Bridge moves to fill the 7pm gap
Is it a sharp turn? Three’s AM host takes on a new project as the current affairs slot goes back to a hard- edged format
Anew interview- based show, hosted by Ryan Bridge, will move into Three’s 7pm weekday slot early next year following the demise of The Project — a bold move by Warner Bros. Discovery to return to a harder- edged style of current affairs in primetime.
Bridge, 36, who hosts AM each weekday morning, will switch to the other end of the day, as Three returns to a less expensive but harder format, focused on one- to- one interviews.
Newshub political reporter Lloyd Burr will replace him on AM,
alongside Melissa Chan- Green.
“I’m bloody excited,” Bridge told Media Insider in an exclusive interview.
“It’s very, very exciting.”
The name of the 7pm show has yet to be announced but Bridge will be the sole host, reminiscent of the days of Campbell Live, Holmes and Close Up.
It is an audacious move by Three which has run the more relaxed but expensive format of The Project for six years.
The Project — which finished last week — had about 24 staff including hosts Jesse Mulligan, Kanoa Lloyd, Jeremy Corbett, and a revolving roster of other stars.
The company also paid a hefty international licensing fee for the use of The Project brand. Its axing has given Three a blank canvas upon which to build the new 7pm show, free of any contractual obligations.
In returning to a harder- edged show, Three will be banking on viewers wanting 90 minutes of news in primetime.
Like The Project, TVNZ’s Seven Sharp at 7pm is a mixture of lifestyle and softer, human- interest stories.
“It’s different from what has come before in that it’s going to be much harder, I think, in its approach,” says Bridge.
“It’s more news- focused and [ with an] emphasis on live.
“[ That’s] something that I definitely have a preference for.
“Obviously, you have to do some pre- record stuff, but I just love being live on telly — that’s what I love doing in the morning.
“A return to that style of interviewing at 7pm is the goal and I guess the big get for us will be that big daily news interview.
“Whatever is the most important or the most interesting interview of the day will be what we’re aiming to put up front.”
The show will start in the new year — an official date has yet to be announced.
Bridge has been at AM for the past two years, waking up between 2.30am and 3am each weekday, and working alongside Chan- Green.
Three also announced today that Burr will replace Bridge on AM.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a front- row seat to many news events over the past 13 years — but the seat I’m looking forward to the most is the one on AM,” says Burr.
“I’m excited to join such a brilliant, dynamic team and I couldn’t think of anyone better to share the couch with than Mel.”
Bridge has a strong news background, starting his career as a Radio Live news reporter in Auckland before moving to the parliamentary press gallery.
He then ventured on an OE, through South and Central America, and eventually worked in Beijing, for Chinese state media.
“That was a really interesting experience. It’s a very different country to New Zealand in terms of media freedom.
“It opened my mind to the way that things are done overseas and made me appreciate even more what we have at home and how lucky we are.”
While working on a piece for TV3’ s Story, then TV3 news boss Mark Jennings offered him a fulltime role.
More recently, on the AM show, he has built a reputation as a hard- edged interviewer, especially with politicians.
“I’ve always been a curious person, but I think the fun thing about news is you get the opportunity to ask whatever you like and have the great privilege of [ interviewing] people who are making the decisions or people who need to be held accountable.
“I think there’s nothing quite like a live interview to get that job done.
“That’s really what I’m most excited about — just the opportunity to be able to do that at a time of the day when it’s currently not really being done and where I can sleep in a little bit more!”
Bridge says he’s been inspired by a wide range of interviewers in the past including Mary Wilson, Lisa Owen, Paul Henry and even Graham Norton.
“My grandma always used to say, ‘ Don’t be afraid to be yourself ’.
“I like to laugh at myself and there are also a myriad of amazing characters around the country. I think it would be completely remiss to have a show at seven and not include them.
There will definitely be lighter moments in the show. It’s not going to be just straight down the line interview, bang, bang, and not have any levity.”
That comment is backed up by Warner Bros. Discovery news boss Sarah Bristow.
“It’s going to be interview- led and harder- edged.
“There will be discussion about topical stories and issues, but there will also be moments of levity — and we want to drive a live and social conversation with our digital and social audiences too,” says Bristow.
“Ryan consistently shows up on screens with true authenticity, intelligence and his trademark cheeky wit and will lead the show superbly.”
For Bridge, the new role is bittersweet in one sense — saying farewell to Chan- Green and the AM
team. Their last show together will be next Friday.
