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What the picker changes
  • Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
  • 12-week heatmap & outlet matrix — show the 12 weeks ending at the selected week (they slide back with the picker, they aren’t a fixed snapshot).
  • Per-topic volume / alias drift — same 12-week trailing window, anchored on the selected period.
  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
  • Anomaly cards — only show alerts the detector fired during the selected period. Quiet weeks legitimately show none.
What stays as-is
  • Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
  • Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
  • Source & topic profiles — all-time data for the topic; the picker doesn’t affect them.
Rolling 7 days is a sliding live window for “current vibes”; switch to Weekly to compare specific weeks side-by-side.
Weekly Rolling 7 days
←
Week of 19 Oct 2026
→ This week
Discourse › the on-air slice

This week on the airwaves

What talk radio and political podcasts covered, who held the microphone, and where the on-air agenda ran ahead of — or apart from — print. Built from diarised transcripts with voice-level speaker attribution, on the same canonical topics as the other lenses.

Every episode here is already counted in the Discourse lens — this page isolates the talk-radio & podcast share: 144 of 664 discourse items this period (21%).

284
Episodes ingested
148
Political episodes
43.0hrs
Political airtime
35.4hrs
Attributed speech
259
Identified voices

The shows

Political episode volume per tracked show for Week of 19 Oct 2026, with the 12-week trend. Editorial lean from the source-orientation register.

rnz-morning-report Government / N-A
avg episode 5 min
50 political episodes
Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive (Newstalk ZB) Right
avg episode 14 min
34 political episodes
Mike Hosking Breakfast (Newstalk ZB) Right
avg episode 14 min
29 political episodes
The Country (Newstalk ZB) Centre-right
avg episode 15 min
15 political episodes
Big Hairy News Left
avg episode 116 min
5 political episodes
The Front Page (NZ Herald) Centre
avg episode 21 min
5 political episodes
Public Interest Left
avg episode 42 min
4 political episodes
The Detail (RNZ) Centre
avg episode 23 min
3 political episodes
Cross Party Lines (audio) Centre
avg episode 55 min
1 political episode
Gone By Lunchtime (RNZ) Centre-left
avg episode 40 min
1 political episode
RNZ Focus on Politics Centre
avg episode 47 min
1 political episode

Access to the microphone

Voice-attributed speaking time for everyone who isn't a show host, next to the gap between being talked about and being heard from. Attribution comes from the reviewed voice-reference library; unidentified speakers aren't counted.

Who got the mic
Attributed speaking minutes, non-host voices
Alika Wells Green Party 48.0m
Chris Hipkins Labour Party 43.0m
John Campbell 40.2m
Show hosts held 14.8 hours (41%) of all attributed airtime and are excluded from this board.
Free account See the full speaking-time board — create a free account. Create a free account Log in
Talked about vs heard from
Episodes naming a person vs episodes carrying their voice
mentioned in heard in
Christopher Luxon 37 · 10
Chris Hipkins 36 · 14
Rt Hon Winston Peters 28 · 9
A zero on the right is a right-of-reply gap: named across the week's episodes without once being heard.
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Where air and print diverge

Topics living only on the airwaves this period, and stories that surfaced on air before the written corpus caught up.

On air, not in print
Discussed on tracked shows · zero written items this period
Agriculture Curriculum Cuts
“political marginalisation of rural interests”
3 seg · 1 show 0 print
Rural Property Selling Timing
“economic uncertainty and demand dynamics”
3 seg · 1 show 0 print
Us Meat Sector Tariffs
“trade conflict undermines export markets”
3 seg · 1 show 0 print
30 Percent Funding Increase For General Practice
“pragmatic and workable solution”
2 seg · 2 shows 0 print
Agricultural Trade Envoy Role
“official representation in international trade”
2 seg · 1 show 0 print
Aurini Kuiper's Statement On Gang Policy
“misrepresentation of cultural restoration claims”
2 seg · 1 show 0 print
Weekly candidate leads. The stricter 6-week radio-exclusives board (≥3 items across ≥2 shows) lives on the Insights page.
Air → print
First surfaced on air, then picked up by the written corpus
Non-Doctor Health Care Expansion
On air
rnz-morning-report · Wed 21 Oct
→
In print
3 pieces · from Wed 21 Oct
Northland Gp Workforce Shortage
On air
rnz-morning-report · Wed 21 Oct
→
In print
3 pieces · from Wed 21 Oct
Kerrin Leoni Gang Visit Allegations
On air
Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive (Newstalk ZB) · Thu 22 Oct
→
In print
3 pieces · from Thu 22 Oct
Topics whose first corpus sighting was on a tracked show, with written pickup afterwards — the airwaves acting as the assignment desk.

Same story, different mic

How each show framed the same topic, from per-segment framing analysis of the transcripts.

Healthcare Staffing Shortages 4 on-air · 9 written
Big Hairy News
Left “systemic crisis with uneven media coverage”
Mike Hosking Breakfast (Newstalk ZB)
Right “declining from 72% to 31% understaffing”
Public Interest
Left “systemic neglect of non-clinical roles”
rnz-morning-report
Government / N-A “a critical structural failure undermining care delivery”
Cost Of Living Pressures On Restaurants 4 on-air · 6 written
Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive (Newstalk ZB)
Right “economic distress fuels public discontent”
rnz-morning-report
Government / N-A “widespread community distress”

Quotable — heard on air

Verbatim voice-attributed turns by sitting MPs on tracked shows this period, with timestamps and playback pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts. Each speaker is confirmed manually from their voice clip.

  • Lawrence Xu-Nan Green Party The Front Page (NZ Herald) Who has the best plan for our schools? 23 Oct · at 17:27 · 84s
    One of the really important aspects, and one of the things I'm uh really proud of the Green Party's policy around is our position with ECE, because again, we believe that when you have a quality public early childhood education system, that's what ECE stands for, early childhood education. And with that, what we're hearing is how much parents are paying and a lack of transparency when it comes to …
+5 more quotable clips from this week's shows Create a free account →

Method & fair dealing. Quotes are diarised transcript turns attributed by voice matching and reviewed before publication. Display is limited to a short excerpt; full audio streams from the originating broadcaster and is subject to takedown suppressions.