NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS (Part 2)
PTV News and Current Affairs programming will have the cream of New Zealand’s reporter/anchor talent.
As mentioned in Part 1, my ability is to attract a pool of media professionals to join PTV Network as my television business, so the most exciting team of journalists in New Zealand broadcasting history have been assembled. Top talent includes:
- Wendy Petrie (a former TVNZ presenter who has co-anchored 1 NEWS’ 6pm bulletin for the past 14 years, from 2006 until 2020);
- Daniel Faitaua (best known in recent times as a news anchor for Breakfast on TVNZ but currently based in London as TVNZ’s Europe correspondent);
- Jared McCulloch (a Southlander - currently based in Central Otago as a 1 NEWS reporter through TVNZ - with a background which includes regional television and radio newsrooms around New Zealand);
- Janika ter Ellen (currently a weekend anchor for Prime News); and
- Tom McRae, Mitch McCann, Michael Morrah and Wilhelmina Shrimpton as existing Newshub journalists.
In regard to regional television, PTV Network has six broadcast regions: Auckland (including Northland), Waikato/Bay of Plenty, Palmerston North (the Central North Island just south of Lake Taupo), Wellington (including the Kapiti Coast and Wairarapa), Christchurch (including Nelson/Tasman, Marlborough and the West Coast) and Dunedin (Otago and Southland).
On weeknights, the 6pm news hour will be divided into two separate bulletins: one for regional news and one for national and international news.
The first half of the news hour, from 6pm, will be known as PTV Local News and similar in format to Britain’s BBC One and ITV. Each PTV Local News bulletin will be ‘live and local’ and drawn on the same resources as the PTV News newsroom (as mentioned in Part 1), with a particular emphasis on comprehensive daily news, sports, weather and feature stories from around the regions. The six bulletins will be produced at studios in Auckland, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. According to Trevor Egerton, then CEO of Horizon Pacific Television (a wholly owned subsidiary of TVNZ that ran from 1995 - 1997), he told the NZ Listener:
“Our news bulletin is important to us. There is a real craving in the regions for news and current affairs that is locally anchored and locally based. There are big issues in the cities that don’t necessarily rate a national mention but which, sure as hell, require some attention locally.” - Trevor Egerton, 1995
The PTV Local News teams will do their best and work hard to produce a total of 30 half hour bulletins across six regions each week, taking a break on weekends. And because NZ On Air supports multi-platform news and information content serving regional audiences as part of its funding strategy, PTV Local News will screen Monday to Friday, all year round (i.e. 52 weeks a year, just like Te Karere on TVNZ), so that it won’t be taken off the air during public holidays and the Christmas/New Year holiday season.
The second half of the news hour, from 6.30pm, will be known as PTV National News, 30 minutes of national and international news coverage each night. As the ‘flagship’ of the PTV News brand, PTV National News will cover the important news of the day from New Zealand and around the world, drawing on the resources of the PTV News newsroom and international sources (as mentioned in Part 1), plus a report on the day’s sport and a national weather forecast. The stories will be shorter and punchier because of its half hour format.
On weekends PTV National News will screen at 6pm instead of 6.30pm. It will be known as PTV National News and Sport, and greater emphasis within the weekend edition will be given to sports news.
In lieu of The AM Show (with hosts Duncan Garner, Amanda Gillies and Mark Richardson) as a multi-platform breakfast show at the same time as radio, I have created an ‘even better’ early morning news programme on television - PTV News Today. It will inherit a format that stretches right back to Firstline during the 3 News era and will concentrate on the important stories that happened overnight and what is likely to make news in the day ahead, covering national and international news, sport, business and weather information. From 6-8.30am every weekday, there will be rolling bulletins every half hour.
In addition to *PTV Local News , PTV National News and PTV News Today, there will be PTV News bulletins at midday and 4.30pm every weekday. Called PTV Midday News and PTV News: First at 4:30 respectively, the half hour bulletins will provide viewers with the latest updates on the day’s developing news stories from New Zealand and around the world, a comprehensive business report, sports news and a national weather forecast.
PTV Late News will provide viewers with a wrap of the day’s big news stories, along with breaking news from New Zealand and around the world. The late bulletins will be screened as part of Nightline on weeknights and as a standalone 10-15 minute bulletins on weekends and during public holidays and the Christmas/New Year holiday season. More details regarding Nightline will be outlined in Part 3.
While news and current affairs programming is concentrated on PTV1, the other PTV Network channels (i.e. PTV2, PTV3, PTV4, PTV5 and PTV6) will be limited to news updates during the day - although, to offer a choice for busy viewers, PTV3 will screen time-shifted replays of PTV Midday News, PTV News: First at 4:30 and PTV National News at later, more convenient times during the week.
PTV3 has a particular emphasis on quality programming (i.e. British dramas, classic comedies, all-time favourite movies, thought-provoking documentaries and factual shows) to cater for the older demographic (i.e. a primary target audience of all people aged 55+ and a secondary audience of all people aged 40-64). For ‘globalists’ (i.e. people who are more interested in the world than what’s happening in New Zealand), PTV3 will screen three international news programmes via satellite from the UK and US:
- Channel 4 News: With top presenters like Jon Snow, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Matt Frei and Cathy Newman, this is Channel 4’s flagship evening news programme - beamed in from ITN to New Zealand viewers every weekday morning (NZ time);
- CBS Evening News: Presented by Norah O’Donnell, this is America’s respected news programme - beamed in from CBS to New Zealand viewers every Monday to Saturday at lunchtime (NZ time); and
- Face the Nation: Presented by CBS News Washington correspondent Margaret Brennan, this is one of America’s longest running public affairs/political talk shows on television - beamed in from CBS to New Zealand viewers every Monday morning (at 9am).
More to come in Part 3.
