Mere weeks before the shock announcement of Newshub’s imminent closure, Karl Puschmann sat down with Ryan Bridge to talk about Bridge, his upcoming nightly current affairs show. At the time, Newshub’s demise was unthinkable; looking back, perhaps the warning signs were there all along…
The breaking news on an otherwise uneventful Wednesday morning was that Three’s parent company Warner Bros Discovery was breaking the news. Staff had been drafted to an 11am meeting, where they were given the unholy word that Newshub’s newsroom would be shut down in June. Job losses were reported to be around 300 to 350 people.
The sudden closure was immediately lamented on social media. While the usual crowd of conspirators and nuts responded with cold-hearted glee at their foolhardy perceived ‘win’ over the mainstream media, most were sympathetic, troubled and worried. There were a lot of voices, but for my money, comedian Guy Williams, whose excellent satirical news show New Zealand Today screens on Three and streams online on ThreeNow, summed it up best.
“This has huge implications for New Zealand’s democracy; we need more sources of reporting, not less,” he wrote.
Newshub’s imminent closure sent shockwaves through the news industry, with reports, analysis and opinion pieces on Warner Bros Discovery’s decision running non-stop in print, on radio, on television and online ever since. In a particularly cruel twist of fate, Newshub’s 6pm news anchors, Samantha Hayes and Mike McRoberts, had to lead the Newshub bulletin with the news they and their colleagues would soon be out of work.
A lot of people had a lot to say, but one who has been atypically silent is the channel’s newly anointed golden boy, Ryan Bridge. His only comment at the time of writing was “We’re going to go and have a drink”, when a microphone was shoved in his face as he left the building after receiving the bad news.
Fair enough. In his situation, I’d have had a few. His reply did, however, leave a big question unanswered. What would become of his high-profile, brand-new, much-anticipated 7pm current affairs show?
Everyone wanted to know. I suspect that at the time, in the aftermath of the announcement, he simply didn’t have the answer. As we speak, there still hasn’t been any formal announcement from Three regarding the show’s fate.
I have to say the odds don’t look great. How can you make a nightly current affairs show without a dedicated newsroom powering it behind the scenes? Is such a thing even possible?
To give an idea of how out of the blue Newshub’s shock closure was, only a few short weeks prior, NZ Marketing sat down with Bridge to talk about his show. The launch of a new 7pm current affairs show is a huge deal, and hype and expectations were beginning to build. But there was also an undercurrent of doubt and uncertainty swirling, largely because Three kept delaying the launch date, pushing it back and refusing to commit to an exact start date.
During our conversation, I asked him about all the negative speculation, and he laughed it off. But we’ll get to that in a moment…
NZ Marketing’s interview was one of the first Bridge had given about the show, rumoured to be simply titled Bridge. Bridge was jazzed about Bridge. He was bullish on how it would beat Seven Sharp, TVNZ’s rival current affairs show. He was aware of the importance and weight the 7pm current affairs timeslot held, especially on Three, where the legacy of John Campbell’s decade-long Campbell Live still carries enormous weight within the walls of its newsroom.
“I’m feeling really excited and challenged. I’m very much involved with the production, from the set to the graphics, and we’re working closely with the team here at Newshub to put it together,” said Bridge, which at the time made complete sense, but subsequently raises a lot of questions about how the show could now move forward.
“It’s something that’s mine,” he said. “Something that I’m being given the privilege to help create from the ground up.”
A few days before we spoke, the launch date had shifted again, so it was through an exhausted smile that Bridge said: “I just can’t wait to get on with it.”
He told me about his strong vision for Bridge. It was to be the antithesis of TVNZ’s more fluffy and jocular Seven Sharp. It would focus on the news driving that day’s agenda and would serve as “a bookend” to the day. Live interviews played a big part in that ambition, with Bridge referring to interviewing as his “bread and butter”.
“I’d like the show to be somewhere we can have honest and challenging discussions about issues of national significance to people. Whatever the big story is that day, we want to be able to get to the bottom of it and then debate it, or challenge an idea or hopefully make people think differently about something that’s in the news or something they’ve been talking about at work.”
He was adamant Bridge would not be like previous shows that have held the 7pm slot. Reading between the lines, it sounded like he wanted to bring intelligence and news credibility back to the timeslot and, by extension, the whole current affairs format.
This is all well and good, and worthy, but there were parameters he had to stay within while conceptualising the show. President of Warner Bros Discovery Asia Pacific, James Gibbons, is on record as saying the company’s focus was on a “digital future”, with their streaming site ThreeNow replacing the free-to-air terrestrial channel Three as the “core” of their business model.
