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Well done and congratulations to Stuff for “saving” the 6pm News on Three, and welcome to free-to-air TV news.
I want to be positive, and certainly keeping a TV news bulletin on air that competes with TVNZ is a great outcome. Being part of live news is exhilarating when it goes well, but a cesspit of rapidly growing snakes when it goes bad.
For Three’s owner, Warner Bros Discovery, it’s all upside. It wanted news gone, then realised it had gone too far and would lose critical nightly advertising dollars, so this deal means it can keep making money but have fewer costs and responsibilities. Win-win. For them.
For Stuff, it’s ballsy, risky and an exciting assault on the relatively unknown - the unrelenting demands of an hour of TV news, live. Stuff says it is not getting into TV, that it’s an extension of its digital and video news gathering operation, and to a point, that’s true.
But let me just correct Stuff there - you are getting into TV. Old-fashioned linear TV, to be exact, which has seen audiences drop year on year for more than 10 years because people consume their news throughout the day on their phones and via apps, websites, and social media platforms. Very few wait to be lectured to at 6pm any more.
Stuff has money to play with, but only a few million and that’s not much to produce a daily TV news bulletin. To make this work, it will still have to slash and burn staff numbers.
If you ask me, Glen Kyne, Warner Bros Discovery’s NZ boss, looked about as unhappy as a death row inmate on execution day who just heard a judge had granted mercy to the other guys on his lag, but not him. He’d saved news, but his people may well still die.
Walking the shop floor can’t be easy, especially after penning a deal that transfers the news to Stuff but not the 300 staff who make it what it is. The casualty list will be long, and as few as just 40 staff might make the cut. Household names are out the door, and there isn’t a pile of new jobs in journalism around the corner.
The cold, ruthless reality is that in less than 80 days, Mike McRoberts and Sam Hayes will drive to work about lunchtime and get ready to read their last bulletin together; hordes of staff will walk into the studio for a final hug, cry, and a goodbye, and a substantial number of them will walk out of Newshub for the last time. Institutional knowledge, contacts, and experience gone.
They’ll head into the abyss of the jobs market inside the NZ economy. They’ll find it’s a strange place; an economy lacking in confidence and someone to believe in.
But a bold and audacious move by Stuff, buying a business that loses millions each year, perhaps cutting most of the staff, and hoping a slick product remains. If it’s cheap and tacky, it will die.
So, how on Earth will Stuff make a slick, competing one-hour bulletin?
It could start by hiring the experienced hands – even if it’s on short-term contracts or freelance type ones – who know how to put news to air live. Mark Jennings, Angus Gillies, Kim Hurring, John Hale, Todd Symons, Richard Sutherland, Mel Jones, Ali Harley and Karen Rutherford. Have I left anyone off?
They’re TV3 news stalwarts. I’d add Mike Brockie too but he’d kill me for suggesting he go back to work instead of sailing and mountain-biking. Grab some of these people, and the rest will fall into place – the editors and directors, and studio crew.
Experience matters
TV news can go badly when it’s live; there’s a domino effect and you don’t want that. Then there’s the weather and sport - bulletins within the bulletins. Technology. The graphics department. Crews. Makeup. The archive and library.
Having the existing infrastructure, studio and a pick of the staff is a massive bonus and beats what the guys had when TV3 kicked off 35 years ago, when they sat on wooden wine boxes and were quickly in receivership.
Having raw footage playing on a website is not a packaged news product. This new product will have to look and sound slick from day one otherwise the already dwindling audience will be gone. Haircuts, sharp clothes, and good broadcast voices make it look like you know what you’re doing even if, as I suspect, you’ve no idea at this stage and there are just 77 days until launch.
(Speaking of which, you talk about not wanting to replicate but innovate the 6pm News but give no further detail. I suspect you’re saying the word innovate without having a bloody clue what it means in a 6pm news sense.)
I urge you, once again, to scale up and contract as many of the production and studio and technical staff as possible. They make it look easy, seamless. But it’s mind-boggling putting out the news, finding the content, being in the right places, being accurate and getting all the names spelt correctly, writing a TV script, filming it and filing it with pictures that are fresh and attention-grabbing, cutting it, and broadcasting it on time.
Having the sound work, the studio cameras in the right place, the lighting, the autocue - and what is plan B if it all goes down?
Get that first week right even if the only difference is superficial - one news reader, new name, a new paint job, keep the bones, the skeleton and the people who know how to put out a high-octane, slick news product.
That said, don’t reach for all the bells and whistles on the first night. Best to be cautious and not over-reach.
TV is harshly judged. Naturally, other media will get hold of the ratings and do stories comparing it with TVNZ. You’ll find the critics are just that, awfully critical, but they are bitter; the types that “review” and knock the brave who are willing to risk something.
(Don’t do it to yourself and read them because it may not read well. Then again, your own papers and website have been home to many of those nasty critiques in years gone by.)
It’s just another workplace
I did close on 20 years inside Newshub and 3News and seven years at what was known as One Network News before that. It’s addictive and you believe you are the centre of the universe.
I once hired a chopper for the week, and it cost $28,000. I was 22 covering an air crash.
But the reality is it’s just another sausage factory or workplace.
My old mate, Guyon Espiner, TV One Political Editor when I had the same role at Three, used to joke that in TV news there is no such thing as winning, only degrees of failure and losing. We also said TV sucks time and money - but mostly money.
Hunter S Thompsom, Gonzo journalist, reportedly said, “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
So, good luck – and well played on “saving” the 6pm News on Three. Watch for trapdoors and big promises.
P.S Can someone let Melissa Lee know it’s all worked out, but thanks so much for everything she did. Let her know she’s no longer needed and could she pass her ID card to security on her way out of the Beehive.
