Broadcaster signs off on early mornings
Kate Hawkesby opens up on her six years as host of ZB’s Early Edition show, life in the Hawkesby-Hosking household and what’s next; a former Kiwi radio star is brutally axed following a record deal across the ditch; and the TAB snaps up a troubled sports
An emotional Newstalk ZB host Kate Hawkesby yesterday farewelled her Early Edition audience, signing off from her radio show for the final time in a “bittersweet” moment.
In a Q&A with Media Insider, Hawkesby, who finished after six years as Early Edition (5am-6am) host and 10 years before that in various ZB broadcasting roles, revealed the mental exertion of a role that starts with an alarm clock at 3am each day.
“It’s bittersweet, I love my job so much, it’s been the best job I’ve ever had in broadcasting, and to be honest my heart is still in it, it’s just my body is not. It’s given up. It’s asking for more sleep,” Hawkesby said.
It would be good to hear/discuss your emotions of these last weeks/ days behind the microphone.
It’s bittersweet, I love my job so much — it’s been the best job I’ve ever had in broadcasting, and to be honest my heart is still in it, it’s just my body is not. It’s given up. It’s asking for more sleep.
It’s been so hard to say goodbye because we have such a loyal and engaged audience and I really feel connected to them in our wee predawn hour. The gym bunnies, the shift workers, the nurses, the rowing mums, the swimming dads doing drop-off, the farmers, the chief executives.
It’s actually a real go-getter crowd. I think there’s this misconception that ZB is just talkback. It’s not. My show, Mike’s, and Heather’s do no talkback at all, we’re just news and current affairs, people can text or email us, but we don’t take calls.
What you get from those audiences is a real sense of who they are and where they’re at, which I think helps us be better broadcasters because it keeps us on our toes.
Our listeners are smart, they’re out there living it, they’re the productive side of the economy, they’re not pontificating on Twitter, they’re getting on with it, they care about this country and what happens to it, they’re engaged and I’ll really miss that to be honest.
Also, I love our little pre-dawn team, we’re a tight bunch in the wee smalls, we’re all sleep-deprived, we’re all working twice as hard to be alert and get out a great product with less of the machinery around us — there’s no management in at 3.30am, there’s no infrastructure (part of the appeal to be honest), it’s just us.
It’s a sink-or-swim situation and you have to be up for that which is how I love to work. It keeps your brain firing.
Tell us about the challenges of producing /hosting a one-hour show?
One of the things I’ve loved most about my show is that we are a short, sharp hour — I always said I’m here for a good time not a long time. But it makes us really focus on what counts — we have to be super selective about what we’re covering and how, and we crack along at quite a pace.
We are a really small team in the mornings, me and Hannah Filmer, my executive producer who’s the same age as one of my children, so I’m always in awe that someone so young is so on to it.
But it means we have to be on form every morning and thrash it out with real clarity when most people are fast asleep.
Mike’s team is super-supportive of us, but they’re the juggernaut, we’re just the supporting act.
But being a one-hour show is what appealed to me about this slot from the get-go — it meant I could still juggle being a mum and get home in time for school drop-off, etc.
What I love about our timeslot though is we are often breaking fresh international news for the first time.
I’ll never forget when the Queen died and my producer just said in my ear, “The Queen’s dead,” that was it.
It was just this surreal moment of, “Whoa, I have to communicate this breaking news.”
People are just waking up and they’re going to hear it first right now . . . you’re digesting news often as you’re relaying it and there’s no template on how to do that, there’s no script, you just have to do it.
It’s intense but it’s part of the allure of broadcast journalism.
It’s never boring.
You’ve built a big audience at that time of day — you must get the sense that a lot of the country is up and about a lot more at 5am these days?
The success of the show and the audience we’ve built has been the biggest surprise to me. I had no idea so many people were up so early, but particularly in Auckland, I mean I’m heading home on the motorway just after 6am and it’s chocka.
People are up earlier and earlier these days to commute, or work out, or walk the dog, just get into their day earlier and I regard it as a total privilege that when they do that they choose to turn us on.
