A subliminal utterance kept playing in my head as I watched hours of prediction and speculation on election night. It was the voice of Sergeant Joe Friday.
Most of you would be too young to know Sergeant Friday. Dragnet, the series in which he featured, was broadcast on New Zealand radio in the 1950s. His signature phrase was “All we want are the facts, Ma’am”.
And that was all I wanted after the polling booths closed at 7 pm on Saturday. All I wanted were the results.
Instead, every news outlet gave me proof that British naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson was right: Work does expand to fill the time available for its completion. Each outlet had lots of time to fill as the vote count continued throughout the evening.
I was prepared for prediction and speculation. That is the nature of emerging political fortunes, and those offering it do so in the expectation that things will become clearer as the night progressed. It’s an unfortunate fact that clarity and New Zealand’s emerging brand of Mixed Member Proportional Representation take longer to come together than First Past the Post.
There was also a certain inevitability about the appearance of BWC graphics. BWC? It stands for Because We Can and denotes the use of elaborate studio graphic overlays that can place thoroughly urbanised presenters in territory that Indiana Jones would struggle to reach. On election night it had TVNZ’s intrepid Jason Walls theatrically scaling the heights of massive columns and trekking along fast-moving bar graphs. TV3/Stuff may have had less grunt in the electronics department but it, too, managed to paint the floor with graphics that contained less information than the straightforward charts it also displayed.
And, although their ephemeral nature makes the information harder to assimilate, the tickertape results along the bottom of the screen were there as expected. And, as anticipated, they went in one eye and out the other.
All this paled, however, alongside the retreat into entertainment in which both TVOne and TV3/Stuff freely engaged. Such actions on both networks detracted from the serious business of the evening. TVOne wanted your election party photos, while 3/Stuff played bingo with its audience. Live crosses to election parties in people’s homes? Spare me!
Presenters and panellists on both networks indulged in gameshow behaviour, indulging in gesticulation, grimacing, and ‘smart’ interjecting that disrupted rather than contributed to proceedings. It had been surprising to see ACT list candidate Paul Henry on the TVOne panel (no other party had a candidate at the desk) but his level-headed approach was nonetheless refreshing.
There was a sense that, above all else, the networks were there to ENTERTAIN…hour after hour after hour. At times it resembled a scene from Deal Or No Deal.
Radio provided a more informative environment and the combination of Mike Hosking, Barry Soper and Maurice Williamson gave NewstalkZB an air of authority that persisted throughout the night. RNZ National was similarly informative although John Campbell’s awareness that the broadcast was being video streamed meant he could not help but play to the camera. His co-host Lisa Owen was admirably oblivious to its presence.
Given Stuff’s tie-in with Three, it was perhaps surprising that the New Zealand Herald did not join forces with its stablemate NewstalkZB but, like Hosking, the host of its video election night special Ryan Bridge maintained a sense of gravitas appropriate for the occasion. Its changing panel of experts were similarly focussed.
When my appetite for media theatrics evaporated and weariness set in, I went to bed unaware of the names of the people who (based on the night’s results) would sit in our Parliament for the next term. It was apparent that we had a ridiculous overhang and an inconclusive majority for the current coalition. Head on the pillow, in my mind’s eye was an abiding image of David Seymour’s attempted grand entry to the Viaduct by boat ending with a crooked grin behind a barred security gate at the top of the jetty.
Sergeant Friday taught us as tots to be patient. So, the names of our Parliamentarians for the new term could wait until the Sunday newspapers arrived. Full lists of the election night count – every candidate in each electorate and the number of votes they had attracted – have been a feature of election coverage since the 19th century. In papers past, publication of results was often delayed. Now, however, we have computers and artificial intelligence.
However, the present-day press and distribution deadlines for the Sunday Star Times and Herald on Sunday defy even the most advanced computers. Neither gave comprehensive lists of votes in each constituency. The best we got was a resurrection of the Herald on Sunday’s nationwide map graphic from the last election, with no more than the winners of key electorates. Even their websites failed to give the full picture without drilling down electorate by electorate.
I turned in desperation to the Electoral Commission website, only to find that I had to access each electorate individually to obtain results. I quickly gave up that exercise when I found that the commission listed the names of each candidate but not their party affiliations.
Yet there was light on the horizon: The Herald on Sunday’s nationwide map assured readers there would be “Full results in tomorrow’s Herald”.
In 2023 the Monday edition of each daily carried the full results of the on-the-night count – full page or double page spreads which readers could pore over to their heart’s content. There was no reason to doubt that 2026 would produce the same spreads.
Wrong: Neither the New Zealand Herald and its NZME stablemates nor The Post and its Stuff siblings carried results charts yesterday. Was there some Electoral Commission gaffe that prevented publication? No, there was not. How do we know that? Down in Dunedin, the Otago Daily Times put all of them to shame.
The ODT carried the election night counts of all electorates from Auckland Central to Waiariki. It listed all candidates, their affiliation (19 parties contested the election), the votes cast for each, plus the number of informal votes in each electorate. The full page chart made fascinating reading, and it was the sort of thing Joe Friday would appreciate…just the facts. And it was a much-needed break from the endless speculation on the way power politics will play out after an election night result that left the present coalition with a fragile, wafer thin majority.
Looking back on the way coverage played out, it was disappointing that on election night the television networks felt obliged to put entertaining above informing. Yes, the founder of the BBC Lord Reith created the mantra: Inform, educate, and entertain. However, he did not require all three in the same programme. And note the order: Elections are events where informing and educating take precedence.
The BWC factor was equally unimpressive, and it was not limited to TVOne’s graphics. The layering of digital information on websites and in apps sent users on hunt and peck expeditions. That may be deliberate because it increased the amount of time on site, but at the same time they prevented users from simultaneously seeing all information laid before them. Digital maps with zoom functions took you to an electorate and clicks took you down through layers of information about the electorate and its candidate. Why? Because they can, not because the information is better or more detailed than you would find in the chart in yesterday’s Otago Daily Times.
Some, with a slightly pejorative tone, will call the ODT’s results coverage ‘traditional’, even ‘old-fashioned’. It was neither. While it provided readers with ample commentary and necessary speculation over an uncertain outcome, its comprehensive Monday coverage did not privilege opinion over fact, nor did it allow form to triumph over substance. Sergeant Joe Friday would give an approving nod.