KEY POINTS:
Newsreader Mike McRoberts will anchor the first week of TV3's World Cup coverage from France and will return to host the play-off weeks of the tournament.
There are also plans to broadcast Campbell Live from the tournament while TV3 will also have a news team covering the six
weeks from the All Blacks' opening match in early September.
When McRoberts is back in New Zealand in the middle of the tournament, TV3 staff Sean Sommerfield and James Gemmell will host the daily content which will screen nightly for half an hour at 11pm.
"That programme will be full of what's happening in the tournament, match highlights, previews and other news around our live coverage of every match in the competition," said head of sport production John McDonald.
TV3's free-to-air commentary team will be led by Hamish McKay with analysis from former All Blacks Grant Fox and Alan Whetton.
"We hope to have access to a lot of past or present players and we'd like to have Andrew Mehrtens on board but that depends on his playing commitments and what we can sort out," McDonald said.
TV3 won the New Zealand rights to broadcast this year's event, starting in September, after beating out a combined bid from TVNZ and Sky.
TVNZ had the rights to cover the previous five World Cups but appeared to lose traction with the IRB when they made a joint tender for this year.
McDonald said his station's coverage would be fairly traditional, they did not need to be unorthodox because they had sole rights to the matches. However TV3 wanted to appeal to a wide audience from core rugby watchers to those looking for entertainment.
TV3 plan to use their commentators for every All Black match and about six other matches including the opening match between France and Argentina, France meeting Ireland and England playing the Springboks.
"We are not the host broadcaster (French network TF1 hold that title) so it is all about how we add on to their coverage," said McDonald.
"We may be able to get an extra camera in on that but we are really at the mercy of their pictures. We need to give viewers the flavour of what is going on with the rugby and in France."
Every game of the tournament would be live because there were no overlapping games.