Those were our presenters tonight

When Paul Holmes marched off to Prime Television, Ross McKay, a 59-year-old freelance writer from Birkenhead, went right on over with him.

His reasons were simple. Susan Wood is "a mental lightweight" and of his thoughts on John Campbell, the only printable one is "trivial, and I'm trying to be nice here".

"Paul Holmes is a wit, which I find sadly lacking in the other two versions. Sometimes he'll do stories I can't be bothered with but he handles things with a wit."

McKay has few viewing allies. When Holmes left TVNZ, head of news and current affairs Bill Ralston announced the days of big current affairs personality were over.

Susan Wood would take over from Holmes and Close Up's point of difference would be its "ensemble cast".

Holmes scoffed on his Newstalk ZB show. "TVNZ say that because they don't have any personality left. The entire industry is laughing at them. Personality is everything in broadcasting. Personality. It's a people business."

Six months later and the dust has settled, and with it the ratings. Ralston is sticking to his line.

It might be fighting for turf in the young, urban demographics that Campbell Live is plundering, but the no-frills Close Up still has the lion's share of the viewers. It draws about 600,000, fewer than in Holmes' heyday, when it had a monopoly, but still healthier than anyone else.

Holmes, with all that personality, has pulled in fewer viewers than the Hogan's Heroes show it replaced and has since been moved to 6pm.

While he does not discount the polling power of a personality on television, Ralston says the Holmes experience has exploded long-held beliefs about how strong that power is.

"My assessment would be that the marketplace has changed quite a lot in the last 12 months. Certainly my assessment of the worth of some presenters is different than it was."

Rivals dismiss Ralston's stance as spin. TV3's news and current affairs boss Mark Jennings claims Ralston is being disingenuous and doubts he believes his own words.

Jennings points to the billboards with Wood in the forefront and the on-air ads of Wood in the studio.

TV3's John Campbell weighs in: "If TVNZ had a personality they felt would really work for them, I'm sure they would be making the most of it. When you have a personality to sell you sell the personality. When you don't have a personality to sell, you sell the team and you say 'hey, we've turned our back on personality'.

"So I don't know if the death of personality at TVNZ is a reality or a marketing rhetoric."

Ask Ralston if he would be reeling off the "less personality" line had he managed to lure Campbell over and he prevaricates. "That's just too hypothetical to answer."

A check of the nation's couches reveals that some people want a bit of chutzpah on their box. Helen Baxter, 31, never watched current affairs before Campbell Live. Her choice is partly based on content, and on the theme-based approach, with an increasingly blatant liberal tang, attractive to young city dwellers. But the host is a crucial part.

"I can't stand Paul Holmes. He hectors and he's very old-school. I find Close Up tends to appeal to middle New Zealand and people in their 60s. I'm a huge Campbell fan."

It is this connection with viewers that has commentators sceptical about Ralston's theory. They attribute Close Up's success less to the pared-back personality approach and more to viewer habits.

Holmes' theory is that after a certain amount of time, Pavlov's dog set in. Judy Bailey signs off with "po Marie" (good night) and viewers stay put, simply because they've watched the 7pm show for decades.

Despite his hot air at the time, Holmes now says he never expected his audience to follow him.

"I had no idea of what to expect, but I never had any delusions that an audience was going to follow me, because I know in broadcasting that sense of habit or inertia is a hugely powerful force.

"If you build a habit of people being there at a certain time, it's very hard to break that habit."

Point out to Ralston that in his own days on telly - his slot on TV3 News, Backchat, and even his columns - he very much relied on personality and he shrugs.

"Different times. People are smarter now and more media savvy," he says, pointing overseas to countries such as Australia, where stars are less dominant.

Ralston says TVNZ does have shows that people tune in to just for the host, such as Eye to Eye with Willie Jackson, who gets "stuck into people, he rarks them up, he gets the best out of them", and Kim Hill.

But such shows are television snacks, not the staple nightly meal.

"The presenter is there as a brand, I suppose, so people know what programme you're talking about. That is why we advertise using the presenter, but in the end the primary concentration is on the stories."

Both Campbell and Prime CEO Chris Taylor say TVNZ's history as the monopoly broadcaster until 1989 has given it a 20-year head-start. An entire generation of New Zealanders has been trained to watch only TVNZ. TV3 and Prime are left to fight over the younger viewers, whom Taylor says are loyal to programmes rather than networks.

Campbell says in the "Wild West" of deregulation holding back on the personality at TV3 is not an option.

"If we didn't offer something different, slightly more cheek, slightly more naughtiness, slightly more irreverence, if all we did was replicate what TV One did, we would die."

Ralston gets support from a 2001 study by Bond University for the Australian Broadcasting Association. It found just 2 per cent of the Australian audience surveyed chose to watch a show because of the presenter. Fifteen per cent said it was the content of the show or outlet and the stories it covered and 6.5 per cent attributed it to habit.

But media observers warn networks not to dismiss personality.

Senior lecturer in communications at Unitec Peter Thompson - referring to work by Auckland University political studies lecturer Joe Atkinson - says commercial pressures mean broadcasters abandon their familiar faces at peril because of the "para-social relationship" the audience has with presenters.

"It's almost an imaginary relationship that has emotional consequences - we see the person on television almost as a friend.

"I don't know how far you can push that, but it has been found to be a factor, for example, when One News dropped Richard Long and brought in John Hawkesby.

"There was a huge drop in audience, not because Hawkesby lacked news talents but because, for the viewers, there was almost an imaginary relationship between Richard and Judy.

"They were a couple, and when Hawkesby came in it was almost as if Judy had jilted poor old Richard."

Paul Norris, the head of the Christchurch Broadcasting School who as TVNZ director of news and current affairs signed Holmes on in 1989, says Holmes' experience has shown the audience will not necessarily follow the host, but other factors are also at work, including the network's status and market share, the TVNZ brand and viewer loyalty.

"Susan is a personality as well. The show is still constructed around that host. Similarly, Campbell Live would be nothing without John Campbell. The attractiveness of those programmes is in the host and it would be a mistake to downplay the role of that host."

Jim Tully, head of Canterbury University's school of political science and communications, says Holmes' demise is partly a result of him having been around so long.

"After some time any personality is going to lose appeal and start to wane. But Campbell's personality has been a factor in the way his show has gained traction. "

Campbell doesn't believe it's a case of deciding of whether to be or not to be a personality.

"Someone, somewhere, decided on behalf of all viewers that there was a right way to do this for all viewers. And the assumption on behalf of all viewers was that all viewers were the same.

"But it's not a one-size-fits-all journalism and I think it's possible that everyone is right, that personality will work for some audiences and won't work for other audiences, and that this is a part of the fragmentation of the market."