What 1News’ succession plan says about the bulletin’s future
Thursday, 6 November 2025
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Stewart Sowman-Lund is a senior reporter for The Post. He reports on media and Auckland issues.
OPINION: Jack Tame has just been announced as the new weekend presenter for 1News at 6pm, days after his colleague Melissa Stokes was named to be taking over the high profile weekday gig.
Tame’s appointment is something of a surprise, but Stokes was the obvious choice, or rather, the safe one.
It’s been something of an open secret in media circles that 1News’ long-serving presenter Simon Dallow was set to retire later this year.
That was confirmed on Monday, with Dallow, 61, set to vacate the plush 1News swivel chair on November 28 after nearly two decades as a presenter. Since 2020, he’s been the sole host of the nightly bulletin.
In a previous column for The Post, largely devoted to RNZ’s Morning Report which is also shuffling its deck chairs, I theorised whether Dallow’s departure could see Tame lured to 6pm on weekdays, or even ThreeNews’ presenter Samantha Hayes.
There were undoubtedly other, even less likely, names who could easily have been in the mix: former TV3 news anchors like Hilary Barry and John Campbell are both now well-ingrained at TVNZ.
Even Mike McRoberts, the former Newshub anchor who has since moved to the NBR, may have wanted back into the broadcast limelight.
But would TVNZ want to shake things up?
In the end, as should have been expected, the job was offered to Stokes as part of a tidy succession plan. Little time for speculation, no rotating guest hosts, and a presenter that has clearly been well-groomed for the transition. (Stokes has been hosting the weekend bulletin since 2019 and is a regular frontwoman on weeknights too).
It’s since been confirmed that Tame will indeed be appearing at 6pm - but on the weekends. He’ll be taking over from Stokes while continuing to host Q+A. It was labelled the final touch of a “fresh line-up” for the TVNZ evening bulletin. Again, a tidy transition - and one that keeps Tame grilling politicians on Sunday mornings.
Stokes’ appointment presents less of an opportunity for TVNZ to refresh or reset its flagship bulletin, but rather an opportunity to continue its legacy and ratings dominance.
1News at 6pm has always been the biggest programme on linear television, and continues to pull an average nightly audience around the 600,000 mark. It’s bookended by two of the other most popular shows on the telly: The Chase and Seven Sharp.
It makes sense, especially in this fragmented media landscape, that you wouldn’t want to risk alienating that audience.
You only need to go back a few years to remember the last time TVNZ went for a shake-up over a safe bet with disastrous results.
When Close Up came off the air in 2012, it was replaced by Seven Sharp. On debut, it looked and felt very different to both the show it succeeded and the show it has become since. It was a light-hearted, semi-interactive magazine style show, in comparison to Close Up’s harder edge.
It was the heyday of the so-called “ratings wars” between TVNZ and Three.
Within a fortnight of launching, Campbell Live, which at the time was airing in the 7pm slot on TV3, had outperformed Seven Sharp for the first time ever.
Of course, there’s less to play with when it comes to the format of a 6pm bulletin, though ThreeNews, which is produced by Stuff, has made attempts such as regularly incorporating longer form interviews into its show.
But ThreeNews is the underdog. It needs to try something different, just as its predecessor, Newshub, routinely did.
Why risk anything when you’re at the top?
Stokes’ rise into the most high profile role in New Zealand media appears to be part of a carefully controlled succession plan, and as recent events in the UK have shown, when it comes to succession, nobody wants a sideshow.