Saint Hosking of the Perpetual Opinion – Finally Losing His Flock

The King is shedding his clothes

There was a time when Mike Hosking was unavoidable. He was the radio dial’s equivalent of traffic on the Harbour Bridge - you didn’t want him, you didn’t ask for him, but somehow you ended up stuck with him every morning. He styled himself the nation’s conscience, a man whose opinions dripped like holy water from the lips of a slightly smug televangelist. His pulpit was the breakfast show, his parish the long-suffering commuters of Auckland and his gospel? Endless variations of I reckon.

But even saints fall. St Hosking of the Perpetual Opinion has just been dethroned in Auckland’s breakfast ratings, a mighty 7,400 listeners fewer than Mai FM’s team of Tegan, Fame and Nickson. Yes, the country’s most self-anointed oracle has been pipped by three people whose main sin is making jokes about Onewa Road traffic while playing Doja Cat. The miracle here isn’t that Mai won, but that it took this long for Aucklanders to stop mistaking Hosking’s political hackery for entertainment.

Hosking’s whole schtick has always been to sound like the guy at the back of the pub who thinks he’s nailing the big issues while spilling Lion Red down his tie. The difference is, the pub guy doesn’t get a multi-million-dollar contract and a fawning PR team to tell us his “reckons” are journalism. For years, that act somehow worked. But now, finally, people are realising that being hectored about tax brackets by a man in Italian loafers is about as compelling as a lecture on humility from a real estate agent.

Meanwhile, RNZ National - our plucky little publicly funded truth-teller - is trying to remind the nation that facts are still a thing. In the age of reckless reckon-peddlers, RNZ has clung, stubbornly, to the notion that journalism means reporting what actually happened, rather than what one wealthy broadcaster would have preferred to happen. It’s been a rough ride for them in Auckland - Morning Report down a bit, Nine to Noon sliding - but nationally RNZ has managed to grow its audience for the first time in years. Against the current of bants, jingles and hot takes, that’s a genuine act of rebellion.

Of course, RNZ executives seem terrified of being bold. They’ve responded to the slide with timid tweaks - a bit of jaunty music here, a splash of presenter banter there, like nervously applying lip gloss before a first date. But it’s still fundamentally the same awkward nerd in the corner who actually read the book instead of faking it and you know what? Maybe the awkward nerd is what we need right now.

Because let’s be honest - Newstalk ZB, with Hosking at the helm, has been a masterclass in confusing confidence with credibility. If you say I know this country enough times, some people will believe you. But the spell is breaking. When Mai FM beats you by more than seven thousand listeners in the nation’s biggest market, it’s not just a blip. It’s a sign that the cult of Hosking is losing converts. His cathedral of Reckonism is shedding worshippers faster than an old Anglican parish on a Sunday morning.

So here’s the twist - in the same way that climate change will one day make beachfront property worthless, the hot-take economy is finally collapsing under its own carbon emissions. Hosking’s ratings slip is not the death of talk radio, but the overdue demise of one very tired act. For once, the people have voted not with a ballot, but with the dial.

And maybe - just maybe - in that gap, RNZ’s dogged little truth machine can remind New Zealanders that telling it straight is still, in fact, pretty cool.

📢 Newstalk ZB Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
Subject: Market Leadership Through Strategic Audience Diversification

At Newstalk ZB, we are thrilled to announce that our recent audience recalibrations confirm our continued position as New Zealand’s premier platform for opinion-led excellence.

While some industry observers have chosen to narrowly interpret recent GfK survey results, we at ZB embrace a more holistic framework of measurement. Listener transitions are not declines; they are dynamic reallocations of auditory engagement pathways. To put it simply - fewer listeners equals stronger impact.

Mike Hosking’s iconic breakfast programme has achieved a strategic pivot into second place in Auckland, a testament to our bold leadership in reframing success metrics. By courageously shifting from first to second, we are pioneering a new paradigm of relativity-based dominance.

Our cross-platform synergies demonstrate that winning is not about numerical aggregates, but about the qualitative intensity of listener loyalty ecosystems. A smaller audience is a more curated audience and curation is the new scale.

Furthermore, the modest numerical variance (a mere 7,400 individuals) reflects not weakness, but an intentional strategy of targeted audience optimisation, ensuring our brand equity is sustainably leveraged across multi-generational consumer bases.

We remain committed to delivering industry-leading reckon-driven insights, high-octane perspectives and unrelenting opinion velocity. As others chase fickle “facts” and “truth,” we recognise that the marketplace of ideas is won through conviction, not accuracy.

In conclusion - Newstalk ZB’s performance is not a decline. It is a recalibrated elevation into the next frontier of thought leadership. We are not second - we are first in redefining what second means.

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