Paul Norris: She's world class, but is she worth her huge pay?

Opinion

So, the climax of one's working day has been reduced to a mere four-minute read. With that flip but politically savage phrase, Helen Clark has no doubt encouraged thousands of wannabe Judys to believe that anyone could do the newsreader's job.

The truth is that thousands of you could do the job. It is not that technically demanding. All you need is the ability to read the words on the autocue screen in front of the camera with clear diction in a strong voice.

TVNZ could take someone off the street and train them to a competent standard. The BBC did exactly that - took a person with no experience and made her into a passable newsreader.

But competent and passable is not enough. It may have been in the days of only one channel, but those days have been overtaken by an era of intense commercial competition in media around the world.

Commercial news programmes attract millions of viewers and millions of dollars in advertising. Rivalry between channels can end in bidding wars for prized talent.

Presenting the news is clearly more than reading the news. Newsreaders read short bulletins; an hour-long programme on prime time demands a news presenter who can hold the programme together. It is not for nothing that in America such presenters are called anchors.

It is when the cock-ups strike that the presenters begin to earn those contentious salaries.

I have seen a presenter try to introduce a news story four or five times without success, yet somehow retaining the confidence of the viewer that all is well. I remember Paul Holmes having to ad-lib for several minutes until the next story could be found - a tape had gone missing. No studio guest to turn to, no standby story, simply the presenter and empty air, for an eternity.

Then there is credibility. Viewers take it for granted that the news will be presented by professional journalists who understand the stories and who can do live interviews. But most important is the ability to communicate with, and relate to, the audience.

News presenters invade our living rooms with a range of stories, many of them unpleasant or disturbing. Yet the best presenters manage to convey this information with directness and warmth.

These few presenters have what their bosses call the X-factor, and viewers rank them in the must-watch category in the all-important presenter research surveys. These presenters can attract ratings points away from rival channels, and are prized as key company assets that must be retained.

But at what price? How much are the best presenters worth? The simple answer is that the market rules, and they are worth what their employers are prepared to pay.

Judy Bailey is a news presenter of world class, with a broad appeal across the age groups, whose departure from TVNZ would be a serious loss. But she is not indispensable. TVNZ has other up-and-coming female news presenters. So, at $800,000, has TVNZ exaggerated Judy's worth?

Many of the public, writing letters of outrage or spluttering on talkback, cannot conceive of this level of salary for any job. Government ministers cannot understand it. Neither do I. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that TVNZ has misjudged both the market and the common sense of the reasonable person.

* Paul Norris is the head of the Broadcasting School at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. He is a former director of news and current affairs at TVNZ.