Tara Ward looks back on the TVNZ newsreader’s two decades on our screens.
Tonight, Simon Dallow will deliver his last news bulletin for 1News at Six. Nearly every night for the past two decades, the experienced broadcaster has been a constant and reassuring presence behind the TVNZ news desk, always wearing a dark suit and serious face to inform New Zealanders about the terrible things that happened that day. Whenever there’s been news, Simon Dallow has told us about it.
“Simon has presented TVNZ’s most watched and most streamed programme for two decades, bringing professionalism, integrity, and dedication to the role,” TVNZ said when they announced Dallow’s departure earlier this month. On November 3, Dallow himself acknowledged the news about his news, on the news. “You know I hate talking about myself, but you may have heard I’m stepping down as presenter of the 6pm news,” he said, promising that viewers would be in safe hands with his replacement, fellow 1News presenter Melissa Stokes. “It’s been an absolute privilege to represent my colleagues and bring you the news over the years.”
Simon Dallow and Alison Mau present One Network News in 1995 (Screengrab: YouTube)
Dallow joined TVNZ in 1993, and the following year presented TV2’s late night news magazine show Newsnight alongside Alison Mau (with whom he later shared one of New Zealand’s most high-profile marriages) and Marcus Lush. He went on to present a variety of TVNZ news and current affairs shows during the following years, including One Mid Evening News, One Tonight, Agenda and Q&A. In 2006, he teamed up with Wendy Petrie to become the weeknight co-presenters of 1News at Six (formerly One Network News), and in 2020, Dallow became the sole 6pm news anchor.
If longstanding One Network News presenter Judy Bailey was the mother of the nation, then what important part of the news family is Dallow? Could he be the country’s reliable uncle, the wise and dependable family member who turns up just when we need him, delivering some important words and then leaving, never outstaying his welcome? Simon Dallow never put a pair of melons to his chest live on the telly like Seven Sharp’s Jeremy Wells (the little brother of the nation?), or got the giggles after reading a news story about an emergency defecation situation. He’s always just been there, night after night, reading the news with precision and purpose. Ever the professional. Unflappable. Unmelonable.
Whatever he is to us, his departure marks the end of an era. Let’s look back on some of Dallow’s more memorable moments behind the 1News desk.
He covered a lot of news
Over the past 20-plus years, Dallow delivered the news during numerous major national and international crises. He steered us through the Canterbury earthquakes, the Pike River mine disaster and the Christchurch mosque attacks. He kept us up to date during the Covid-19 pandemic and its many lockdowns, as well as events like the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption and Cyclone Gabrielle. If there was a breaking news bulletin, Dallow was all over it. He’s also seen us through several general elections and countless political polls and budget lockups, reported live from Auckland infernos and America’s Cup wins, and was even there to help test the nation’s IQ back in 2003.
He sat at a lot of different desks
Simon Dallow reads the news in different decades (Screengrabs: YouTube)
If there’s one thing 1News loves more than a breaking story, it’s taking the opportunity to zhuzh up their news studio. Dallow has seen it all over the years: the shiny glass table of the 2020s, the sleek mahogany bench of the early 2000s, the giant New Zealand on the world map in the background in the late 90s. He’s been in the eye of the news storm through all of TVNZ’s jazzy studio and technological updates, but nothing says “breaking news” more than this silky smooth 1999 news desk, which included not one but TWO landline phones. Was this… the original news notification?
One time he went to Mars…?
This is the news
Who wants to sit down at a desk all day? Not Simon Dallow. Thanks to the TVNZ graphics department, Dallow spent the past few years zipping backwards and forwards in space and time every night at 6pm, dodging virtual cars that hoon across the studio and sidestepping wayward planets that suddenly swing into his orbit. He once went to a galaxy far, far away, but he also stopped by the Somme and even popped up at the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Who says the news is boring?
His pronunciation was perfect, even when it wasn’t
Not everyone could pronounce the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull mid-sentence live on the 6pm news, but Dallow did it with a smoothness rarely seen this side of a hot flow of lava. And amid all the serious news and heavy stories, there were also a few lighter, unexpected moments, like when Dallow randomly tried out an Australian accent during the 6pm bulletin, or the time in 2008 when he accidentally called the global credit crunch the “global credit cunt”. They can’t all be Eyjafjallajökull, I guess.
Simon Dallow’s final 1News at Six bulletin is tonight at 6pm on TVNZ1 and TVNZ+.