TV3's new soap: NZ's Summer Bay revealed

Mount Maunganui. Photo / Getty

TV3 bosses hope Trinity Point will be a must-visit destination for their viewers.

The Herald on Sunday can reveal the much-vaunted new soap - which will try to replicate Home and Away's hugely successful Summer Bay locale - will share its name with a luxury lakeside estate in New South Wales, a shopping mall in Washington and a remote cape in Alaska.

The show will be based around a beach community, will screen up to four nights a week, and will require $10 million of funding.

It is understood the plot will revolve around a group of families living at a fictional seaside resort north of Auckland.

"Trinity Point is a small town that is an amalgamation of three or four different Auckland communities," a TV insider said.

"It is the sort of pristine place that families will love and older people would like to retire to.

"However, the imagined oasis will be tested when it comes under threat from an external source."

Trisha Dunleavy, senior media studies lecturer at Victoria University, believed if Trinity Point gets the green light it could be in for a bumpy ride if it screened in the same 5.30pm slot as TV2 hit Home and Away.

"A new Kiwi soap would be great for the industry as it would provide jobs and be a breeding ground for acting talent, like Shortland Street has done," she said.

"However, it would be going after the same demographic as Home and Away. The endeavour would be fraught with risk and by no means is it a done deal it would work.

"In the UK, rival broadcasters don't put popular soaps like Coronation Street and EastEnders up against each other in the same time slot as common sense dictates this would be folly."

New Zealand on Air confirmed last week it had received an application from MediaWorks for the soap and a funding decision would be made on December 11.

NZ on Air has $15.5 million available in funding until June next year but 41 applications seeking $21 million have been submitted for next month's funding round alone.

In recent weeks MediaWorks announced it would not renew the much-criticised local version of British cooking hit Come Dine With Me and confirmed X Factor NZ and MasterChef NZ were off the TV3 rosters next year, too.

Dancing with the Stars is also believed to be facing the axe in 2016.