Initially meant to begin airing in late 2007, TV3‘s Nightly News with Vincent Browne is to finally debut tonight at around 11pm.
The programme replaces the station’s News Tonight programme, which was a straight-forward news round-up, and promises to “go behind the headlines to take an in-depth look at the stories of the day”, whatever that means.
It is certainly filling a small gap in the market in terms of a news feature-driven nightly programme, however whether it simply wraps up the days news or tries to actually break stories remains to be seen.
It seems as though a reasonable investment has been made in the programme, at least in the context of TV3’s journalistic output. Joining Browne will be Newstalk‘s Karen Coleman and Brian O’Donovan, who has been promoted up through the ranks of TV3 News to this more senior position.
Nightly News… is also the jewel in the crown of a TV3 News revamp which kicks off today.
The exact format is still unclear but by the spiel on their website it seems to be covering all bases – the day’s news is reviewed, there’s original content like interviews and in-depth reports, there’ll also be analysis, sport, weather and finally the newspaper previews (which is unique in itself). All of TV3’s dependables will make a showing too, such as Ursula Halligan, Alan Cantwell and Colette Fitzpatrick.
The show will be interesting to watch on a number of levels – firstly to see how Browne makes the transition to TV, secondly to see what direction the overall programme is looking to take and thirdly to see if TV3’s new owners really are serious about investing in homegrown content and current affairs. We’ll have a better idea of all three by midnight.
(by the way, Jim is taking bets on what will happen on tonight’s show – some very tempting odds on some of those bets too).