The week the ‘breakfast wars’ got interesting again

Sunday, 19 April 2026

ANALYSIS: After suffering a budget cut, audience decline and a savage internal report in 2025, RNZ has reason to celebrate this week.

The public broadcaster stayed atop the latest AUT Trust in Media Survey, coming two spots ahead of fellow state network TVNZ.

It also debuted its refreshed Morning Report hosting line-up, bringing John Campbell back to the network for his fourth stint, this time paired alongside Ingrid Hipkiss in the coveted breakfast slot.

This has been a long time coming. Last year’s independent review of RNZ, conducted by former news boss Richard Sutherland, made a number of pointed recommendations for the network. Among them, that it should make at least one new, external “high-profile” hire into a “prominent” role - a move Sutherland said would signal “ambition and drive renewed interest” to both staff and the audience.

Campbell will have beaten out a number of other prominent names to secure the top job. The Post floated some of them last year, including Tova O’Brien, who has since joined TVNZ’s Breakfast.

But Campbell’s appointment is said to have ruffled a few feathers internally, not least because of his perceived political slant (he wrote some fairly heavy-handed columns during his tenure at TVNZ which took aim at the coalition government).

It’s understood that, during the hiring process, this was all well-considered - but that Campbell’s broadcasting credentials won out.

Network bosses will be hoping Campbell can help close the gap between RNZ and its rivals. RNZ may be the most trusted outlet (albeit with overall trust in media still quite low), but it has suffered serious blows to its listenership. The main beneficiary has been rival talkback network Newstalk ZB.

While the December ratings figures showed RNZ had regained some ground, it was still lagging about 100,000 listeners behind the commercial talk network.

Campbell’s appointment sees a few crucial pieces of an overdue RNZ refresh slot into place.

It reunites him with his former Campbell Live and RNZ Checkpoint producer Pip Keane, who has taken on the hefty job as RNZ’s first Chief Audio Officer, a position tasked with developing and executing RNZ’s audio strategy. It also means both RNZ hosts, and the new lead producer, are based in Auckland.

While you may never have really noticed that Corin Dann and Ingrid Hipkiss were based at opposite ends of the North Island, the Sutherland report identified Auckland as a region that required a key focus from RNZ, which has long been perceived as too Wellington-heavy.

(The Post has requested interviews with Keane several times since she took up the job, and with Campbell this week - neither were available for this piece).

It’s far too soon to know what impact Campbell will have on RNZ’s listenership, and it will likely take a couple of ratings cycles to get even the slightest feel for whether this new era of Morning Report is going to win back any of the lost audience.

But it’s never too early to prophesy.

Greg Treadwell is a senior lecturer at AUT and a researcher with the university’s Journalism, Media and Democracy Research Centre, the department responsible for the trust in media report.

He reckons RNZ will get a bit of a ratings bump from Campbell, but isn’t convinced it will be enough to dethrone Mike Hosking as the king of the morning airwaves.

“It's a place that Mike's carved out for himself,” Treadwell says. “It'd be pretty hard to dislodge him. I think it's a little bit of apples and oranges there, in terms of actual listeners. They're … comparable numbers, but they're quite different organisations.

“I think you'll probably see a little numbers rise. That's not a criticism of Corin Dann either, [but] John Campbell is a pretty powerful brand. I don't really like that term for journalists, but he is a pretty powerful brand, and I think it was a good move to get him back.”

What we do know is that the ‘breakfast wars’ have not been this exciting for a very long time. Traditionally a battle between TVNZ and TV3, or RNZ and Newstalk ZB, in this continually shrinking industry it’s now surely a contest between them all - and all three big morning news shows have their aces.

It’s surely no coincidence that the prime minister has just brought onboard a new media advisor in the form of Rachel Smalley, helping prepare him to run the Monday morning gauntlet of Hosking, O’Brien and Campbell. This week was the first time in a while that the PM has got through all three programmes unscathed.

We also got our first glimpse at what the weekly pair up of Campbell and Luxon will look like.

The PM chose to reuse the same line he trotted out when being interviewed by Tova O’Brien for her first Breakfast show: “How’s the first day at the new school going?”

Campbell volleyed back: “I must have failed numerous exams cause this is my fourth time back … I should study harder, I’ll get out of here one day.”

Banter sometimes feels out of place on RNZ, but Campbell, in his slightly verbose style, is very good at it.

It seems as though RNZ has done little else to shake up the format. A slightly cynical read could be that they’re ZB-ifying up the occasionally sleepy show, introducing new ‘stings’ before news bulletins that give you no doubt you’re listening to RNZ, tightening up interviews and trying to liven up the pace.

But where O’Brien’s quickfire style has instantly injected new life into Breakfast, RNZ seems to be relying on Campbell as star power without adjusting the format too much.

On his Knightly Views blog, former New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis described Campbell as the “fighter ace” needed to take on Hosking.

“I see him as a humanist (in a non-spiritual way). He puts people before institutions or beliefs. Yes, sometimes his empathetic attitudes drive me nuts, but that’s just this grumpy old man expressing himself.”

Asked about trust, and whether perceptions of his political worldview could be an issue, Campbell told fellow RNZ presenter Jesse Mulligan: 'I'm not worried about that. We need to ask the people who are saying that why they're saying it and what their agendas are.'

Treadwell agrees, saying that accusations of bias against the media reveal more about the “positionality of the person” making the complaint.

It would be wrong not to expect a high level presenter such as Campbell to bring some of his personal views to the airwaves, he says.

“You'd expect John Campbell to have some opinion in the way he reports on the world, but hopefully you wouldn't get that from a junior reporter in a newsroom who's working on a truly impartial news story.

“He's built a trust with people that is a result of his pretty authentic work. I think he's also sort of a vulnerable character, which helps people trust him. I think he's pretty open about himself. I think that helps. But again, we're not talking about your average reporter here.”

John Campbell may not be your average reporter, but then again, becoming king of the airwaves is no ordinary challenge. Let the breakfast wars begin.