“I just absolutely love working with her,” he says.
“She’s been so supportive — she’s an absolute sweetheart. I’m going to miss being with her all the time.”
He says Burr, with his own background in the parliamentary press gallery, will be fantastic and he and Chan- Green will make a great team.
“There will probably be tears,” he said of his pending departure.
As he announced his departure on air shortly after 7am yesterday, he paid tribute to viewers, Chan- Green and his partner.
“All I can say is thank you.
“I should thank my partner as well because he’s long- suffering and you know what it’s like when you do these hours, you’re just mingy in the afternoon, not just the afternoon, sometimes from the morning, there’s no two ways about it.
“He has just been amazing for me.”
RNZ’s puzzling new strategy
RNZ is developing “a new digital experience” targeting 30- to 49- yearolds — putting it on a likely collision course with commercial media companies in a new strategy that appears to contradict earlier promises about how it would spend a big $ 25 million annual boost in public money.
An internal RNZ document obtained by Media Insider says the new digital experience — the broadcaster is planning a special mobile app with a new brand name and an extension of its existing website — “is intended to sit somewhere between Facebook . . . and Stuff ”.
But, says the document, it would offer “additional value by being free of advertising, which enables a calmer and less ‘ busy’ experience with none of the toxicity present in social media comments”.
RNZ went to market last week to find a technology partner to help build the digital experience. A design of how the app could look features in the document obtained by Media Insider.
The new strategy threatens to shift an already well- established 30- to 49- year- old audience group away from the likes of the NZ Herald, Stuff, Newshub, 1 News and The Spinoff websites and apps, therefore undermining those companies’ own advertising revenues at a time when most commercial media companies are facing serious financial headwinds.
The other, possibly bigger risk is a waste of taxpayer money, with RNZ investing in an audience segment that is already saturated with options, including RNZ’s own existing website and app.
In my opinion, it is a puzzling, provocative and problematic strategy from the public broadcaster.
It also arguably flies in the face of earlier promises by RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson that the $ 25m funding boost delivered by the previous Labour Government earlier this year would not be used to simply replicate what commercial companies were already doing.
“I’ve actually slowed down our planning,” Thompson said in September.
“I think the key thing is to not just look at the additional money but look at all of the money and have a thoughtful strategy. Our big challenge is to deliver more against our charter. It’s not to be carnivorous around other people’s audience or to grow for the sake of it. We have to actually deliver to the charter.”
The document obtained by Media Insider — titled Digital Experience Strategy — was drawn up by an outside digital agency last month.
It recommends “three key areas of change”:
● Be where younger audiences are: “Bolster the social media team with more resources and develop strategies for how to use specific social platforms to reach specific audiences”;
● Provide a new digital experience that younger audiences expect: “Introduce a new experience that provides the 30 to
49- year- old audience with a quick and easy way to stay up- to- date and ‘ in the know’ by scrolling through shorter, fully formed bits of content”;
● Enhance the experience for existing audiences: “Improve the RNZ website to enable people to better find, discover and consume new content and listen to audio. Maintain the existing mobile app”.
The RNZ document says:
“Through research and testing a prototype, it was determined that the new digital experience needs to be . . . familiar, quick and easy to use; be up to date; be succinct ( short content with no clickbait); contain a variety of stories and different content formats; be trusted; and offer a way for people to customise the content and media formats they see.”
In my opinion, the recommendations could easily have been written a decade ago, while the design prototype of the “digital experience” is fine but nothing out of the ordinary.
While the stated principles include trusted content with no clickbait, headlines on the prototype include: “Best signs at the teachers’ strike”; “Why is Taylor Swift skipping NZ on her world tour”; and a video titled “Is it love at first hi- vis”.
Meanwhile, the description of 30to 49- year- olds as “younger audiences” will be flattering to those in that group — especially those in their late 40s.
In reality, that age group is already extremely well- served by commercial media, many of whom are also focusing on targeting a truly underserved youth market — the 15- to
24- year- olds.
NZME this year launched its socialplatform- led brand What the Actual; Stuff has brought in new snackable vertical video content on its main website; and since 2017, TVNZ has had Re:, its youth- focused news platform.
Last year, an in- depth piece of NZ on Air research found: “Each day less than one in three 15- 24- year- olds watch TV, local on- demand sites or listen to the radio — media where they will have a better opportunity to engage with NZ content.
“Instead, they are predominantly on social media, overseas online video sites, SVOD and playing online games.”
