With the closure of major TV newsrooms in New Zealand, there was a growing gap for high-quality, live video news. NZME identified an opportunity to extend the NZ Herald brand into video, targeting both existing and younger audiences, and to create new revenue streams through video and sponsorship advertising.

In 2025, with support from Google, NZME launched Herald NOW, a live digital news show and FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channel, to transform how New Zealanders engage with news. The project aimed to grow video views, increase video and sponsorship revenue, and deepen audience engagement across NZ Herald’s digital platforms.

The launch of Herald NOW began with the formation of a cross-functional team, bringing together expertise from editorial, operational, marketing, product, engineering, data, ad tech, and commercial departments. This team met three times a week to ensure strong coordination and rapid execution. A significant early milestone was the construction of a new studio and control room in Auckland, complemented by the installation of cameras in Wellington and Christchurch. Journalists were also equipped with mobile video kits, enabling high-quality field reporting.

To support this new video-first approach, NZME developed and integrated new editorial and operational workflows, embedding video production into the daily planning and story creation process. Alongside these operational changes, the team built a new video player and enhanced website functionality, allowing homepage editors to easily feature Herald NOW content and respond to audience interests in real time. Comprehensive training was provided to both video journalists and editorial teams, ensuring they were skilled in live production and field reporting. These efforts culminated in the successful launch of Herald NOW on May 26, 2025, with the show airing weekdays from 7 to 9am across the NZ Herald app, website, and YouTube.

Herald NOW had 2.4 million views in July* and clips from the show had more than 15.7 million views across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in the first two months, demonstrating the significant demand from audiences for high-quality video news content and premium journalism.

*Brightcove analytics & YouTube analytics Jun – Jul 2025. Unique audience may be duplicated across platforms.