Newshub shutdown: Melissa Chan-Green’s tribute to AM - ‘We were in this together’
Melissa Chan-Green has shared her memories of working as a morning TV host and a Europe correspondent. Photo / Michael Craig
With Newshub set to close this Friday, July 5, hosts across its network of shows from Patrick Gower to Amanda Gillies to AM’S Lloyd Burr and Melissa Chan-Green have reflected on their time at TV3.
Now Chan-Green has shared a tribute to the morning show, which she co-hosts with Lloyd Burr, a day before its broadcaster Newshub is set to close for good.
In 2022, Chan-Green joined the new-look AM, previously known as The AM Show, to present alongside Ryan Bridge. But that wasn’t her first stint on breakfast television.
Writing for Newshub’s website, Chan-Green has reminisced on her years doing the rounds on Three’s morning shows, from Sunrise, which launched in 2007, to Firstline from 2011 to 2015.
“I was hooked. Hooked on the adrenaline of breakfast telly,” she wrote, recalling a live cross from a London pub.
Even when she went on maternity leave to have her children, Busby and Mabel, Chan-Green tuned into AM when she woke up each morning.
“I felt how important it was to feel part of a discussion, to feel connected with what’s happening in the world - and, more basically, just to start the day with a laugh,” she shared.
She went on to recall some of the highlights of her time with Newshub, for whom she also worked as a Europe correspondent.
Chan-Green waited with the media pack outside the hospital where Prince George was born, covered the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s death, and was in Paris during the Bataclan theatre attacks, before passing the baton to Lisette Reymer.
Chan-Green concluded: “Thank you to everyone who has chosen AM - you’ve helped us close the ratings gap, kept up the commercial support and the messages of what AM means to our viewers have kept us going over the last six months.
“It made it feel like we were in this together, and I like to think that’s what morning telly on TV3 has done best all these years.”
Earlier this week, Chan-Green and Lloyd Burr were joined by TV veterans Paul Henry, Oliver Driver and Carly Flynn on the AM sofa to offer advice on how to move on as the series comes to an end.
Chan-Green spoke of feeling “mixed emotions”, while Flynn, who hosted Sunrise alongside Driver when it launched in 2007, wiped away tears.
“We were so privileged, I think of it as the golden years of my career,” Flynn said. “We got to be in people’s homes during really amazing moments.”
Sunrise was canned in 2010, with TV3 saying the show was financially unsustainable.
“We got told on the day,” Driver said of their cancellation. “We’re shutting you down, there’s no show today.”
But the AM crew had to keep up the 3am starts and front up to their audience, from the day Newshub’s closure was announced in February until the end of this week.
“That’s tough as well. But the reason you do it is because of the people you’re doing it with, that’s who you get up for in the morning,” Flynn said.
“Everybody loves you,” she told the pair. “You’ve had a great time, you’ve got good friends, you’ve had some great memories.”
Bethany Reitsma is an Auckland-based journalist covering lifestyle and entertainment stories who joined the Herald in 2019. She specialises in telling Kiwis’ real-life stories, money-saving hacks and anything even remotely related to coffee.