KEY POINTS:
Just a couple of months before TV3 launches its new breakfast show Sunrise, it's interesting to look back and realise that 10 years have passed since the original Breakfast programme launched on TV One.
These days, breakfast television is part of the fabric of our daily lives. Even
if we choose not to watch it, we know it's there.
But Breakfast really only came about thanks to one man's persistence.
TVNZ's then head of News (there have been a few since) Shaun Brown kept asking why New Zealand was the only developed market in the world without breakfast television.
He met with resistance from various senior executives at the time, mostly because there was no competitive pressure, so no obvious reason to spend the money.
Yet breakfast shows had long been highly popular in other markets. The USA's Today Show, which launched in 1952 and is still running, set the template for news, lifestyle and entertainment that has inspired many breakfast shows around the world.
When the go-ahead for TV One's Breakfast was finally given, the show was carefully designed to follow this basic pattern, with adjustments for the New Zealand lifestyle. The 7am-8am hour would focus more on news, for those heading off to work, while the 8am-9am hour would concentrate on "softer" lifestyle pieces for those staying at home.
Fronting a live two-hour breakfast show requires extremely capable presenters, who are able to shift gears smoothly from interviewing the Minister of Finance to discussing the finer points of pet grooming. Accordingly, experienced broadcasters Mike Hosking and Susan Wood were chosen as the first anchor team.
Breakfast's success even in the first few months was obvious. In those heady days when TV One bestrode the New Zealand media world like a colossus, the channel could count on a loyal audience and an uncontested timeslot. So Breakfast had the unusual luxury of being able to find its feet without worrying about a quick cancellation.
Financially, the show was always designed to be profitable because of its ability to leverage off the newsroom's existing infrastructure, and because News wouldn't have been allowed to launch it otherwise. The extra costs mainly centred around the additional people required to staff the show.
TV3, however, is not generally known for being inclined to take on extra costs.
In addition, TV3 has an even greater requirement than TVNZ for every decision to be profitable, since TVNZ can always call on its public service aspect to justify news investment.
So why is TV3 bothering with Sunrise at all?
Clearly TV3 feels ready to compete against TV One on One's own terms; and perhaps this is the most significant aspect of this venture. It is the sign of a channel which has moved from being a plucky little upstart, to being a channel with a solid day-long, week-round news presence.
The move is beautifully timed to follow immediately after the Rugby World Cup. Viewers lured into watching the morning matches on 3 will be bombarded with promos for Sunrise, while Breakfast will have lost ground during this time.
The timing has also taken into account recent downsizing at TVNZ, which has made staff with considerable experience in breakfast television suddenly available to TV3. TV3 director of News and Current Affairs Mark Jennings is quoted as saying of the decision to launch Sunrise: "We try to take advantage of TVNZ's problems, I suppose." Certainly having immediate access to an experienced production team will make it a lot easier for TV3 to get the show up and running.
Campbell Live was launched in a similar way, when Paul Holmes' departure from TVNZ had left a timeslot apparently up for grabs. Starting a competing current affairs show in the 7pm timeslot was an aggressive, head-to-head move against TV One, which TV3 has stuck with despite Campbell Live's viewership generally failing to equal the show's high media profile.
Historically TV3 has shown a level of bullishness and persistence which has served them well. CanWest's willingness to weather long periods of so-so ratings for news product has more than paid off for 3 in the past, with both 3News and Nightline now performing very strongly. It remains to be seen whether TV3 will be able to be as committed to the long term approach under new ownership.
Still, a popular breakfast show can set up a channel's ownership of the whole day. It shows your viewers that you are there whenever they need you, all day long. It reinforces loyalty to the channel and the news service, while offering programmers the chance to promote shows and stars that are important to the network.
The success you hope for is driven to a large part by the appeal of the presenters.
Good breakfast presenters need brains, warmth and charm - and iron stamina, thanks to the ridiculously early start required.. (The Breakfast team has already been at work for several hours before most of us have headed groggily for the cereal box.)
The right presenting team is crucial to the success of the show.
After all, you are letting these people into your homes, in a far more intrusive way than radio, which has always known the importance of charismatic and congenial breakfast hosts.
Over the years, TV One's Breakfast presenting team has ranged from the journalistic one-two punch of Mike Hosking and Susan Wood to the off-the-wall charm of Mike and Kate Hawkesby to the odd couple pairing of Paul Henry and Kay Gregory.
I mean no disrespect to either Paul or Kay. Both are talented and experienced broadcasters who are great company in the morning, just not, in my view, together. Together, Paul and Kay project a kind of anti-charisma, notable mainly for uncomfortable pauses and awkward body language.
Paul and Kay may be great off-screen chums, whose exasperated eye-rolls are just affectionate teasing. But I for one don't believe it.
Personally, I watch Breakfast partly to see whether this will be the day that Kay gives in to her inner voices, and starts beating Paul around the head with a microphone stand.
Shows aren't just about presenters, though; there's the right mix of content to consider as well.
Mark Jennings of TV3 said he wanted viewers not only to be informed, but also to start the day with a smile on their face, which suggests that TV3 will follow the looser and more accessible style of programming they have made their trademark.
Morning shows need to adjust to a different kind of viewer behaviour than most programmers are used to. In the evening, we hope that viewers are glued to the screen, intent on our offerings of dramas, comedies, documentaries and Pop's Ultimate Star. In the morning, however, our audience is dashing back and forth as they get ready for work, with television a backdrop to their morning routine, so the shows are structured in bite-size chunks, with a degree of repetition you would not have in primetime.
Yet even if Sunrise gets the mix right, gets a great presenting team and manages to increase 3's audience share in that time slot, will it really be worth it?
Historically, Breakfast has generally been profitable for TV One when there has been no direct competition.
TV3 will be hoping there is enough advertising revenue to go around.
Should Sunrise be able to topple Breakfast, it's not just about bragging rights, nor is it just about a single slot in the morning. It's about the things that really matter in television: audiences and money.
The launch of Sunrise together with a new Midday show means that for every news bulletin TV One produces, there is now an equivalent on TV3. So next time there is a news story that shakes the world - a tsunami or a 9/11 - it will be covered in as many regularly scheduled news bulletins on 3 as it will be on One.
But that's not the only game in town. Depending on their inclinations, viewers can now also choose to get their news from Prime News's bulletin at 5.30pm, or from round the clock coverage on Sky News NZ, CNN, BBC World or Fox News.
New Zealand is historically a news-hungry nation, and now we have more ways than ever to sate our appetite.
In a market where television audiences are splintering rapidly, networks are all competing for smaller slices of an ever-shrinking pie.
In this context, the launch of Sunrise could be yet another blow to knock the tottering goliath of One News off its hill.
A compelling new book about Australian television, Who Killed Channel 9?, describes how perennial underdog Channel Seven made its first ratings inroads into the seemingly unassailable Nine with a breakfast show called, coincidentally enough, Sunrise. Sound familiar?
I bet Jennings has heard of it.
