Sharp choices ahead for TVNZ as presenters leave

If there were no reasons other than long hours and the needs of their respective families and children, then well done Toni Street and Mike Hosking for hanging up your

Seven Sharp buckets and spades.

Both hosts have lucrative and time-consuming other gigs, especially Hosking with his earlymorning Newstalk ZB radio show. Street is going to be hosting TVNZ’s Commonwealth Games coverage, and the state broadcaster will be anxious to keep New Zealand’s most likeable girl-next-door heavily booked up till she’s a little old lady, when she will probably still have cutthrough.

Popular New Zealand TV media hosts have too long been in the habit of career over-exposure, being everywhere at once and sucking all the oxygen up, preventing other talent coming through and having a go.

Eventually this overfamiliarity breeds viewer contempt. But the shelf-life of a television host can be brutally brief, making the star feel the greedy need to make hay while the sun shines to take all multiple offers coming their way.

Street and Hosking managed to turn Seven Sharp around at a time when confused viewers were tuning into to watch a non-stop spin cycle of rapidly changing tryout hosts, till there was almost noone left on the TVNZ bench.

With his right-wing rants, Hosking was quickly identified by the left as National’s not-so-secret MP. Hosking’s squirm-inducing sign-off editorials defending the Government were savagely mocked by social media, while his pompous persona was pilloried in a weekend newspaper column.

Street played amused handler to Hosking like an expert air hostess managing a particularly obstreperous passenger acting up in first class. With his clown suit of messed-up hair, tragic ripped jeans, and his quirk of licking one finger to turn the next page, Street showed him the therapeutic light of her bubble.

He in turn pulled her pigtails and they rubbed along together with what appeared to be affectionate familial contempt, but hard news it wasn’t. Older audiences feeling short-changed by the larf-a-minute, in-house banter turned to Three and were alienated by the generational change going down on The Project.

So what and who will we be ‘‘presented’’ with next year when

Seven Sharp returns? Perhaps the show’s executive producer, Alistair Wilkinson (formerly a TV3 presenter) might have the audacity to go after John Campbell, currently doing drivetime hours on RNZ?

But why would Campbell go there with money being chucked at RNZ and the opportunity of a new TV channel adding to their broadcasting repertoire? He’s got to stick around for some of that. However, change brings with it lots of risk and many noses have been put out of joint in that shop.

(Rumour has it that RNZ might even start Morning Report earlier at 5am, or put up a new standalone show in the 5-6am slot, taking on Newshub’s First@Five with James Coleman.)

When Kim Hill and John Campbell recently got together to do Morning Report many listeners thought it was the dream team. Unfortunately, the audience doesn’t get what it wants when the stars have their own coveted patches to defend – Hill on Saturday morning, and Campbell every weeknight.

For next year’s Seven Sharp, instead of rifling through the back catalogues of Three and TVNZ former stars, or poaching from RNZ, Wilkinson could be utterly fearless and present two new talents. And have the guts to stick with them through the difficult bedding-in days.

It’s a hard ask trying to capture the millennials who have waited so long in the wings they have switched off and got their own groove going on. And to remember the older viewers consigned to the dinosaur dump still sitting to attention in their chairs, desperate for meaningful engagement and real debate.

The country is going through a generational change politically, and a 7pm current affairs show with a relatively new executive producer will be cleansing its palate.

Hopefully in this incarnation, there won’t be so much of the whipped cream desserts in Seven Sharp, but more main courses, something to chew on and ruminate over before our brains are completely diced by distraction.

Popular New Zealand TV media hosts have too long been in the habit of career over-exposure