New Three boss Juliet Peterson on the future of TV (and the shows that don’t have one)

Thursday, 2 May 2024

Juliet Peterson has been named new vice president, head of networks, ANZ for Warner Bros Discovery.

Juliet Peterson was named head of Warner Bros Discovery NZ on Wednesday, after Glen Kyne announced his resignation in the wake of Newshub’s axing.
She said local versions of MAFS, Traitors and My Mum Your Dad, funded the same way as Newshub, would no longer be produced.
Three would become “a window for ThreeNow” under a digital first strategy

“My first job was in this building,” said Juliet Peterson on Wednesday afternoon, “sitting very close to where I’m sitting right now. So I have a lot of love and I think spiritually, this is my home.”

The office, on Flower St in Auckland’s Eden Tce, might be the same, but otherwise a lot has changed since then.

Back in 2000, Peterson was a recent graduate, working in an entry-level job, and the channel she worked for was known as TV3. It was only 11 years old then, still the cocky upstart that had come in to break up TVNZ’s monopoly and shake up New Zealand’s television industry.

In the last 24 years Peterson has risen dramatically through the ranks, all the way to the top, in fact; hours before she spoke to Stuff it was announced she had been named the new head of New Zealand operations for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), the network’s current owner.

6pm host Samantha Hayes says the focus will now be on celebrating what they have done and enjoying their remaining shows.

The channel is now called Three, and times are much less buoyant.

Peterson’s predecessor, Glen Kyne, made the decision to step aside after WBD confirmed a major restructure that will see its news and current affairs arm, Newshub, shutter entirely. July 5 will be his last day, and the last day for about 300 Newshub staff, who are being made redundant.

It’s hard, as the new boss, to stand up and wave the flag of optimism.

“We had a session internally here earlier,” Peterson said. “Someone asked me what success looks like and I said success to me partly looks like the people who are unfortunately walking out of here with their heads held high.”

Three’s on-demand platform, ThreeNow, is the fastest-growing streaming service in the country, Peterson claimed.

The job losses are “a tragedy for our business, for the sector, and for everyone in the nation as well, but I’m also conscious that we need to balance how we move forward and we are very focused on that.”

Peterson’s sights are set on the future of television - and there very much is one, she said.

“It’s really important to reflect the fact that people are still watching linear TV. It’s not that linear TV is dead, it’s how we access that content that is changing and moving away from likes of traditional transmission and into streaming in huge numbers.”

Peterson, who until Wednesday was head of content and BVOD, now sums up her strategy in a phrase that would have been meaningless in 2000: Digital first.

Friends Like Her is an example of a local production made with some international funding.

“Three is really moving to be a window to ThreeNow,” Peterson said. “It’s not about creating ThreeNow as a separate content proposition, a separate editorial space… No secret we have been supporting the growth of ThreeNow over last couple of years. We have seen incredible results.”

ThreeNow is the fastest-growing streaming service in the country, she said.

And what are Kiwis watching?

“A lot! MAFS (Australia) is absolutely killing it and we have seen it is the only show on TV that has grown actual numbers of people viewing for multiple years, and we’re seeing that hugely too across ThreeNow.”

They like local shows, too; dramas like Far North, Black Coast Vanishings and Friends Like Her are “doing really big numbers. David Lomas Investigates is a perennial favourite.”

But local production also needs to adapt to survive.

“Absolutely we’re not walking away from local content,” Peterson said, “the only change is we’ll no longer be fully funding those local formats.”

That means the 2024 seasons of the Kiwi versions of MAFS, My Mum Your Dad (a new show this year), and Traitors will be their last.

They - like Newshub - were broadcaster-funded product, reliant on advertising revenue that has decreased sharply over the last few years. That funding model is no longer viable.

This is “an evolution that was happening anyway,” Peterson said, and many shows already on air have been funded through things like international co-production or sales deals.

News and current affairs, meanwhile, is “integral to our service,” Peterson said, and again, “I think obviously the future is in partnering. It is about, for example, Stuff and WBD working together. That’s the future.”

While her focus for the moment was on that partnership, which will see Stuff produce a 6pm bulletin for WBD, she thought there would likely be more news products on the horizon.

“The question is, how can we create and distribute that content so it has broad reach and appeal. It’s not useful for the industry, for democracy, to have content that is not broadly accessible and that people don’t want to engage with.”

But Three - “the original challenger” - is up to the task, Peterson said.

“The agility, the gutsy nature. ‘Gutsy’ is a word we use throughout our content proposition, and what we are as a business is still here, and it’s that that is going to be the foundation of what leads us forward.”