KEY POINTS:
This was a tough week for a network ramping up to cover the general election.
The graphics and touch screens were ready. Special sets went up, with TVNZ's designers producing scaffolding for a non-nonsense industrial look. This was a jump from recent times when the pundits and a professor or two elbowed each other aside for a look at a solitary laptop's screen.
Problem was, the US election was four days earlier. The Americans mightn't have MMP to help commentators through the quiet spots. They didn't miss it. They had newsrooms packed with what looked like the population of Mt Albert, complete with graphics defining the voting patterns of, for instance, single white females living in the northern part of the south-eastern suburbs of Cleveland, and over the last ten or so elections.
Given the local sets were filled with the population of half a cul de sac off Sandringham Road, it made the effort, respectable as it was, resemble a Nissan Sunny in the shadow of a purring Humvee.
As always both networks started at 7.00, with Maori Television rolling at 8.00pm, leaving little to talk about, beyond regurgitating polls already canvassed in minute detail on television, radio, and the print media.
Because they had a lot of time before anything meaningful happened things turned odd. TV3 had a snappy exercise in vicious editing, to produce a witty 'Politicians Got Talent' segment. That helped smooth over John Campbell's introducing Duncan Garner at National's HQ and noting no one was there. A few moments of light chitchat later he asked "What's the mood there?" Garner looked around at the balloons in a bare room before finding something to say.
Cut to the TVNZ building and what looked like a roaring rooftop party. This may have answered the question of why their set looked empty. Was everyone up there making a run at the canapés and obviously free-flowing drink?
In drama terms this was a strangely quiet night. The front people and the experts kept talking hopefully about late surges, which didn't quite arrive, leaving a quiet, inexorable night of plugging along to the obvious result.
In New Zealand's highly commercial television environment this presented its own special problem. Advertisers buy in expectation of audience numbers staying on board, at least through the key 8.00pm - 11.30pm period, when the major leaders arrive for the concession and the victory speeches. This may have driven some of the hope something, anything, would happen to keep them. Helen Clark eventually provided it, announcing her departure, and sparking all three sets of commentators to life.
Both she, and John Key, got treated well, kept in flattering medium to long shots. The only sour moment was a brutal Winston Peters close-up, obviously looking to capture the tear in his eye.
If there is a verdict it would be that both TVNZ and TV3 were efficient and professional, with a special nod to Maori Television for a tight focus on its audience, and for the generous coverage of the wider election.
