MediaWorks Bites The Dust

The troubled owner of TV3 and half of New Zealand's commercial radio stations chomped into the dusty ol' receivership sandwich yesterday.
MediaWorks owes about $700 million - that's from its 2007 sale to Australian private equity firm Ironbridge by Canada's CanWest Global Communications. After more than six years, MediaWorks has struggled to pay even the interest bills!
But managing director Sussan Turner says there're no plans to make any of the company's 1400 staff redundant: "It's business as usual." It's hoped it'll emerge from the receivership in a restructured form, with debts of less than $100 million. So, just how will it either discover a spare $600m or write it off? And with no redundancies? "Our core business is strong and all divisions are trading well. We're confident we can successfully build on this solid platform." She did say no redundancies, right?
A possible new board appointee may be Julie Christie, reality tv show producer (who can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - see how her tv shows manage to score taxpayer subsidies while not adhering to their original briefs!)
MediaWorks' tentacles extend over the whole country. It operates two TV networks, and its insatiable hunger for every possible radio frequency has enabled it to establish eight nationwide radio networks. It also owns five regional stations, and a new media division, MediaWorks Interactive, that includes 18 websites and a mobile network.
Ironbridge bought MediaWorks in 2007 for $561m, but the broadcaster has needed repeated and ongoing financial restructuring, breaking several debt deals. In 2010 it scored a $43m govt loan to pay for radio spectrum licence renewals - remember the howls from opponents, citing Communications Minister Steven Joyce's conflict-of-interest as past managing director of the company's RadioWorks division??? (That loan was repaid in Oct.2012.)
It's understood Ironbridge and its co-investors have lost all the money they invested. MediaWorks was significantly larger than any of their other investments.
OK, so just to clarify: no redundancies? Watch this space...

PS: 18 June 2013 - MP Winston Peters calls the deal "shonky"!

Kakapo World’s Favourite Species

New Zealand's flightless parrot, the kakapo, has been named the World's Favourite Species!
As part of its 10th birthday celebrations ARKive.org – a popular online multimedia guide to the world's endangered species – sought to find the world's top 10 favourite species, with 14,000 voters from 162 countries taking part. In an online poll featuring 50 animals from across the globe, our own kakapo took out top honours ahead of the tiger in 2nd place and African elephant 3rd.
Sirocco the kakapo has been pivotal in bringing attention to the plight of his species, and for gaining global awareness.
Kakapo Recovery programme mngr Deidre Vercoe says the most pleasing aspect of the poll is that voters are most concerned about the need to protect the species from extinction: "It's become increasingly apparent that kakapo are treasured worldwide. It would be wonderful to reach a stage when all kids throughout the world know what a kakapo is, like they do a tiger."
The kakapo's first real introduction to the world stage was through the BBC documentary Last Chance to See - remember those scenes of Sirocco trying to 'mate' with the presenter's head? As a result of that, Sirocco shot to fame. He's now the official 'spokesbird' for conservation, goes on annual display as the ambassador for Kakapo Recovery and has more than 20,000 fans online.
The current kakapo population is 124, up from a low of 51 in 1995. There's been no breeding during the past two summers because of poor rimu crops, but the team predict a small breeding season for early 2014. The flightless birds rely on a good rimu fruiting season to trigger breeding. The long-term recovery goal is to have 150 females at three separate sites, one of which is self-sustaining.

Seeing Red In Christchurch

For the first time in more than two years, Christchurch people can explore another stretch of the city centre.
The red-zone cordon has been reduced to open up Colombo Street between Gloucester and Armagh Streets.

...courtesy Stuff.co.nz

The cordon reduction will allow folk to see the remains of the 21-storey PWC tower, which once dominated the CBD skyline but which is now just a concrete frame, a tangle of steel and shallow water. Though not Chch's tallest building, it was its largest by land mass, and thus the city's biggest demolition job.
The cordon reduction is part of a programme that'll see all the main streets in the central city open to the public by the end of this month.
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) CEO Roger Sutton says lots of people have been in to explore the newly-opened stretch of the city: ''Opening it as much as we can as fast as we can gives everyone a boost. I expect the central city to be busy as people explore those areas that they haven't seen in two years."

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Tower demolition, September 2012