Australian Today Show Shoots In New Zealand

Media Release
For Immediate Release
Tuesday 9 June, 2009

Australian Today Show Shoots In New Zealand

New Zealand is about to become the star of Australia’s morning television Today show which will be broadcasting live from New Zealand for a week.

The landmark Australian breakfast TV airs daily between 5.30am and 9am and is watched by 800,000 Australians.

Between June 22 and 26, Today’s weatherman Steven Jacobs will present live weather broadcasts every half hour starting in Northland before moving to Auckland, Marlborough and the West Coast.

The Today team’s anchor presenters will then travel to New Zealand and broadcast the show live from New Zealand on 29 and 30 June from the Queenstown Winter Festival.

Tourism New Zealand has worked with five of Today’s key presenters to pre-record travel segments on 12 New Zealand regions which will also be shown during the two-day New Zealand special.

Qantas is the key partner with Tourism New Zealand on the project and will be bringing the Channel 9 Today crews to New Zealand.

The regions covered include Northland, Auckland, Wellington, Taupo, Rotorua, Christchurch, Fiordland, Dunedin and Queenstown.

“Tourism New Zealand runs a highly-successful international media programme which brings hundreds of journalists to New Zealand each year, but it is a first for us to get this degree of reach and penetration over such an extended period of time,” Tourism New Zealand chief executive George Hickton said.

“We are delighted to be working with Qantas as a key partner to develop tourism from Australia through the Channel 9 Today Show,” Mr Hickton said.

It is the first time Today has broadcast the show from outside Australia since 2005, when it went to the UK.

In March, Tourism New Zealand gained an additional $2.5 million of Government money for Australian promotional work. The Today Show’s visit to New Zealand has come as a result of some of that money being made available for public relations work.

Australia is a key market for New Zealand and marketing there has been stepped up since the global economic downturn. It is New Zealand’s biggest market providing 992,674 arrivals in the year to May.

In the six months to April, Australian visitor arrivals increased by 4.7%, compared with a decline of 3% in visitor arrivals from all markets.

“New Zealand is competing against well-funded Australian domestic campaigns and other international destinations for Australian’s attention. The Today show will help us stand out in the crowd,” Mr Hickton said.

The International Media Programme hosts around 400 print, broadcast and online journalists each year, with coverage reaching around 937 million consumers from our target audience around the world.

Recent television highlights include Australia’s Biggest Loser. Five episodes were filmed in New Zealand and were viewed by over one million Australians. America’s The Bachelor reality TV show filmed two episodes in New Zealand, which aired to a combined audience of around 30 million in the US and Canada.

The additional Government funding has allowed Tourism New Zealand to promote heavily in Australia in recent months starting with an early bird ski campaign and advertising in February. A combined winter and ski holiday campaign is also currently running.

ENDS

© Scoop Media