Would love love love to see a Judy and John video from that era. God what a mess that was. Simply bizarre they ever made that move to bring him in at all. Felt very sorry for Richard at the time and still do.
From 3:25 in this is actually Liz Gunn (when she was sane) announcing Hawkesby would not be back.
He did get a pretty raw deal, didn’t he? Bumped for John Hawkesby in '99, and then bumped again as part of the great purge of 2003. Then he went on to do those infamous finance ads:
@TVGeekNZ With Tom McRae and Mitch McCann now left, the Newshub team are trying their best to find a replacement (e.g. Daniel Faitaua if he returns to New Zealand and switches networks). Award-winning journalist Michael Morrah may be on assignment for Newshub on a sporadic basis.
Yeah - never should have been cut in 1999 or 2003. Him and Judy should have been allowed to retire gracefully at some point together, maybe even moving to weekends or similar. Handled horribly.
Yeah, I agree, maybe easing in Simon and Wendy (or even Alison Mau, as it might have been back then!) during the week. But hey - bygones are bygones, and all that…
You know, I don’t think TVNZ (or indeed, any network) would dare do anything like what they did with Richard nowadays. I know they moved Wendy off 6pm a couple of years back, but at least she was allowed to continue as a fill-in (and now she seems to be the regular host of Tonight, so I suppose she’s kind of returned through the back door, as it were).
Richard and Judy are both lovely people (not to say Simon & Wendy aren’t) and neither were particularly old, Judy would be younger than Simon is now. Absolute disgrace.
Definitely not - and the Wendy move came during Covid instability across many businesses so while it was sad, many people had been placed in a similar scenario
Wasn’t Judy let go because of the ‘uproar’ over her salary, rather than any sort of ageism? I know there was a lot made in the media about TVNZ increasing her salary to $800,000 after Richard left, and subsequently Simon and Wendy being paid half of that between them. Bill Ralston (who of course was head of news back then) has said in the past that he wanted Judy to stay on for much longer than she ultimately did.
It was also an issue with being offered only a 1 year contract. Paul Holmes quit for the same reason.
What does this refer to?
Basically… At the end of 1998, TVNZ decided to increase ratings for their news by hiring newsreader John Hawkesby, who had recently left TV3. The plan was to put him together with Judy Bailey - the pair had previously presented a popular regional news magazine for the northern half of North Island, appropriately called Top Half. Unfortunately, this meant disrupting another popular partnership: that of Bailey and Richard Long, who had presented the news on weeknights for about a decade at this point. Long was moved to weekends alongside Liz Gunn.
The move… did not go as planned, shall we say. TVNZ received thousands of complaints and lost tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of viewers, leading them to reinstate Long on the weekday news after less than six weeks. Hawkesby was let go, and eventually received a multi million dollar payout after a court battle.
1 News political poll graphics shown as of August 8, including an AR view of Parliament unveiled tonight:
Breaking news slide
Studio/ Poll graphic
AR view of Parliament/ colored seats
Preferred prime minister graphic
Indeed, absolutely not. But anything to talk up Team Luxon…
That missing railing into the sitting house is dangerous for Jessica. 
Agreed - but don’t they do that every time a Colmar Brunton (or whatever it’s now called) poll result is released?
Brilliant find. You can sleep easy now, @OnAir 
. Would be good if a full bulletin (or even just an intro) turns up later.
Has Andrew Saville done any reporting in the last few weeks? Hasn’t presented for ages, despite major sport events.
