The demise of long-form current affairs show Sunday last year was “a horrifying time” to be a journalist, former host Miriama Kamo says.
The experienced broadcaster lost the role she had held for more than two decades when Sunday was taken off air in May 2024– a shock ending to a beloved programme that coincided with other major ruptures in New Zealand’s media industry.
“Sunday was still rating well, it was still making money, so we fought hard for it. What is a heartbreak for me is watching the pillars of our industry falling over,” she told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
“Sunday fell over at a time where TV3 got rid of its news, and Fair Go [was axed] – there were just so many things going on at the same time. It was a pretty horrifying time as a journalist.”
That said, Kamo told Cowan the overwhelming emotion she felt was thankfulness, more than grief.
“I had grief for the institution of Sunday and what it represented for the country, for our industry, for my co-workers and for people who loved it – most importantly for our audience,” she recalls.
“But for myself, I didn’t have a deep grief. I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna, but I went to gratitude rather than grief and my gratitude was that I got to do this amazing job for 22 years.
“That’s amazing. How lucky am I? I still think that I just can’t believe how lucky I was to do that job for so long. And that’s still where my deepest feelings lie: in gratitude.”
Kamo says part of what made the loss of Sunday easier was a “deliberate strategy” to leave TVNZ as a salaried employee only two or three years into her work there.
“When I looked around as a very young journalist, at older journalists and people in my industry that moved on and struggled, I thought I don’t want that,” she told Real Life.
“I became a contractor and that provided me with just enough separation so that I never became institutionalised. I never felt like ‘I am Miriama Kamo and this is my identity – I am X Y Z’.
“That strategy paid off because I was able to extricate myself in a whole state and feeling gratitude for what I got to do.”
Since leaving Sunday, Kamo has simply defined herself as a storyteller.
Miriama Kamo and the Sunday team on the last edition of Sunday on TV1 in May 2024. Photo / TVNZ
She currently presents alongside Scotty Morrison on TVNZ’s Māori current affairs show Marae – a programme she describes as “such a taonga” – and continues to MC events and take on other speaking engagements.
After Sunday was taken off air, Kamo also co-founded two production companies – Herd Productions, offering video content production, media training, motion graphics and event coverage services; and Putiputi Productions, a film production company.
“We get to exercise our storytelling muscle through that,” she told Cowan. “Herd in particular is really exciting, because I get to work with my Sunday colleagues and we are working hard across a lot of different storytelling platforms and excited about those.”
One of those involves a trip to Antarctica alongside Dr Rangi Mātāmua, ONZM, the man who led the push for Matariki to be recognised as a public holiday.
“We’re going in winter, so there’s no guarantee we’ll actually make it!” Kamo said.
“Rangi, he’s a mate of mine, [and] he said ‘I’m going to Antarctica. I’m going to go and study the stars from down there. I want to understand what it’s like to establish a sense of place, to transport mātauranga Māori into an unknown environment, as our tūpuna did when they arrived in Aotearoa’.
“And so I said ‘Well, I’d love to come too, we’ll do a documentary’. So we’re going to follow him to Antarctica to do that.”
Alongside her presenting and production work, Kamo has also been busy writing children’s books, including several about Matariki, in which an environmental message looms large.
“I’m very concerned about the challenges that our taiao, our environment, faces, and so have been advocating for more connection for people and planet,” she said.
Miriama Kamo presenting the last edition of Sunday in 2024. Photo / TVNZ
“The books are a way to hopefully get kids interested in the taiao – so making it fun, making it a little bit magical, getting them to relate to all things Māori. But on a bigger scale, getting them to relate to the planet as a whole.”
This mission has been informed by her experience of “crippling climate anxiety” about 10 years ago, which had left her regularly waking with a thumping heart and feeling helpless.
That experience has since changed: “I have developed since then this notion that you don’t get anxious, you get active – and the minute I started doing that is when my anxiety lifted.”
“So I don’t have climate anxiety [any more]. I am concerned but not anxious, and that means I can stay engaged in the kaupapa.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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