Duncan Greive: Prime News tags along with big brother

Wayne Hay and Janika ter Ellen are charged with reading the new Prime News bulletins.

Opinion

Let’s hope Prime News doesn’t become light reskin of TV3’s bulletin, writes Duncan Greive.

Prime has long been the neglected stepchild of New Zealand's free-to-air television family. Peers TVNZ and MediaWorks ignore it, and its parent (company) Sky doesn't quite know what to do with it. It showers spending on Sports, Movies and SoHo while Prime languishes, still in SD, with the shows no one else wanted and second-hand sports coverage buried deep in the night.

Even the poetry it inspires is disappointed: "Your logo/ Up in the right-hand corner/ It could not be/ Any more annoyinger", a viewer wrote to the TV Guide recently.

The big thing separating Prime from the likes of Choice TV was Prime News. A nightly bulletin shows you're a serious channel with aspirations for the nation. At a half hour, its news has always been a little thin - but better that than the over-stuffed hours trotted out by One and TV3. To be fair, New Zealand only manufactures about 45 minutes of news a day, so the networks can't win.

On March 1, Prime quietly gave away its membership of the news club. All 15 staff were made redundant, and erstwhile competitor MediaWorks took over production of Prime News. I settled in to watch the new programme to get a sense of what has changed, and whether it was distinguishable from TV3's product, airing a half hour later from a studio nearby.

The first thing to note is that while Eric Young and Charlotte Bellis have gone, the admirable commitment to solo newsreaders remains. It turns out just one person can read all the news! Weekends are fronted by Janika ter Ellen, while Wayne Hay handles the working week. Ter Ellen was last seen struggling valiantly to hold position against a tidal wave of innuendo issuing forth from Paul Henry. Hay is a former Al Jazeera correspondent and is earnest to the point of dryness - but if the worst thing you can say about a guy is that he takes the news seriously then things are probably fine.

On Sunday it opened with a story on the Breakers. It's tough for a minority sport to lead the news, but that drink-spillingly great finish from Ibekwe was not to be denied.

Next came Labour leader Andrew Little's torturous non-endorsement of Winston Peters. An important story on an issue which might change the dynamic of this Government.

You couldn't argue with the news values, but the same pair of stories, in the same order, opened TV3's news too. Monday saw a similar pattern - an identical opening trio of stories repeated in a slightly tweaked order.

One News served as a control group. On Sunday it led with Little, but followed with a soft news sob story about how rural pubs are struggling because we're not allowed to drink drive anymore. Cry me a river of blood, pubs. Monday saw One open with a strong exclusive about a child murderer Elizabeth Healy breaking parole by babysitting children.

3News is no doubt stressed by the strain of Paul Henry's looming multi-platform monster, and these are very early days for the new arrangement. But it would be nice to think that the outsourcing of Prime's news won't just mean a light reskin of existing 3News work.

The thing which sat idling in my mind the whole time was what might have been.

Because Prime is not without its charms. Namely The Crowd Goes Wild - a smart, satirical look at a sporting culture which desperately needs deflating.

It's a bummer no one thought to rethink the whole idea of a nightly bulletin in favour of bringing the CGW's effervescent approach to our increasingly bizarre political news - to shoot for appointment viewing over a comfortable third place.

• Duncan Greive is the editor of New Zealand TV website The Spinoff