Murdock's musical chair manoeuvres

Friday 2nd February 2001

OUTFOXED: The televisually practised Tom Mockridge (left) took the top job, nudging out the man widely thought to have clinched the position, Rick Neville

The surprise move to bring in a Murdoch man has upset INL's longtime seating plans, DAVID COHEN investigates

Early last year Foxtel chief Tom Mockridge was asked if he harboured any ambitions to head Star TV in Hong Kong. "I'd love to get the job but Gareth Chang is very well ensconced there."

But within a couple of days, Mr Chang abruptly left the company and a day later the New Zealand-born Mr Mockridge found himself scoping out new work opportunities in the East Asian territory.

It would appear, the Australian Financial Review noted dryly, that for Mr Mockridge the phrase "very well ensconced" really meant "still sitting in the chair last time we looked."

Up until late last week Independent Newspapers acting managing director Rick Neville appeared to be very well ensconced in the expectation that he would be appointed the next chief executive of New Zealand's largest media group, a position left open by the unexpected death six weeks earlier of his friend and colleague Mike Robson.

Mr Neville (52) was widely regarded as having clinched the job but instead found himself nudged to one side by News Corporation, INL's long-time major investor, in favour of the 45-year-old Mr Mockridge.

A professional who in the past has sometimes given the impression he would rather be respected than liked, Mr Neville found himself a bit more liked than he was respected by News Corp when it came to charting the company's future direction.

The former Evening Post editor is understood to have been sorely disappointed at being passed over for CEO.

Still, it's hardly as if Mr Neville now faces being consigned to the euphemistic role of "special projects manager." As the managing director of publishing, a position he assumes on March 1, Mr Neville will oversee the running of what by local standards is a large and robust news gathering operation, accounting for more than 80 titles on a daily or weekly basis throughout New Zealand, including virtually all the country's major provincial and urban newspapers.

Local publishing still represents a lion's share of INL's profits, which were $34.6 million for the year to June 2000.

The man to whom Mr Neville will now report has over the past decade held a variety of positions with News Corp subsidiaries in Australia and Hong Kong, most recently as a senior executive with Star TV.

Mr Mockridge last lived and worked in New Zealand in 1979, where he was a general reporter at Taranaki's Daily News, a connection he has been at pains to point out to at least one editor in the INL group, the Dominion's Richard Long.

(Mr Mockridge, who was unavailable this week for an interview with The National Business Review, telephoned Mr Long last Friday to assure him that he would not be meddling in the editorial policies of the company's newspapers.)

Much of his experience since then has been in television and political lobbying.

At the time of Mr Mockridge's arrival, Sir Colin Maiden will also step down as chairman of INL's board, where he will be succeeded by another senior news operator, Ken Cowley.

Taken together, the appointments signal Rupert Murdoch's most striking attempt yet to stamp his organisation's brand on INL, although it's by no means his first burst of intense activity in this respect.

It's sometimes forgotten but in 1964 Mr Murdoch mounted an energetic campaign for his group to take over the Wellington Publishing Company, the erstwhile publisher of INL's flagship morning newspaper, the Dominion. The bid, the first of its type Mr Murdoch mounted outside his then native Australia, scandalised much of the Wellington establishment but left the Australian investor with a 29.57% stake in the company, a figure that has subsequently crept up to 49%.

A long-running parlour game for those within the INL orbit - among executives, union officials and the company's 3324 employees - has been to speculate when, not if, Mr Murdoch's organisation would move to grab the reins in such an emphatic manner.

The late Mr Robson was a highly respected newspaperman of the old, courtly school, one steeped in the traditions of the Blundell family era Evening Post, where he served as editor from 1975-81.

It was often said his presence at the helm of INL constituted the single-most compelling reason that News Corp long opted to keep an outwardly polite distance from day-to-day running of the group's operation.

A more likely explanation for the recent changes is they reflect the growing importance - and apprehension - News Corp attaches to Sky Network Television, a 47% stake in which is currently owned by INL. Unlike the outgoing chairman and Mr Robson - and indeed unlike the newsman Mr Neville - both the new chairman and CEO boast strong pay television backgrounds.

Although Sky's subscriber base currently stands at 377,000, compared with 346,000 in 1999, its growth has been a mixed blessing for INL, with the expansion of digital producing a bottom line loss for the company of $26.97 million in the past financial year. With subsidised setup costs for each new subscriber at somewhere between $700 and $800 being borne by the company, and with a potential growth of 300,000 more new subscribers expected within the coming five or so years, the operation plainly calls for televisually practised hands to be in charge.

Other challenges - some potentially fearsome - await the new guard. On Thursday this week, a freshly energised NZ Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union served notice at all INL's daily and suburban newspapers that it intends negotiating an across-the-board agreement with the company on behalf of the workers it represents, currently reckoned to be around 30% of INL's overall workforce. The company staunchly opposes the idea of such an industry-based contract.

"We're not here to fight the revolution in the halls of INL," the union's national secretary, Andrew Little, said this week. "We're not trying in any way to be hostile to INL's interests here."

The negotiations Mr Mockridge will inherit will be the first of their type to take place since the introduction into law last year of the Employment Relations Act. They will be keenly watched to see whether the union has, as it has repeatedly claimed, entered a new pro-business mode of thinking or if it will revert to a more familiarly insurgent style harking back to its long-running battles with INL during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Elsewhere, a day of reckoning draws closer for the long-term prospects of the INL website, Stuff. Launched in late June, the venture employs 17 full-time staff, with support from scores of others across the group. It is not expected to make a profit, by way of classified advertising and the sale of archived articles, for at least another two years.

Exactly how long Mr Mockridge and Mr Cowley will be prepared for INL to keep reaching into its deep pockets to subsidise Stuff is anybody's guess, particularly when Mr Murdoch has reportedly grown cold on the dotcom frenzy.

In this respect, as in so many others, the new guard at INL looks likely to be very well ensconced in its new position.

LION'S SHARE OF PROFITS: The Dominion newsroom, one of more than 80 in the INL empire

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