Sky Network Television’s former chief executive John Fellet is stepping down from the board, following other executives out the door.
Mr Fellet’s retirement follows some statements from the new chief executive Martin Stewart, who took over last month, publicly criticising the company’s performance last week.
“Sky should be a loved brand… It’s brought high levels of production and service to the screen but somewhere along the way the relationship (with customers) started to get broken or damaged. We stopped listening or even when we did listen, we didn’t take action,” Mr Steward said in an interview with Newsroom.
Mr Stewart promised Sky would remain the home of New Zealand sport after losing sports content rights to competitor Spark.
The network’s digital streaming offering would be one of the first to see change.
“I’m going to change the name, the price, what’s in it, and what you can do with it. These are all relatively simple things for us to do,” he said.
The company recently reported its first-half net profit dropped 20 percent on last year, with a full year guidance expected to be between $85m and $90m, which compared with a year earlier loss of $241m.
Sky’s former chief financial officer Jason Hollingworth also left the company earlier this month, while the head of sport left earlier this year.
Board’s chairperson Peter Macourt paid tribute to Mr Fellet’s 28-year career with Sky.
“[His] leadership of Sky saw the business transform from three channels and 125 employees to a multi-platform, highly profitable company with over 1200 staff serving more than 750,000 New Zealand homes.”
Mr Fellet initially joined the board to provide support for his replacement.
This story was originally published on Radio New Zealand.
