputation at SBS, a broadcaster that draws 85 percent of its funding from the state and is allowed five minutes of advertising an hour, was that of an astute manager responsible for healthy audiences and interesting programming. He presided over the most successful five years in the broadcaster’s history and doubled local content.
“Rising ratings, clever ideas and cult status. Surely, this can’t be SBS? But it is,” said the Sun Herald in 2002, when SBS increased its audience by 23% to reach 7.6 million people a week.
Cavanagh left last year, reportedly unhappy at SBS’s creep towards commercialism and a reshuffle that stripped him of some power. On his last day, so the story goes, staff gathered at his office door to give him some sort of ovation. Since then, he hasn’t been in a hurry to find a new job.
Cavanagh began his career as a cadet with the ABC, and spent 12 years there, the last six as senior political reporter. He taught journalism in the UK for a while and then moved to Australian Capital Television (now known as Southern Cross), producer of all that Aussie drama on our screens, where he spent five years as managing director before leaving to whip the SBS news division into shape.
“I’m a public broadcaster born and bred and first and foremost I was looking for opportunities in public broadcasting. That’s a narrow field worldwide, but I was prepared to bide my time. Radio New Zealand offers exactly what I was looking for.”
Yes. Popular, passionate about the role of public broadcasting in society and – get this – prepared to accept tight budgets. When Cavanagh took over as SBS head of news and current affairs in 1996, he inherited a department facing massive budget cuts and rife with the sort of staff disputes triggered by those pressures.
The solution? “I’m a great believer that if you analyse carefully what you do and how you do it, there are usually ways of freeing up resources so that you are able to live within tight budget restraints and you are able to deliver a good product and increase quality. Over the next couple of years at SBS, we expanded the output with only marginally increased resources, and we more than doubled the number of people who used SBS’s World Service.”
You can imagine how that played to the Radio New Zealand board, although RNZ budgets are getting a top-up with the government’s announcement that funding will increase from $22.4 million to $25.046 million a year, plus $3.39 million to establish FM services – welcome news after a decade of cuts and uncertainty.
The good ship RNZ isn’t exactly on the rocks, or even heading for them, but it does have the battered air of a vessel that has weathered too many storms in the past decade and especially the past two years. Budget cuts, consultants’ reports, the spectre of privatisation, reports of internecine warfare between departments, of news staff at breaking point, Morning Report presenter Sean Plunket’s stoush over the Nine to Noon job that he said was earmarked for him, and the bitter, drawn-out dispute with news division managing editor Lynne Snowdon have all battered Radio New Zealand. Cavanagh says he doesn’t have details of any criticism, although he has heard broad outlines.
In its favour, RNZ has a large group of loyal listeners, although the number has dipped slightly. A survey carried out from late May to early July showed that in an average week National Radio drew 494, 700 listeners aged 15 or over, down from 503,000 last year, and Concert FM drew 137,400 listeners, down from 150,000.
National Radio’s flagship show Morning Report lost 8% or almost 30,000 listeners, Nine to Noon lost around 2% or almost 5000 listeners,
but Checkpoint picked up 11,000 and Kim Hill’s Saturday morning show picked up 1000 or so listeners.
However, as RNZ likes to point out, together National Radio and Concert FM in an average week attract one in five New Zealanders and audience satisfaction remains high. Ninety-three percent of its listeners believe that RNZ provides a comprehensive news service and 84% think it is fair and balanced.
Eighty-two percent of those surveyed think that RNZ broadcasts programmes not generally found on other stations and 79% believe RNZ supports New Zealand music, up from 60% in 1999, when the question was first asked.
Another statistic – 68% of National Radio listeners and 57% of Concert FM listeners have listened for 10 or more years – suggests that the state broadcaster may have to work harder to attract new listeners while at the same time not upset its loyal following. This point has been picked up in the government’s Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill, now passing extremely slowly through Parliament. The bill proposes three changes to the RNZ charter, including a requirement to survey non-listeners for the first time and to include the survey results in its annual reports.
“The purpose of this new requirement is to assist in assessing Radio New Zealand’s performance against its charter obligations, and to inform future programming decisions that may increase the size of its audience,” says Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey.
For all the argy-bargy, there are things that Radio New Zealand does well. Despite the criticism of RNZ’s news division, much of it from newspapers or Opposition politicians, the survey shows that listeners hold the service in reasonably high regard. Its drama department is undergoing an amazing renaissance under the guidance of new executive drama producer John Dryden, and its new music shows are the best in the country. But the old cardy image is reinforced when RNZ sets up a new weeknight arts and entertainment show and calls it What’s Going On?
Cavanagh says he brings skill as a marketer and someone aware of the importance of branding, words that seem anathema to a public broadcaster and more in keeping with an organisation wanting to attract advertisers. “I wouldn’t be shocked if Radio New Zealand is already doing all those things it is meant to be doing,” says Cavanagh. “The great challenge is how do you connect in marketing? How do you let our listeners know what we’re doing and, more importantly, the people who aren’t listening at the moment.”
Yes, it’s a question of focus, he says. “But sometimes you have to make bold decisions in making greater use of resources for marketing. But it’s tricky for a public broadcaster, using resources for marketing rather than making programmes.”