AUCKLAND, Today: The New Zealand Herald has seen an 8% increase year on year in readership to 453,000 print readers, with 806,000 print readers across a week, according to the latest Nielsen survey released this afternoon.

AUCKLAND, Wednesday: The winners of the 2018 Deloitte Top 200 awards have been crowned at Spark Arena in Auckland, acknowledged for their business excellence and noteworthy leadership across 10 award categories.

A number of readers – mainly Radio Live staffers and their associates – have sided with M+AD’s negative take on the Radio Live/Magic ‘merger’ (in reality, a miserable MediaWorks capitulation and closure).

AUCKLAND, Today: Māori Television has taken an innovative step forward by utilising an external production company’s new media team, together with the MTS internal team, to grow sales and content partnerships.

GREY LYNN, Wednesday: We’ve all seen those big, bold marriage proposals in movies: the couple are at a basketball game when the question appears on the big screen and the crowd cheers with joy.

Or maybe it’s written in the sky as a pair share a romantic picnic and a plane flies overhead, puffing a “Marry me Sharon” above the city.

SYDNEY, Today: Consumer insights outfits Fiftyfive5 and GalKal have announced a merger to create a larger independent consulting business – with an office in High St, Auckland.

AUCKLAND, Today: Not everybody is celebrating the merger of MediaWorks stations Radio Live and Magic. One insider has written to M+AD saying: “It’s not so much a merger – more of a closure of Live” (which is exactly the way M+AD ed David Gapes – an old radio hand – sees it).

AUCKLAND, Today: Ogilvy has released details of Auckland Transport’s latest road safety campaign – a multimedia affair that the agency rightly describes as “hard-hitting”.

AUCKLAND, Today: Just one week to go till PREScom – the Comms Council’s inaugural PR/experiential awards show – the finalists include Spark PR, Lassoo, Mango, Sherson Wills, Fuse, Tenfold, Campbell & Co, TBWA\ and Copper Brand Experiences (scroll down for details).

SYDNEY, Today: oOh!media has announced the new leadership team responsible for driving the continued growth of the business in New Zealand, following its successful acquisition of Adshel.