So TV ONE’s Close Up is to close up shop at the end of the year. According to TVNZ it’s too old, past it’s prime, tired and no one wants to watch it any more.
Instead TVNZ will invent a whole new 7pm programme which it claims will be current affairs. Neither statement is true.
The three-part nightly current affairs format is more than 23 years old, dating back to Paul Holmes launching it in 1989. Throughout those years its popularity waxed and waned.
A low ratings phase was usually turned around by an infusion of new production staff, stronger editorial content and fresh journalism that meant the programme broke stories.
The classic format for this type of show is incisive interviews with the newsmakers of the day, tough investigative stories that told people things that they didn’t know already, powerful human interest stories and being first with the “gets” – seeing and hearing people in the news before any other media interviewed them.
The idea is to be the subject of “water cooler” chat the next day, making the show a “must see, must not miss”.
Over the last few years, I believe, Close Up drifted from that winning formula. If it was tired it was because making a daily current affairs show is tiring, it is the Russian Front of television journalism, it’s exhausting and debilitating if you do it for too long.
Nightly current affairs requires a constant turnover of reporters and producers, feeding fresh reinforcements into the programme as longer serving staff reach the end of their endurance.
TVNZ’s claim that the days of the three-part nightly current affairs show is over ignores the fact that A Current Affair on the Nine Network and Today Tonight Channel 7 still pull big audiences in Australia.
What is killing Close Up is its audience. The change is being driven by its marketers. Close Up may have twice the audience of its rival Campbell Live on TV3 but it’s the wrong kind of audience.
Close Up viewers tend to be aged over 50 yrs old, the majority live outside Auckland and there are not a lot of Household Shoppers viewing it.
TV ONE fears its audience is literally dying. Advertisers don’t like older viewers, they think they can pitch their products better to younger viewers. Advertisers like Auckland viewers because that city is where the money is. Advertisers love Household Shoppers because they spend the money.
TV ONE wants a 7pm show that will attract this new audience because they can sell more expensive ads and make more money.
While TVNZ isn’t saying what kind of programme it will put in the 7pm slot next year my long experience with the half-witted reasoning of TVNZ’s top management suggests it will be lighter, fluffier, magazine style. Think Breakfast at 7pm.
Then again, another format suggestion involves sending in the clowns. TVNZ’s Head of News and Current Affairs Ross Dagan apparently helped set up The Project on Channel 10 in Australia. It is a news and current affairs show fronted by comedians. No, I’m not joking, comedians.
TV ONE’s strategy is fatally flawed. It’s targeting younger people, women, household shoppers and Aucklanders. At 7pm these people are either watching Shortland Street on TV2, having dinner, gone to the gym, out on the turps or glued to their computer.
All the new show will do is ensure a large clump of former Close Up viewers migrate to Campbell Live on TV3, which is good news for John.
I have the feeling the new 7pm show will be lucky to last a year on screen and then the gleeful marketers and programmers will be able to run a game show or soap instead.
TVNZ has a vertically anally/nasally integrated management structure and Mr Dagan is too far down the bottom of the executive ladder to have any effect on the marketers and programmers who sit at the top.
In my experience TVNZ upper management don’t like News. They don’t watch it, don’t understand it and they don’t want it cluttering up their airwaves. It chews up too many resources, its expensive, and they distrust it because it risks being an intelligent product at times.
What worries me most is that Close Up’s problem with “the wrong kind of audience” is shared by ONE News and Sunday. TVNZ management have already slashed the hour long Sunday to 30 minutes so as to accommodate a talent quest. How long before it disappears off the screen altogether?
They’re already inserting fake news style infomercials into the 6pm news advertising breaks, damaging the credibility of their flagship programme.
I’d be the first to admit even news and current affairs needs to be a commercial product to attract audiences and generate revenue. But TVNZ is headed in completely the wrong direction.
What’s worse is that programmes likely a nightly current affairs show can perform a valuable function in a democracy, holding politicians and newsmakers to account, exposing stories that others don’t wish us to know, and providing genuine insight into what is happening around us.
We are about to lose that, on TVNZ at least.
for what it’s worth – v good piece Bill.
Re:Comedians – I watch Daily Show/Colbert as my primary source of US news. I get all the headlines I need, and the occasional bit of profound insight, wrapped in a reliably entertaining form. If Jeremy Wells fronted a 7 o’clock, I’d watch it!
