His co-presenter for the last eight years, Samantha Hayes, is one of those tipped to lead the new bulletin.
“I think if Sam wants to do it, then clearly she’d be very good at it,” McRoberts said. “But at this stage I really don’t know much about it.”
He had been reflecting on his future since Warner Bros Discovery first announced it would close the newsroom in February and it was an easy decision to walk away, he said.
McRoberts had worked in news for 40 years and presented the 6pm for 20 years. It was an all-consuming job and he felt relieved to be retiring.
“When you have this hanging over you, it is quite a weight. Not just the past couple of months but the past 20 years.
“It doesn’t finish when you walk out of the studio. You are always Mike McRoberts from 3News or Newshub. I’m really looking forward to stepping away from that, it’s been such a determining factor of my life.”
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He added: “The sense of owning your own name and your face and what you say is really appealing to me and I’m looking forward to that.”
McRoberts told ZB he did not have another job lined up after July. While he was “open to all options”, he was considering a move away from journalism.
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Asked what he was considering, he said he wanted a meaningful role and had been “on a te reo journey” over the last few years.
“It has been a great source of comfort to me. There is a whakatauki which I love, ‘he punga i mau ai’, and that is ‘the anchor that holds you’. And for many years that anchor was the role with TV3 and my whānau and family. And over the years I’ve added a few more anchors to keep me steady in rough seas and I will be calling on those in the future.”
McRoberts had initially intended to be a lawyer but visited the Radio New Zealand newsroom in Christchurch as a seventh former and was hooked on the “intensity and adrenaline” before the midday bulletin. He got his first job at RNZ in Wellington “and the rest is history”.
It was an unlikely choice of career for a teenager with a stutter, he said.
“If you had told people who knew me one day I’d read the 6pm news, they would have fallen about laughing.”
Four decades later, he is unsure whether he would recommend journalism to young people and is happy that his children had gone on different paths to him.
“I look around and see some of the younger colleagues of mine, just starting off and... really worry for them about the opportunities there are.
“You are constantly worried about whether you’ll have a job at the end of the month, which is not a great place to be.”
After McRoberts steps away in July, he admits he may feel a little lost when 6pm rolls around.
“Even on holiday, at around five to six you start getting a bit of an adrenaline shot, wandering around the house wondering what you’re meant to be doing.
“I will still follow the news. But I’m happy to be passing that baton on now and I’m looking forward to doing something else.”
