The Fold

From the press gallery to spin doctor for Helen Clark and chief of staff to Jacinda Ardern, Mike Munro has seen plenty of the kaleidoscope in New Zealand politics and media. He joins Toby to talk about those roles and how it all has changed through the decades. Plus: In How Good, Liam Rātana on Matariki with a bonus beat from Te Aihe on Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club, season two. At Large with Toby Manh...

Sarah Murray was a longtime staffer at FQ under different owners, before making a bold move to buy the publication outright in 2023. She joins Duncan Greive on The Fold to talk about the publication’s history and its transformation under her stewardship, including its insider club, its awards night and the rise of its ‘sleepover’ activations, which builds a bridge to the creator economy. Learn mor...

Toby Manhire joins Duncan Greive for an emergency episode to discuss the genuine shock appointment of columnist and political operator Matthew Hooton to editor-in-chief of The Post. We discuss his history, what his columns tell us about him, the potential fallout with staff and audiences, and whether his lack of newsroom experience is surmountable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

Jason Monteiro is head of streaming for WBD across APAC, and joins Glen Kyne and Duncan Greive on The Fold to discuss the late arrival of one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world to a small and seemingly saturated market. Monteiro makes the case that this is not just some of Sky’s Neon in new clothes, but in fact a powerful and singular platform in its own right. Learn more about your a...

Hamish McNicol and Calida Stuart-Menteath co-edit the National Business Review, New Zealand's business publication of record. For a publication which could appear very conservative, it has been anything but across both its editorial output and its business strategy. McNicol and Stuart-Menteath join Duncan Greive on The Fold to discuss their flagship editorial project, the Rich List, and the impact...

Duncan Greive is joined by James Davidson, Chief Strategy & Planning Officer, PHD Aotearoa; Lisa Leicester – Head of Social & Innovation, Omnicom Media; and Mike Delaney  –  Group Product Director, Omnicom Media, all in partnership with PHD Aotearoa. In the age of influencer marketing, the strict planning and measurement tools long honed by the media industry and expected by brands were effectivel...

Glen Kyne returns to The Fold to analyse the resignation of Paul Thompson after 13 years running RNZ, look back on the Re: News era and touch on last week’s (not Voyager) Media Awards. We also provide quick reactions to Budget 2026 and what it presents for the media sector. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sharp-eyed and longtime Spinoff readers might have noticed that The Fold host Duncan Greive has been staggeringly unproductive as a writer lately. For once, there is a good explanation for that: a new and quite ambitious new music app and platform named Lume. To manage the colossal conflict of interest that entails, The Spinoff’s editor-at-large Toby Manhire guest hosts The Fold to ask Duncan all...

Media is a fraught place at the moment, less due to persistent economic challenges than external forces acting upon it. Glen Kyne returns to The Fold to discuss the end of Maiki Sherman’s time as political editor at TVNZ, the shutdown of the BSA and David Seymour’s pointed provocations of RNZ. Finally, they talk about the travails of rugby in Auckland, after a weekend that showed the strength of t...

Philippa Rennie has had a near unique view of real life TV storytelling in New Zealand. She worked as the in-house lawyer for Warner Brother Productions for a decade, before moving across to make television as head of scripted there. She joins the Fold to speak with admirable candour about what went wrong on shows like Married at First Sight, why Julie Christie probably isn’t the right person to m...

Duncan Greive flies solo to break down and respond to the shock decision to shut down the BSA. He gives reaction from the key players, talks about where it might head next and pays tribute to the courage of the BSA in opening a door when this was always a likely outcome. Then he gives a view of the Maiki Sherman affair, before closing on a quick take on the first month of John Campbell's Morning R...

Rob Harvey is CEO of Dentsu across Australia and New Zealand – it’s one of the biggest ad agencies in the world, and Rob is notable for the length of time he’s spent leading it locally. In an industry notable for executives burning bright then shifting up, down and sideways, Harvey has been a deeply committed constant. He’s led the Aotearoa business since 2013 – before Netflix landed here – and la...

