Fellow Newstalk ZB broadcaster Jack Tame has spoken out in support of Rachel Smalley's comments about gender bias and lack of diversity in the media, saying most people missed her point.

Smalley, a Newstalk ZB host, said in a column that John Campbell's new job meant "introducing yet another white male broadcaster to prime time, at the expense of a strong, capable, experienced female interviewer".

READ MORE: Carol Hirschfeld says Rachel Smalley's column about John Campbell is 'muddled'

Campbell will front a drive-time news and current affairs programme starting in September. That will replace Checkpoint, whose host Mary Wilson has been announced as the station's new director of news programming. Wilson's appointment means she will be Campbell's boss, RNZ said on Friday.

On Saturday on Newstalk ZB, Tame gave his views on colleague Smalley's views and said it was a bit of a "fiddly issue".

He said he wondered if everyone was missing the big point. "Rachel was accused of sour grapes, she was accused of inverse sexism...if you actually step back and take yesterday's appointment, yesterday's events, all the personalities completely out of the equation, it's a fair and reasonable point that she is trying to make. There isn't much diversity at all in gender or in ethnicity in New Zealand's primetime radio airwaves."

Tame said the truth was that a lot of people listened to primetime radio and it had a lot of power. "Why wouldn't we want everything and everyone, every symbol and every person specifically appointed to represent us, to actually do that?"

Personal background gave everyone an inherent bias and shut people off from certain things, so it wasn't unreasonable to want more than just "well-to-do white guys on the radio", Tame continued.

He is one of few public figures to support Smalley's stance with many big names speaking out against her column.

RNZ head of content Carol Hirschfeld said Smalley's column about John Campbell's appointment at RNZ was "muddled" and "self-promoting".

Meanwhile, Campbell's former producer accused Smalley of "sour grapes" over the piece. Pip Keane, who worked on TV3's axed Campbell Live show, tweeted: "Poor Rachel Smalley has sour grapes". She added it was "a bloody miserable column".

Head to our Facebook page for more from Stuff Entertainment