At seven in the morning, a New Zealander can wake to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB. By lunch, she may scan the New Zealand Herald app. That evening, she can check an Auckland home's price estimate on OneRoof, then play a local podcast through iHeartRadio. Four different products, one company, one day. This is the quietly formidable idea behind New Zealand Media and Entertainment: do not make one medium carry the business. Build a map of everyday attention, then be useful at several points on it.
NZME is the public company behind some of the country's most familiar mastheads, voices and digital destinations. Its portfolio includes the Herald, BusinessDesk, Newstalk ZB, ZM, The Hits, Coast, Radio Hauraki, iHeartRadio, the NZME Podcast Network, OneRoof and a chain of regional publications. It makes journalism, music radio, talk, video, podcasts and lifestyle coverage. It also sells property listings, stages events, prints publications for outside clients and helps advertisers plan campaigns across the entire system.
01 / The mapOne audience, many moments
NZME says it reaches nine out of ten New Zealanders. That claim comes from a company reach study, while its current corporate material puts combined audio and publishing reach at almost 3.5 million people. The precise totals shift with survey periods. The strategic point does not: in a country of roughly five million people, NZME operates at national scale while retaining local texture.
That combination matters to two groups. Audiences get local reporting and entertainment in whatever format suits the moment. Marketers get a way to move from broad awareness to a narrower decision. A supermarket can sponsor a breakfast segment, run a display unit beside a Herald recipe, use first-party audience signals for a digital campaign and activate at an event. A real-estate agency can buy a OneRoof listing upgrade while appearing in print property sections that reach homeowners who are not actively searching online.
02 / The portfolioA newspaper company that refuses the label
The Herald is the historic anchor. Founded in 1863, it now spans print, web, an app, premium subscriptions, podcasts, newsletters and live video. The wider publishing group adds specialist reporting from BusinessDesk, property and automotive coverage, lifestyle brands such as Viva, rural reporting through The Country and regional newsrooms from Northland to Hawke's Bay, Whanganui, Rotorua, Tauranga and Gisborne.
Audio supplies frequency. Ten radio brands cover talk, pop, rock, nostalgia, hip-hop, rural life and country music. Those stations also flow into iHeartRadio, where live streams sit beside catch-up shows, playlists and podcasts. The distinction between “radio” and “podcast” is commercially porous: an advertiser can buy a spot, a host read, a show sponsorship, a themed audience module or inventory across a network. NZME reported that digital audio revenue grew 10 percent in 2025, while audio operating revenue rose 5 percent and divisional profitability increased 23 percent.
“For the first time, readers can shape their own Herald experience.”Murray Kirkness · NZ Herald editor-in-chief
Video is being built inside this ecosystem rather than as a television network. Herald NOW launched in 2025 as a free ad-supported streaming channel on the Herald website, app and YouTube. A partnership with Sky put the Ryan Bridge weekday programme on ThreeNow in early 2026, with broadcast distribution planned for Three. It is an economical route into the living room: use an existing newsroom and known hosts, then borrow distribution rather than purchase a network.
03 / The engineHow the money moves
Advertising remains the largest engine. In 2025, NZME recorded NZ$244.7 million in advertising revenue, alongside NZ$78.2 million in reader revenue and NZ$18.3 million from other activities. Display, search, print, radio, digital audio, branded content, video and sponsorship all sit on the menu. Subscription payments support the Herald and BusinessDesk. OneRoof charges for property marketing and listing upgrades. Events bring together consumers, exhibitors and sponsors. The Ellerslie plant prints tabloid, broadsheet and magazine products for external clients.
This is not diversification for decoration. News advertising is cyclical, print volumes decline and global platforms absorb a large share of digital budgets. Multiple revenue lines allow a single reporting operation, technology team or sales relationship to produce more than one kind of return. In 2025, operating revenue slipped 1 percent to NZ$345.1 million, largely because NZME had closed 14 unprofitable community titles at the end of 2024. Adjusted for those closures, the company said revenue grew 1 percent. Operating costs fell 4 percent, operating EBITDA rose 15 percent to NZ$62.3 million and statutory profit returned to NZ$13.1 million.
Do not organise only around formats. Organise around recurring customer decisions. NZME can serve “I need to know,” “I want company,” “I am buying a home” and “I need customers” with different products built on shared trust and distribution.
04 / The wedgeWhy OneRoof changes the shape
OneRoof is the portfolio's most obvious marketplace. Launched in 2018, it combines national property listings with estimated values, affordability information, sale history, school zones, commute times and market journalism. The consumer arrives with intent, often close to a transaction. The paying customer is an agent or agency that wants listings noticed and enquiries generated.
The advantage over a standalone property portal is circulation in both senses of the word. OneRoof appears online and inside Herald and regional print products. NZME can promote it across radio and editorial channels, then turn housing data and expert commentary back into useful coverage. OneRoof reached positive EBITDA in 2024. In 2025 its digital listings revenue grew 18 percent and EBITDA improved 32 percent. That progress explains why the company treats the platform as a distinct growth asset, not a classified-ad tab bolted to a newspaper.
05 / The moatLocal trust is expensive to reproduce
NZME competes in several directions at once. Stuff contests news audience and advertising. MediaWorks competes in commercial radio. TVNZ, Sky, YouTube and streaming services compete for video time. Trade Me Property and realestate.co.nz compete for home hunters. Google, Meta and Spotify contest almost every marketing dollar. No single rival mirrors the complete portfolio, but every slice faces an alternative.
Its defence is a combination of scale, local specificity and recognisable people. Newstalk ZB can offer a national conversation while Radio Wānaka speaks to one town. The Herald can break a national story while the Rotorua Daily Post follows a council meeting that a global platform will never staff. Hosts lend campaigns a human voice. Newsrooms generate context around the interests that advertisers want to reach. First-party registrations, subscriptions and listening behaviour make that audience more addressable as third-party tracking fades.
There is also a cultural obligation inside the moat. NZME's editorial operation numbers about 270 people nationwide. Its Te Rito cadetship, developed with Whakaata Māori, Discovery-Newshub and Pacific Media Network, was designed to bring more Māori, Pasifika, ethnic, LGBTQIA+ and disabled voices into newsrooms. Twenty-two cadets graduated from the first intake. That work is both public-interest infrastructure and product quality: local media becomes more useful when the people telling stories resemble the communities being covered.
06 / The next screenPersonal without becoming narrow
The rebuilt Herald app, released in June 2026, shows where the company is heading. Its “My Herald” feature allows readers to reorder a feed by topic, journalist or saved story. Users can configure a bottom bar for OneRoof, Viva, BusinessDesk and newspaper e-editions, watch live Herald video and download articles for offline reading. The app was designed and built by NZME's in-house digital team on a new technical foundation.
That product tackles a problem familiar to every general-interest publisher: breadth is valuable, but a crowded home page can feel impersonal. Letting readers tune the experience may deepen daily habit and subscription value. The risk is creating a comfortable tunnel. NZME's opportunity is to preserve the surprise of a newspaper front page while giving users enough control to make the bundle feel made for them.
The company formed in 2014 by combining APN New Zealand, The Radio Network and ecommerce business GrabOne, then listed independently in 2016. Its origins explain its present character. NZME was designed as a convergence project before that word became unfashionable. Twelve years later, the strategy is less about forcing every medium onto one screen than letting each do its proper job. Print slows attention down. Radio provides companionship. News apps speed updates up. Podcasts create intimacy. Property search captures intent. Together, they form a business that is difficult to describe in one noun - and easy to encounter in an ordinary New Zealand day.