Prime-time current affairs: it's a model as old as free-to-air television, here and overseas. The magazine-style, half-hour format brings the chance to grill newsmakers on the big story of the day, to delve deeper behind the news and to bring on warm fuzzies about ourselves with human interest stories.
Traditionally anchored by a host with the brain of a wide-screen TV leavened with a common touch, we've seen few better practitioners than TV3's John Campbell. Dapper-suited Campbell's commitment to fair-minded, advocacy journalism grounded in "real" news has won legions of admirers, but not enough, it seems, to satisfy the bean counters.
Does the axe hovering over Campbell Live simply point to the financial imperatives facing TV3-parent MediaWorks or reflect a more seismic shift in the way audiences are watching free-to-air TV? In the digital era - where viewers choose not only what but when they watch, and where the day's "news" is instantly online - is current affairs as practised by Campbell Live a prime-time dinosaur?
The ratings that dictate where advertising dollars flow tell part of the story. When TV One pulled the plug on its traditional-format Close Up in 2013 for fluffy replacement Seven Sharp, it should have been the dambreaker that delivered thousands more "serious newsers" across to TV3.