It may have strayed from its winning formula, but it’s been in slow decline for a long time, including every single year you were running things at TVNZ, Bill, so maybe the answer isn’t as simple as “must try harder”.
Passed *its prime
Grammar crime in first par Bill…
I am quite surprised at your level of hypocrisy in your blog. Yet another ‘former’ TVNZ staff turned small PR company, who appears to needs exposure as does Edwards in the form of his yearly hate articles on TVNZ.
Your short term memory loss is amazing. Are you not the same person who cancelled Assignment and let go some of the country’s most experienced television journalists?
Furthermore, I’m not sure why you’re bothering in your public recruitment drive to encourage TVNZ to hire inexperienced young “reporters” more enthusiastic about performing PTCs instead of actually reporting news. If you’re so against light and fluffy, why are you “naming” reporters incapable of true journalism to front such show?
It’s been widely reported you oversaw quite a “staggering decline” of rating at One News during your time with TVNZ?
Open up another bottle and keep your mouth closed Billy.
I just read Dan’s criticism of your piece and actually I wonder if he read it. Essentially what you are saying is the frantic scramble to attract the Auckland viewer 25-54 or 18-49 is a farcical approach and I agree it is. I could never understand it because it’s the older demo who 1. watch 2. there are more of, and more to come in an ageing population, and 3. have money!
Close Up consistently rates in the top 10 every night still, top five usually weekly. That’s not to be sneered at. Yes it probably does need a bit of a shake up – like you say it’s hard yakker doing nightly current affairs. But I don’t agree that staff reach “the end of their endurement”. That’s called experience. The Americans celebrate it. The only reason media companies are getting rid of experienced staff is not because they are at the “end of their endurement” but because they cost more. And sadly, it’s ALL about the bottom line these days. That’s what this change is more likely to be about.
Monty, with respect, you have missed my point. Bill makes conflicting arguments. He seemed intent this week on issuing soundbites advocating for light and fluffy “presenters” with the likes of Jack Tame and Pippa. Their credibility and experience in breaking strong current affairs is about as genuine as Entertainment Tonight becoming part of CNN’s prime time lineup. Every presenter needs their time as established reporters. Pippa’s reputation is that of a pretty laughing response machine to Henry. And Jack Tame appears to be struggling in New York. His “personlity” approach is being drowned out by strong US political personalities and rightfully so.
“Furthermore, I’m not sure why you’re bothering in your public recruitment drive to encourage TVNZ to hire inexperienced young “reporters” more enthusiastic about performing PTCs instead of actually reporting news. If you’re so against light and fluffy, why are you “naming” reporters incapable of true journalism to front such show?”
and
“. He seemed intent this week on issuing soundbites advocating for light and fluffy “presenters” with the likes of Jack Tame and Pippa”
Ergh, that’s not what has has said “should” happen, it is predicted what “will” happen given TVNZ have made a choice to dump the Close Up format.
People like yourself Dan have contributed to the decline of current affairs with your lack of ability to comprehend what is presented in front of you correctly.
Cactus Kate has got it right Dan. I was not advocating those reporters to front the show, I was asked who I thought TVNZ would put into the job and so I nominated those likely candidates.
BTW there was not a “staggering decline in ratings on ONE News during my time, for while they actually rose but then resumed the slow downwards track that is still around today.
I canned Assignment because management imposed budget cuts and, frankly, some of its staff had reached their ‘use by’ date.
Judging by the bile in your post I assume one of them was you.
Close Up has run “its” (that OK, Monty?) course, as with ‘The Grinning Bear’, who’s had more than a fair run. I can only take so much joviality, affability and eager-to-please happiness.
Jack Tane’s, hardly, a credible alternative to host a current affairs programme (with any pretence to having grunt). Try as he may, he has the mien of an amiable fresh-cut college kid; he lacks the gravitas to impart depth and the attendant intellect and experience of a seasoned reporter. He’s a bit too earnest in his style; he needs another 10 years — or so — before I take him, seriously.
Groan and hand-wring all you like, but TVNZ’s current affairs is reinventing itself in the guise of ‘American Idol’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’ et al. Where preening hosts parlay their brand of artifice as in-depth news.
Step on up, Pippa and Paul.
Tvnz are out of touch completely employing that Dweeb Jack who acts and looks like an over-confident arrogant 10 year old pretending to be a grown up. What a joke. They should still have professional reporters – the bbc does not employ clowns like him. What are they doing?
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