Sam Stuchbury is the executive creative director and founder of Motion Sickness, and Lee Lowndes is the chief executive and founder of Daylight. Each of them run independent creative agencies, each is under 40, each took home golds at the recent Axis Awards, and - most importantly - each has a very differentiated conception of what an agency is in 2026. They have each found a way to thrive in an e...

Glen Kyne returns to The Fold to catch up on all the biggest stories in recent times. We look at the existential challenge the BSA opened up, and try and figure out what’s really going on with Troy Bowker and Stuff. Then we look at the recent NZME workplace review, and contrast it with a much more substantial effort from Mediaworks a few years ago. We assess the early returns from Tova O’Brien’s a...

He’s very familiar as the star of Wellington Paranormal, and a radio host with Hauraki – but Mike Minogue’s greatest achievement might be Frank, his burgeoning agency. Frustrated with the quality of talent representation in Aotearoa, Minogue started Frank to bring a different approach to the established players. But he added speaker representation and, crucially, podcast representation to Frank’s...

Richard Edelman was deeply prescient, when he responded to the “battle for Seattle” by commissioning an annual global survey of institutional trust. For a quarter century the trust barometer has revealed the extent to which countries and societies have grown insular and mistrustful, and catalogued the downstream consequences. basically, it’s not just media, it’s everyone. New Zealand is no differe...

After six months of careful deliberation, and six years after it first floated the idea, the broadcasting standards authority decided that it definitively does have jurisdiction over platforms like The Platform. This set off a firestorm stretching across politics, law and media, with the regulator having the temerity to suggest that one, relatively tiny corner of the internet was within its bounds...

Joe Webb was working as a coder when he printed a t-shirt at a mate’s house. Within a few years YOUKNOW had become a ubiquitous brand, thanks to their knack for creating social content which created a real sense of community. Then in 2023 he repeated the trick in a whole new paradigm, launching The Morning Shift as a daily podcast to overnight success. He joins Duncan Greive on The Fold to talk ab...

Joel Gouveia is a music supervisor, artist manager and booking agent, with a Substack. Earlier this year he wrote a series of posts, each more successful than the last, which drilled into the streaming music economy in a vivid and challenging way. He talked about bands with millions of streams that sold a dozen tickets, while others with comparatively tiny audiences could sell out tours. He looked...

Alan Soon is a journalist and media consultant who runs Splice Beta, one of Asia’s most popular news media festivals. He recently wrote an extremely provocative piece arguing that journalism as an institution has been ignoring and underplaying advances in AI. He joins Duncan Greive on The Fold from Singapore to unpack this thesis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fold’s regular hosts go through the audience’s best questions, running from media buying to the government as an advertiser to the future of Sky to whether Three should have been born at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last call for our first ever listener questions episode – fill out this form to pose a question of hosts Duncan Greive and Glen Kyne. Glen Kyne joins Duncan Greive to discuss a major week for Sky, which staged the first upfronts from any New Zealand broadcaster since 2023, and delivered its first set of results since its acquisition of Three. After attending the upfronts, Glen and Duncan share the...

The Fold's first ever listener questions episode is coming – fill out this form to pose a question of hosts Duncan Greive and Glen Kyne. A different episode of The Fold this week, leaning on Glen Kyne's deep experience with MediaWorks to tell the story of this perennial underdog of the big media companies – one which has always had great, authentic brands and even greater debt loads. Now that it's...

The Fold's first ever listener questions episode is coming – fill out this form to pose a question of hosts Duncan Greive and Glen Kyne. Anna Rawhiti-Connell joins Duncan Greive on The Fold to discuss three huge stories impacting the social media and platform world. First is a landmark trial which contends social platforms are faulty products which visit huge harms upon their users – both Snap and...

The Fold's first ever listener question's episode is coming – fill out this form to pose a question of hosts Duncan Greive and Glen Kyne. This week, Glen joins Duncan to discuss a flood of major media stories, led by breaking news: The Warehouse Group's shock decision to pause all advertising. Then they discuss the future of Mediaworks after its split from QMS, the end of a dismal era for the Wash...