Considering how every other newsroom is doing right now, I reckon it’ll be tough to spin something up in a matter of months. Everyone is going through re-structuring.
And at the end of it, I feel like it’s going to be tough to find any footing running a short bulletin on a shoestring budget.
Prime News worked for Newshub cause it piggybacked off their own 6pm bulletin and their access to world feeds. It meant you could put out a high quality bulletin with only the added cost of an extra presenter and one or two extra producers.
Setting all that aside, if you were to look at possible options, it’s probably between either NZME or Sky Aus licensing RNZ/NZME/Stuff video.
NZME has probably the strongest video team alongside RNZ in terms of web/print outlets, and they also have something resembling lights, camera, and a studio. Downsides being that they have zero experience producing for TV, and they crucially don’t have any access to world feeds. It’d be quite expensive for them to get into it just to service the Prime audience.
Sky would need to find someone with a New Zealand accent to front the whole thing, and probably bring on an producer or two daily to deal with incoming NZ news that their usual journos aren’t used to dealing with.
The left-field option would be TVNZ offering to do it themselves, but they would be bringing heavy conditions about editorial control - in other words; keeping 95% of the good stuff for their own bulletins.
Did anyone record the very colourful language that was said during a rather unfortunate LIVE for Perry Wilton on tonight’s bulletin? Would love to see it and for it to become a part of this year’s bloopers. Poor Perry Wilton but he soldiered on like a true professional!
New Zealand has to Create a Suitable News and Factual Provider in a way the United Kingdom does with ITN which Produces News Bulletins for Every Non-BBC Channel, Could Three and Sky Open benefit from a Similar Provider for their News?
That Sky News Era was so crap tbh, the quality only picked up when MW/WBD picked up the contract. It’ll probably be full of opinion/slanted news. Surprised our own rightwing NZ herald hasn’t made a play for the News First contract.
With News First closing and Eric Young’s media career almost finishing, does that mean it will be replaced by CGW Rewind (the best bits from the Crowd Goes Wild) on Sky Open?
I doubt it. Hopefully they’ll shift their afternoon sports/current affairs programming forward half an hour. They should get (slightly) more viewers that way.