Duncan Greive 
A conversation between Damaris and Renee Coulter, the women behind Coco’s Cantina, about their endless struggles with the Auckland Council. First, a long caveat: It’s popular in many Auckland circles to malign the council, but most of the time it’s not deserved. The Auckland Council is vast and complex and has an incredibly important job to … Read more
Duncan Greive on Bowraville, the heartbreaking podcast dubbed ‘the Australian Serial’. I spent my family holiday immersed in child murder. I didn’t mean for it to be that way – it just sort of happened. First I read: Helen Garner’s House of Grief, a harrowing account of a trial for a man who drowned his sons. … Read more
Education is a topic critical to us as a nation. It deserves so much better than the pandering polemic Bryan Bruce delivered last night on TV3. Last night TV3 screened a “special report”, “written, directed and produced” by Bryan Bruce, the veteran of dozens of documentaries over the years, many of which he has fronted with a … Read more
News of a proposed merger between NZME and Fairfax has met with a predictably fearful response from news creators and consumers. But Duncan Greive thinks it might finally properly differentiate the main online brands and give consumers a real choice. This week’s major media news was the announcement that NZME and Fairfax were in talks … Read more
For its entire run The Bachelor NZ was a bore. Then Naz, ‘The Women Tell All’ and Story helped it explode into the best entertainment of the year, says Duncan Greive. After 10 weeks and 20 episodes of some of the most interminable and vacuous television New Zealand has ever seen, season two of the The Bachelor … Read more
Duncan Greive looks back at the brief and blighted Mark Weldon era. Last night I watched Mark Weldon complete what would turn out to be his final act as CEO of MediaWorks from the back of a refurbished warehouse in Mt Eden. He stood on stage alongside NBC’s Chris Taylor to announce the replacement of … Read more
The shock resignation of Hilary Barry from Mediaworks represents a bigger blow than any of the other high profile TV3 newsroom departures, says Duncan Greive. Last night, just before 9pm, news broke that Hilary Barry had become the latest and biggest casualty of the Mark Weldon era at Mediaworks. It’s a cataclysmic event for the organisation, … Read more
Duncan Greive interviews Emily Edrosa as Street Chant’s long-delayed second album Hauora is released, and discusses the often-grim realities of life as a woman in the New Zealand music industry. Content warning: contains discussion of sexual assault. I met with Emily Edrosa twice in April. We went to a pub near my office, and each time she was wearing a Street Chant t-shirt. … Read more
The first season of The Bachelor NZ was arguably the greatest of any localised reality import. Unfortunately the second is thus far a disaster. Duncan Greive asks if we have any right to expect otherwise. A long time ago, before HD and broadband and snackable content, there was a little sitcom that went by the … Read more
TVNZ’s Filthy Rich cost $400k per episode to make, a pricetag 10 times that of Māori Television’s new drama Kairākau. Duncan Greive compares the two investments. Earlier this week, I received an email from a person I’d never heard from before. “It would be good for you to do a comparitive analysis on the following low budget … Read more
Auckland City Limits, the new festival headlined by Kendrick Lamar and The National, is as ambitious a live music project as New Zealand has seen in a decade or more. During its assembly Duncan Greive twice interviewed its promoter, Campbell Smith, who gave very candid insights into the business of music festivals. I first heard … Read more
Last night’s episode of Shortland Street saw the debut of a trans character, played by a trans actor. But the show has tackled important social issues from day one. Last night in Ferndale a boy in a hoodie shuffled around the hospital’s glass cabinetry, looking caught between an egg salad sandwich and a mince and cheese … Read more
How well do you know your New Zealand media? Take this difficult quiz to find out! On Wednesday NZME CEO Jane Hastings announced her resignation – an event sharply predicted by Scout in what was a legit scoop and probably the finest piece of journalism in the site’s short history. The moment is noteworthy for a … Read more
Duncan Greive interviews Vend’s Vaughan Rowsell, a tech titan trying to reset his industry’s notoriously problematic agenda. News broke a couple of weeks back that Vaughn Rowsell, the extravagantly moustached CEO of retail solutions startup Vend, was stepping aside as CEO to focus on the product side of the business. I thought the decision was interesting, and … Read more
