McRoberts Mr Nice Guy in TV war

Mike McRoberts believes TVNZ is imitating TV3's approach to news in an attempt to regain lost viewers.

The plan was to blow apart the Mr Nice Guy cover. Behind that perfect six o'clock smile, I would uncover cynicism, sneers and at the very least, a cigarette.

There would be someone who swore blue murder about that bastard Bill Ralston over at TVNZ, who relished long liquid lunches and had pizza stains on the trousers that sit hidden under the 3News anchorman's desk. He would be a little unscrupulous, a tad unsavoury and altogether journalistic.

But on a rainy Mt Eden morning in the midst of the most vicious ratings war New Zealand television has seen, Mike McRoberts is spic and span, smiling and, a little disappointingly, nice.

Twelve months ago, TVNZ news boss Ralston described McRoberts and Hillary Barry's appointments as 3News co-anchors a "cock-up".

TV3 would be "wetting itself", Ralston said, as the ratings dipped in the wake of John Campbell and Carol Hirschfeld's departure.

If only he had known. TVNZ has since imploded, 3News has held its own and Ralston's been left eating his words.

It is evidently not, however, McRoberts' style to help shovel in those words.

"I saw him at a wedding or a function last year and gave him the nod to say like 'we did all right'," McRoberts says, repeating the understated Kiwi male nod he gave across the room. That was that. They haven't really spoken since.

Not that the public abuse didn't hurt.

"It's hard not to take it personally. But that just kind of made us more determined."

McRoberts has more cause than most at TV3 to fight the ratings war. He was poached from TVNZ four years ago to be then-news anchor John Campbell's backup, prompting a bitter battle with the state broadcaster in the employment court.

McRoberts won, departed TVNZ on Easter Thursday 2001 and read the news on TV3 on Good Friday.

Does that old battle make the competition with his old station all the more enjoyable?

"Well, not really. My issue when I left TVNZ was with the management. Well, they've had four or five changes since then. And I still know lot of people at TVNZ who are still really good friends.

"I felt honestly quite disappointed for them with what was happening last year. I can't imagine how miserable it would have been for them," he says.

The misery he is talking about is a year of bloodletting and plummeting ratings at the state broadcaster. Close Up presenter Susan Wood took the station to the employment court over its attempts to dock her pay by $100,000; the end of Judy Bailey's reign; the sudden resignation of chief executive Ian Fraser. That culminated in a parliamentary select committee inquiry which saw more vitriol between Fraser and the company's board as they went head-to-head in a messy public fight.

By the end of last year, One News had lost six percentage points from its overall audience share, while TV3 had gained five.

Now it is One News presenters Simon Dallow and Wendy Petrie's job to steer the state TV ship back on course and claw back some of the all-important younger Auckland viewers for whom 3News is their favourite.

Is McRoberts worried? What does he have to do to stop people reaching for the remote?

"I think the onus is more on them at the moment than us," he says. "Hillary and I get on incredibly well and ... really enjoy each other's company. We've built that up over three or four years." While the focus was on Campbell and Hirschfeld's pairing, McRoberts and Barry snuck into the limelight.

"It just sort of sneaked up on people that gosh, Mike and Hillary are reading the news!"

And quietly, almost so slowly he didn't notice, television's mildest mannered journalist became famous. He was even stalked by a paparazzi photographer last year.

"I was doing the wakawaewae [walking bus] to my son's school, which really annoyed me at the time. It's kind of like 'why did they have to do that?' I thought, apart from my mother, who the hell else in the world would be interested?"

Then the suddenly stern McRoberts melts back into his smile.

"The flipside is that I've had so many people come up to me and say, 'it's so nice that you walk your son to school'."

Though internet bulletin boards are full of McRoberts' female fans who admire "his good manners" and snappy dressing, it's McRoberts' "pleasantness" that is most remarked on.

Does he understand where his nice guy image comes from?

"Well, I think, yeah, I am a nice guy. I think what people see or believe in me is that I am what I am and in that sense that I'm approachable as well ... the good thing is that I've managed to have a reasonably successful career as a news and current affairs journalist and still be a nice guy."

His boss, 3News head Mark Jennings, says McRoberts has a quality that is synonymous with trust. "He has warmth. He is a natural relater to people and he has this humility," he says.

"You have to meet him and talk to him to know what I mean. It's not that he is not confident and strong about what he is doing, he has a humility as well and I think New Zealanders appreciate that about anybody but they particularly like that in high-profile people."

Last year, McRoberts juggled newsreading with a fulltime job reporting and presenting for 60 Minutes and acting as 3News correspondent in hot spots such as Iraq and Gaza.

He tells of how his team broke a signed agreement with the Israeli army to get out of the settlement of Gaza when the soldiers arrived to remove settlers.

When other media left, including TVNZ, McRoberts and his team bribed a local and hid in a school house, eating frozen pizza found in an abandoned supermarket and heated with some aromatherapy candles.

"We were inside the settlement getting the most amazing pictures of soldiers throwing out Israeli citizens. They went all around the world."

McRoberts turns 40 this year. He and wife Paula Penfold, who he works with on 60 Minutes, are building a house and he is training for the New York Marathon. Life's good.

He will be keeping an eye on Petrie and Dallow and trying to hold on to the viewers he and Barry have earned. How does he think they are doing?

"I see what they're doing with the bulletin, what they're trying to do. It looks very similar to ours now," he laughs. "I guess imitation is the best form of flattery."

Ratings wise, says McRoberts, the new TVNZ readers have made little impression.

"Which will be a concern over there because they've fired all the guns and nothing's really happened," he says.

Does he think they might be wetting themselves? He laughs. "Well, that's the difference between Ralston and I - I would never say that."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY