News

Sunrise New Zealand calls it a day

Mediaworks, owner of New Zealand’s TV3, has this morning broadcast the final farewell episode of its axed morning show Sunrise, after failing to dent the ratings lead of TV One’s Breakfast.  

The company has also axed its early morning news show ASB Business. The closure of the shows will lead to up to 20 redundancies.

In a statement the company said the cost of producing the programs had proven to be “unsustainable”  in the current economic climate.

Ian Audsley, Mediaworks TV executive director, said: “Despite the terrific work of the people involved and the commitment of everyone at TV3, we’ve not been able to make these programmes work financially.”

Audsley, a former chief operating officer of the Nine Network in Australia, commenced in his role at Mediaworks in January this year taking on a 12 month contract.

It was announced in February that he would be stepping down from his interim role as TV executive director on May 29 and would remain on the board until the end of his contract.

Sunrise, which launched on October 2007 was hosted by former Nightline presenter Carly Flynn and Oliver Driver.

Last Tuesday it attracted only 21,490 viewers compared to Breakfast’s 169,600.

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