During our interview, Bridge acknowledged that online engagement had influenced the direction of the show and his thinking while putting it together, and in fact, it was actually its focal point. “Our primary focus is ThreeNow,” he said. “That’s an area [in which] we’ve had huge growth over the last couple of years. From the beginning [of my time at Three], I’ve made a conscious effort to target and promote ThreeNow to people as a way of watching us [on AM]. The beauty of it is that people don’t have to watch us at 7pm. You can watch the show whenever you want to.”
It’s fair to say this marked an entirely new way of thinking about what is – or was? – ostensibly a primetime TV show. Like most things now swirling around Bridge and Newshub and the future, it also raised questions, most prominently being: what was Warner Bros Discovery’s barometer of success for Bridge? Was it winning the nightly 7pm timeslot war against its state-funded rival, or was it the amount of clicks, shares, comments and views the show and its various segments generated on ThreeNow? In short, where did they want Bridge to get people’s attention?
“That’s a good question and one of the first I asked the bosses here at Warner Bros Discovery when I started: ‘What do you actually want out of this?’” said Bridge. “It’s ThreeNow that they’re really focusing on. For me, it will be a combination of both, but really, what it comes down to in this environment is how much you can grow the online audience. We’re putting the show together with a linear audience in mind, but we’re thinking about how segments might fit online, and people’s viewing habits online and on certain platforms. It’s quite different to just saying, ‘How’s this going to play on TV?’”
Reading the transcript of our interview now, in the choppy wake of Newshub’s looming closure, is somewhat surreal. You don’t have to squint too hard to see the multiple red flags: the committed non-commitment to Bridge, the prioritising of online numbers over television’s traditional ratings and, most obviously, the show’s numerous launch delays, from late January, to February, to April, to June and now… well, now no one knows.
“I’m not worried about it,” smiled Bridge when I asked how the constant pushing back of the show was making him feel. “I just can’t wait to get on air, and that will happen.”
Yes, but when? As I said, Bridge was bullish, yet unfailingly personable, with his reply. “That’s really all I can say about it,” he said. “Those questions are best directed to Warner Bros. But I’m pumped. I’m ready!”
There was not a shred of doubt in his voice. He sounded like the star athlete sitting on the bench of the season’s opening game. Put him in, coach. He’s ready for primetime!
Bridge considered his words for a second, then added, “I do agree that it’s worth taking the time to get things right. You know, like, is anyone gonna remember the date we started?”
He laughed at how ridiculous that idea sounded, and I laughed with him as we both dismissed the endless newspaper columns about Bridge’s delays and setbacks that now read like portents. “So from that perspective, I’m pretty chill,” he said.
Bridge sounded pretty chill. He was a good dude to chat with. He has an air of likeability around him that has served him well in the news business, first as a reporter here, then as a reporter in China, where he worked for China Central Television (“The People’s Liberation Army was downstairs in the foyer. It was crazy. It was fascinating.”), then in talkback radio, before making the jump to breakfast television.
“I don’t see myself primarily as a journalist,” he said. “I haven’t for a long time.”
Bridge now identifies as a broadcaster, and for any broadcaster, the 7pm current affairs slot has always been the top prize of the game. It’s a position of power, prestige and a pretty huge salary. Traditionally, it’s been the channel’s flagship show, its host being promoted to brand ambassador and the de facto face of the channel.
After putting in the hard yards, Bridge was Bridge’s shot at the title. He was cognisant of the importance of the timeslot, the legacy of those who’d gone before and what it meant – or, perhaps more accurately now, was supposed to mean – to both the channel as a whole and the suits upstairs.
“It’s definitely daunting and intimidating, and you definitely go through a phase of thinking that you’re not qualified for this, but equally, it’s a hugely exciting challenge,” he said.
“It’s a rare, golden opportunity, that someone, somewhere, has decided I have the skill set for. I’m not scared, but I am kind of humbled. I’m aware of what that slot has meant to different broadcasters in the past and the amazing work they’ve done, but at the same time, I’m not dwelling on it. I’m not freaking out about that.”
Even though he didn’t know when Bridge would be hitting the airwaves, Bridge had an easy confidence and an unwavering belief in how his vision of the show would resonate with Kiwis around the country. His excitement to get going was infectious, and if he was feeling frustrated by Warner Bros Discovery’s continual stalling of its launch, he certainly didn’t show it.
He just said: “I’m focusing on all the little things I can at the moment.” And then he laughed, flashed a winning smile and said, “and I’m hoping that our wonderful audience will be there with us when we launch”.
This was first published in our March/April issue
