Paul Norris: On the changing face of TV news and current affairs…

Interview – 2014

Journalist and academic Paul Norris had a major role in changing the landscape of television news and current affairs in New Zealand. He cut his teeth with the BBC, but moved back to New Zealand to run TVNZ’s News and Current Affairs division in 1987. In that role, he revamped the evening news on TV One, and launched the Holmes show in 1989. Norris left TVNZ in 1996 to head the NZ Broadcasting School in Christchurch.

Norris died in February 2014. In this ScreenTalk interview, he talks about:

How a British election set off his career in journalism
Being lured back to be Head of News and Current Affairs at TVNZ
The changes brought about by former head of TVNZ Julian Mounter
Bringing together Richard Long and Judy Bailey on the evening news
Being criticised for introducing American consultants for the show
How the Holmes show changed the TV current affairs landscape
The truth behind the legendary Dennis Conner interview
Wanting to tell the story behind radical political changes in the 80s, in series Revolution
Reinventing himself as an academic as head of the NZ Broadcasting School
Feeling that TV current affairs is now in a rather dire state
Changing the landscape of broadcasting

This video was first uploaded on 14 February 2014, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

That was a radical programme, because it was a personality-driven tea time current affairs programme which we had not had previously, and it had Holmes' stamp all over it. Indeed the programme even being called Holmes, that's quite radical. There was no progamme named after a presenter up to that point.
– Paul Norris on pioneering current affairs show Holmes, presented by Paul Holmes

Paul's Full Profile