So why isn’t RNZ training its news sights on that under- served age group, rather than 30- 49- year- olds?
To be fair, RNZ has had a rocky time in previous attempts to target youth audiences.
From 2013 to 2018 it operated The Wireless as a separate website targeting 18- to 30- year- olds but this folded into the main RNZ website and eventually stopped after reportedly failing to make significant inroads.
In 2020, there was public outrage — and eventually a big backdown — when RNZ proposed moving Concert FM on to AM, freeing up FM for a new youth music brand.
RNZ launched Tahi as a digital audio play in late 2021, but this is focused on music and culture, rather than news.
In a separate request for proposal ( RFP) document, RNZ is seeking a technology partner to help it develop the new digital experience, which will be “mobile- focused”; “built as a web experience ( accessed via rnz. co. nz)”; and “extended to a mobile application”.
The RFP says RNZ’s digital audience has tended to accumulate around its traditional audience base — “typically those 40 years old or older across all platforms”.
It also reveals that the RNZ executive has signed off on the recommended approach.
“We created a basic prototype of the new experience which we tested through qualitative and quantitative audience research.
The research found interest in the proposed experience that coalesced around a target audience of 30 to 49- year- olds and confirmed some of the features an experience might need for it to be engaging.”
The RFP says RNZ is part- way through designing the new- look experience which will also come up with “a name and related branding for the experience”.
The RFP sets a deadline for proposals in mid- January.
The contract is expected to start in February or March, working through to September.
RNZ did not answer specific questions about the new strategy; instead, it gave a general response.
“We do not believe that there are any New Zealanders who shouldn’t have the opportunity to access public media and we will continue to create new content and improve our platforms to reach more people,” said a spokeswoman.
She said RNZ worked to the obligations set out by its charter.
“The charter says RNZ should have services which are innovative and engaging. And what RNZ offers via these will be distinctively RNZ public media content.”
She highlighted several aspects of the charter requirements, including that RNZ be “predominantly and distinctively of New Zealand”; “that we inform, entertain, and enlighten the people of New Zealand, and provide programmes which balance special interest with those of wide appeal, recognising the interests of all age groups”; and that also, “we take advantage of the most effective means of delivery.”
The charter also states, as its first key point, that the public company’s purpose is to serve the public interest.
With many commercial media companies already covering the travails of Taylor Swift and why she can’t make it to New Zealand, it’s puzzling to know why RNZ feels the need to chase the same stories and audiences as public interest pieces.
TVNZ star switches to Sky
TVNZ sports broadcaster Kimberlee Downs is joining Sky.
She will start in February as a presenter and reporter and Sky says it “can’t wait” to welcome her.
“Kimberlee will contribute to our rugby coverage in particular, and given her experience and talents, is likely to feature in our Paris 2024 Olympic coverage and other major events and sports,” says Sky chief corporate affairs officer Chris Major.
“As a talented female broadcaster with a bright future, Kimberlee joins a formidable team of women on air at Sky, helping to fulfil our commitment to helping women and girls ‘ See the Possible’ in sport broadcasting, both in front of and behind the camera.
“That team includes Kirstie Stanway, Laura McGoldrick, Rikki Swannell, Storm Purvis, Courtney Tairi, Honey Hireme- Smiler, Ravinder Hunia, Taylah Johnson, Anna Wilcox and Taylor Curtis.”
Marriage with Madison
The NZ Herald’s very own Markets with Madison host Madison Reidy has announced her engagement to Paralympics gold medalist and businessman Liam Malone. The pair first met a decade ago — they can’t specifically remember the event — but went their separate ways and reconnected a little over two years ago.
“He asked me on a coffee date after one of the lockdowns lifted. We debated inflation and Reserve Bank monetary policy the entire time.
“Our relationship is the only good thing to come from inflation!” says Reidy.
When they first started dating, they spent a week in Hahei in the Coromandel. “It quickly became our favourite place.
“We went back last weekend for some much- needed zen.
“When we arrived, we took our two dogs to the beach for what I thought was a Friday evening walk, but Liam had other ideas. We had the beach to ourselves and he proposed!
“We celebrated with champagne on a picnic table at the Hahei campground — as casual as it gets, it was perfect.”
I’ve always been a curious person, but I think the fun thing about news is you get the opportunity to ask whatever you like and have the great privilege of [ interviewing] people who are making the decisions or people who need to be held accountable.
Ryan Bridge