Duncan Greive watches the ’70s style politics show The Nation, and finds a lot to love. TV3’s The Nation isn’t that old. It was founded in 2010, but despite the flash modern set and the lively twitter conversation which accompanies it, the show might be the most old-fashioned to air on New Zealand television. It returned to … Read more
When Duncan Greive reviewed Filthy Rich a couple of weeks back he was overwhelmed with messages from a depressed New Zealand TV industry. Here he summarises what they had to say. Part of an ongoing series assessing our publicly funded television. Read part two, comparing TVNZ with the BBC, here. A couple of weeks back I … Read more
Friday night’s alright for… laughing? Duncan Greive seeks comfort in TV3’s reliable and formidable week-ending comedy schedule. For a long time, One’s Sunday night line-up was the most reliable and on-brand night in New Zealand television. You had your news, your magazine-style current affairs and your prestige drama. Everything you needed to feel like an … Read more
Approximately an hour ago The Spinoff published a story indicating that Julie Christie had resigned from the board of MediaWorks – and implied that she was currently employed in an executive role. We have since been informed that this is not the case – that she remains on the board, and has no intention of resigning. … Read more
The venerable Mana magazine has undergone a rude second act lately, under the sharp eye of its newish editor Leonie Hayden. Duncan Greive had lunch with her, and asked how she did it. Leonie Hayden was appointed editor of Mana magazine in June of 2014, 21 years and 117 issues after its founding by broadcaster and entrepreneur … Read more
On Friday the 2016 Billy T nominees all played a showcase at Auckland’s Q Theatre. In the crowd, somewhere near the back, Duncan Greive watched and judged. The Billy T award is probably the coolest award in New Zealand. There’s just one given out each year – if you miss out, suck it up. It … Read more
MediaWorks’ new integrated news platform looks to Duncan Greive like one of the best decisions they’ve made in ages. 2015 was a horror show for Mediaworks, a year which began with it toned, trim and swaggering and ended with it gaunt and dead-eyed, reeling from the trauma of what it had lost. It’s easy to … Read more
Tennis is alone amongst professional sports in having its referee frequently yell at the crowd. Duncan Greive thinks that sucks. It had not stopped raining. Big great drops beating straight down on a windless, humid Auckland day. Not great conditions for tennis. But the rain ceased and cloud started to clear as the afternoon wore on, … Read more
The Spinoff’s editor, Duncan Greive, co-authored Dan Carter: My Story with the All Blacks’ first five. Here he shares his memories of the tumultuous year the pair spent working on the book. The lowest I ever heard him was late in February. We spoke via Skype, as we often did through that portion of the year, … Read more
In September Lydia Ko won her first major. Duncan Greive spoke to Guy Wilson, her Auckland-based coach from the age of five until she went pro at 16, about the significance of her achievements. Guy Wilson first met Lydia Ko when she was just five years old. She walked into the pro shop of the … Read more
Duncan Greive interviews Steve Braunias on the occasion of his new book, The Scene of the Crime. Steve Braunias is my favourite New Zealand writer. Maybe that makes me an imbecile, I don’t know. I haven’t read hardly any of our fiction, because I barely read fiction. There might be better people out there in other … Read more
MediaWorks launched gossip site Scout amid much fanfare in 2015. Duncan Greive spoke with a number of former Scout staff members and MediaWorks employees, and was given access to a large cache of correspondence, recordings, data and other documentation to create this portrait of a modern media debacle. On Wednesday September 16 of 2015, MediaWorks CEO Mark Weldon … Read more
Lost amongst TV3’s big budget reality imports and current affairs cancellations has been one unexpected hit: YouTube-on-TV clip show Fail Army. Duncan Greive tries to figure out how this designed-to-fail show works. Of all the millions of new shows TV3 has launched this year, few had lower expectations than Fail Army. A clip show screening … Read more
The Spinoff editor Duncan Greive looks back over the site’s year in 2015, ahead of a break from new content over the Christmas / new year period. Dear Spinoff Reader This is just a brief(ish) letter to inform you that we’ve done our dash for this year, and will be off tanning and sleeping until … Read more
Duncan Greive talks about television’s past and future with Matt Heath and Jeremy Wells as they launch WatchMe – the most exciting birth in a year of TV deaths. Some time in September Matt Heath got in touch, asking if I wanted to have lunch with him and Jeremy Wells. Who wouldn’t? We went and … Read more