Could Paul Henry replace John Campbell?

Paul Henry
Paul Henry
COMMENT: MediaWorks will be tempted to place Paul Henry in to John Campbell's spot at 7pm, continuing with his morning experiment broadcasting on TV3 and RadioLive from 6am to 9am.

On the face of it that would be a disastrous decision, turning around the target audience and abandoning a newly revived following. Their audience is diametrically opposed and Henry has had a rotten start in his morning show ratings.

But chief executive Mark Weldon and board member Julie Christie love Henry as the face of the company. MediaWorks has has already made it clear the new show would not be just a tweaking of the Campbell Live.

Having lost Campbell and serious current affairs at TV3 and with 3 News rating poorly, news boss Mark Jennings has to do something radical to survive, and something that is acceptable to the bosses.

Jennings has lost a lot of influence at MediaWorks.

Commentators have been kind, but Henry has been a ratings disaster in the morning for TV3, and we have no way of knowing it it is working in radio. But Henry, unrestrained by scripts, would not need much work and he could easily riff off the day's events creating controversy along the way. It's current affairs in 2015.

As for 2016, know that MediaWorks' favourite programme maker - Eyeworks - is working on a New Zealand version of the UK reality show "Come Dine With Me" but it would not be ready until September at the earliest.

It's not clear whether other experienced journalists on Campbell Live would survive in the new environment.

MediaWorks has chosen Henry as the face of the future and he seems the obvious choice to fill in for a while.

- John Drinnan of the New Zealand Herald

 

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