Career
Holmes began his career on radio in Christchurch in the 1970s. He then worked in Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands before returning to New Zealand to take up a morning slot on Wellington station 2ZB.
In March 1987, Holmes took over from 1ZB host Merv Smith, who had been breakfast host for many years. This coincided with a change in format from community radio (middle of the road music, news, community notices etc.) to newstalk. The change was controversial, as many long-standing Smith listeners did not like Holmes or the news, interview and talkback format with no music. 1ZB fell to seventh position in the ratings and it took over a year before Holmes' show eventually rose to number one in the ratings for the programme's time slot.
In 1989, Holmes became part of the younger, new-look revamp of Television New Zealand's prime-time news. His 7pm network programme (simply titled Holmes, initially starting at 6:30 and later moving to 7:00 when the news was extended to one hour), analysing news items in greater depth, ran until 2004. Holmes' first TV segment featured guest Dennis Conner, the America’s Cup skipper. After being provoked, Conner walked off the set, providing Holmes with headlines the next day.
Holmes published an autobiography in 1999. A year later he released an album on CD, simply titled Paul Holmes.
On 2 November 2004 he resigned from his TV show after contract negotiations failed. It was reported by TV3 that Television New Zealand would not renew his contract for more than a year. Shortly after this he moved to rival TV company Prime Television, which had offered a three-year contract.
His new show, Paul Holmes, launched on Prime on 7 February 2005. In February 2005, the show rated 7.1 percent for its timeslot, compared with his former programme on TV One (renamed Close Up) at 31 percent share. In March 2005, following the launch of a rival show on TV3, Campbell Live, Nielsen Media Ratings listed Holmes' show at 4 percent. Poor ratings forced a timeslot change to 6 pm after only four months. By this time, the show had been retitled Holmes.
However, these small changes were not enough to save the show, the timeslot change proving fatal. On 8 August 2005, almost six months to the day after the show launched, it was axed by Prime Television, with Prime chief executive Chris Taylor citing poor ratings and inability to attract viewers from the traditional primetime news strongholds of TV One and TV3. The show returned in a weekly format in late 2005 and in 2006 was revamped into an hour long chat show similar to the popular UK show hosted by Michael Parkinson.
In 2005, Holmes was dropped from the New Zealand Listener’s 50 most powerful people list largely because of his TV show's poor ratings and influence.
Paul Holmes also appeared on Shortland Street as Leslie Grant.
He appeared on Māori Television's Waitangi Day coverage on 6 February 2007. In March, TV One, Holmes's former network, announced that he would be among the "stars" on the third season of the New Zealand version of Dancing with the Stars.
Holmes has survived multiple aircraft crashes, including a helicopter crash into the sea at Anaura Bay in June 1989, which killed fellow passenger cameraman Jo Von Dinklage. In 2004, he had two crash landings piloting his vintage Boeing Stearman biplane, on 14 January southeast of Turangi, and on 31 December at Bridge Pā Aerodrome near Hastings.
Holmes supported his adopted daughter Millie Holmes through her arrest and trial for possession of P (methamphetamine). Charges were eventually dropped.
At the end of 2008 Holmes left his weekday breakfast show on Newstalk ZB after hosting the show for almost 22 years. Holmes now presents the Saturday morning show on Newstalk ZB.
In 2009 Holmes returned to TVNZ to present the political talk show Q+A on TV One.
In early 2011 Holmes published Daughters of Erebus, a book on the 1979 Erebus Air New Zealand DC-10 airliner crash.
In November 2012 a television blog posted a story claiming Paul Holmes only had weeks to live due to congenital heart failure. Holmes rejected the rumour, saying he felt fine. Earlier in the year Holmes underwent open heart surgery and was put in an induced coma The surgery was deemed successful.
Read more about this topic: Paul Holmes (broadcaster)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)