I take that responsibility really seriously. I’m also really proud of the lead-in we give Mike’s show. I rub that in a lot. I’m always telling him how lucky he is to have us as his support act.
What you’ll miss/won’t miss? What time does your alarm go off ?
I won’t miss the 3am alarm to be honest.
Mike’s alarm goes at 2.25am and that wakes me up every morning so I’m kind of semi-awake ’til 3, but I have a son living in London so that’s often a good time to get a quick catchup phone call in with him.
But my body is ready to go back to sleep past 3am and not have to get up, put clothes on and get a brush through my hair.
Part of why I’m leaving, too, is my daughter has her last year at school next year and ever since she started intermediate, all she’s known is tired mum who goes to bed early, is busy following news and writing editorials every day.
Shift work has a real impact on the whole family and with two shift workers in the house it’s been really tough for our kids to understand our wacky schedule.
There was a time when the boys were still at home that we’d be leaving for work as they were coming in from a night out.
But with parents always in bed early, my daughter’s had to rely on the village of other mums and dads to pick up the slack on late-night pickups, etc, so I feel like it’s my turn and I want to be more present for her final year and just enjoy her and her friends without always having to shush everyone and head off to bed.
Favourite stories/interviews of the past six years?
Standouts are probably the trips we did — two royal weddings and a coronation — for an avid fan of the royals and London.
These were awesome shows to do because we were able to be out of the studio and soaking up history in real time, bringing the audience a real sense of what was happening on the ground.
Content-wise it was magic, too, because the timezone really worked for us — we’d go to air at night our time, so we had all day to source content, do interviews, get out and about, so by the time New Zealand was waking up we already had a day full of news for them.
Journalistically, the most surreal thing I did was cover Donald Trump’s election in New York.
We were at the Democrats’ HQ , as all international media were, no one for a minute thinking there would be anything other than a Hillary Clinton win, so we were all there with all her celebrity crowd, I was doing selfies with them, having my photo taken at the lectern all set up for her victory, with Madam President draped all over it, and then as the night wore on, it became apparent Trump was going to beat her and the mood just shifted so dramatically.
Locally the pandemic was the toughest thing we did — for all of us I think.
Initially, we thought it was a blessing in disguise being essential workers and therefore able to stay in regular routine, getting up every day and going to work as normal.
But as lockdowns dragged on, particularly in Auckland, while it felt like everyone else was making sourdough and sleeping in, we were still on the daily grind of getting up every day before dawn and going into work and having to report so much depressing news.
We had to live it 24/7.
That really took a toll more than we all realised at the time.
There was a bit of collective PTSD afterwards for us in the newsroom.
What next? Do you still want to be attached, longer term, with media?
I’ve been joking with my girlfriends that I’m in my “country hippie era”, off to grow veges and make homemade candles or something.
I just feel like I need to sleep for a while, and not follow news, not write editorials and not worry about having to have an opinion every day.
I’ll remain part of the ZB family with Mike’s show on Friday mornings, and I’ll do the odd thing here and there. I’ll possibly come back and fill in at times, I don’t know, the door’s open, all I know is I need some sleep for a bit.
How are you feeling about the state of media in NZ?
Media is all I know and all I’ve ever done. The media landscape has changed drastically since I began. The insatiable 24/7 demand for clicks and content has, I believe, seen quality suffer.
Facts come second to being first with the story, so in that regard, the bar seems lower.
When I started it was really tough, it was a real boys’ club. It was relentless.
These days kids going into journalism are often going into it for the wrong reasons or with the wrong expectations, and they get disillusioned real quick.
The bar is lower, because we need more people and there’s more churn, but there’s also — and I saw this particularly during the tenure of this last Government and during Covid — a real “group-think” mentality going on.
There’s a lack of independent thought, it’s more agenda-driven, a lot more virtue signalling, and there’s also a lot of reliance on social media for content.
Ex NZ radio star axed in record $216m deal
A former New Zealand radio star has been axed from his Melbourne breakfast show — despite top ratings — in order to accommodate the biggest deal in Australian radio history.
Sydney’s Kiis FM Breakfast hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O announced this week that they would stay with ARN’s Kiis FM for another 10 years, for a record $A200 million deal ($216m).
But as part of that deal — which has smashed all records for Australian radio talent — the Sydney show will also now air in Melbourne, where Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips have hosted the Kiis breakfast, successfully, for the past three years. They are number three in the market.
Hawkins was based in Auckland from 2015 to 2018, hosting ZM’s Drive Show Jase and PJ — also with considerable ratings success. (PJ Harding was this week announced as the new co-host of The Hits’ Drive show next year, alongside Matty McLean).
“Last night, we all received a phone call from management . . . mine was during ‘black hawk down hour’ when all the kids are cracking it, trying to get to sleep,” Hawkins told his Melbourne listeners on Wednesday.
“[Management was] informing us that the show will be finishing up at the end of this year. We’ll be finishing up at the end of 2023. Kyle and Jackie O will be taking over in 2024.” Phillips choked back tears. “This is certainly not the way we wanted to bow out,” she said.
“We didn’t have a choice. It’s a business decision that we have been told is what’s happening. We don’t want to say goodbye.
“We didn’t have to be here this morning to make this announcement, but we’re here.”
Mr Fixit brought into Senz as TAB takes over
Big changes in New Zealand’s sport broadcasting world yesterday, with the TAB announcing it will buy the financially troubled Senz radio operation.
The gaming business will buy Senz for $4 million from its Australian parent Sports Entertainment Group (Seg), taking ownership of Senz’s digital radio operation and 29-frequency radio station from February. As part of the deal, Seg will still provide content to its former New Zealand arm.
The announcement comes just a week after one of New Zealand’s most experienced commercial media leaders was brought in as a consultant at Senz, to try to help turn around the financial performance of the fledgling sports and racing radio station.
Mark Smith, a former top commercial leader at NZME and MediaWorks, is contracting at Senz until the end of March, advising them on commercial strategy, operations and initiatives.
Senz launched with a range of top sporting names — including Brendon McCullum, Israel Dagg, Ian Smith and Stephen Donald — but aside from Smith, few of them had top broadcasting experience, and ratings in the first two years have been less than stellar. That’s also reflected commercially in Australia, where reports have openly described Senz’s parent company, Sports Entertainment Group, as being at “serious risk”.
It reported a $10.1 million loss in financial year 2023, with much of that red ink — $5.9m — flowing out of New Zealand.
Reports from Australia suggest the Commonwealth Bank could potentially demand an “immediate settlement” of a A$28.7m credit facility provided to the parent company.
“In the Sports Entertainment Group’s preliminary final report, it’s highlighted that the company has slightly more than $1m left in its line of credit,” the Ministry of Sport website reported.
“To manage its obligations, the company sought ‘covenant relief ’ from the Commonwealth Bank in the June quarter. The bank, in response, did not push for immediate settlement of the liability.”
Seg has said it remains a going concern, based on positive cashflow and an improved trading performance in 2024.
Mark Smith told Media Insider: “They just want me to come and give them advice, especially on the commercial side of the operation, how to make the boat go a bit faster and any ideas. What do I recommend, and where should we go, and do we need to recruit some people?
I’m also really proud of the leadin we give Mike’s show, I rub that in a lot. I’m always telling him how lucky he is to have us as his support act.
Kate Hawkesby
I think they hit a bit of a stalemate in the business and they were just unsure where to go.
Mark Smith
“Just basically, I think they hit a bit of a stalemate in the business and they were just unsure where to go.”
Smith has a successful pedigree as a commercial operator, from his days as a dedicated sales rep for Radio Sport in 2000, through to his leadership roles at our two biggest radio firms.
“They’re expensive to run, talkbacks, as you know — you have to have a lot of personnel and announcers demand a lot of money. It’s an expensive beast — journalists, reporters, newsreaders.”
He said he was looking at the entire operation.
“The whole lot really, but commercial obviously — like any business, the money coming in is always a priority when you have got lots of money coming out.”
He believed the Australian operation was strong and the resource in New Zealand was good, although he would be looking to recruit.
The company has about five commercial reps, as well as support teams.