I have stayed out of the Campbell Live argument until now, for obvious reasons. I used to work for Mediaworks, but the issue isn't going away - so here's my two cents.

MORE: John Key dismisses Campbell Live

It’s a fickle old world, television. No-one quite understands the ratings, nor why some people chose to watch one programme, and not another.

I remember hosting Firstline on TV3 during the Boston marathon bombings. The story broke while I was on-air and we took a live satellite feed from the scene and stayed on-air for four and a half hours – two hours longer than normal. I lost count of how many people I interviewed out of Boston that day but what I do know is that no-one matched our coverage. It was live, it was fast, and it was informative, sharp and engaging. Everything you want in a live television broadcast of a terrorist attack.

I remember walking out of the studio that day and Mark Jennings, the head of news and current affairs, said me we’d just put out a bloody great show. It was live TV at its best, he said.

The next day I waited eagerly for the ratings. How did we rate? Did we pull a big audience? Had we snared a chunk of TV One’s breakfast and good morning viewers?

No, we didn’t. In fact, the term we use in the industry is ‘it was a dog’. We rated like a dog.

I can remember my response. It wasn’t pretty. I swore. I was exasperated at how disengaged this country is sometimes when it comes to major new events.

We get exercised about cutting down a kauri tree or we rage about stroppy x-factor judges, but when it comes to real news, big issues and global events, we often disengage. It’s the Kiwi way. It doesn’t affect us directly. Don’t worry about it. She'll be right, mate.

But that morning, when I saw those ratings, it broke me. I couldn’t believe that more kiwis had chosen to watch someone whipping up a lasagne on good morning, while we were covering a live, breaking terrorist attack on the other channel.

Campbell Live suffers from that same syndrome. The programme – and I have hosted it at times, and contributed to it when I was tv3’s Europe correspondent - it has produced some of the finest television journalism this country has ever seen.

I don’t want to see it go. no journalist would ever want to see a current affairs show axed – but if it is axed, there is no-one to blame except the public. New Zealanders killed Campbell Live, because New Zealanders stopped watching.

Julie Christie and Mark Weldon – the senior management at Mediaworks – they’re not to blame. Forget this rubbish about John Key leaning on them to axe the show. It would never happen. If the journalists at Mediaworks got a whiff of that, if there was an ounce of truth to it, they'd collectively walk off the job.

No...this is what it comes down to.

Campbell Live's viewership is miserable, and that is unsustainable - commercially - for TV3. If you start from a low viewership base at 7pm, it is very hard to build a big audience for the big, blockbuster, expensive shows that TV3 broadcasts later in the evening.

So what do you do? Do you move Campbell Live to a different timeslot outside of prime time? You could, but current affairs is one of the most expensive genres in a TV network’s stable. It costs millions and millions of dollars to make Campbell Live. Millions. So you’ll still have the same issue. You've got an expensive programme with a small audience.

So this is what I’d do. I’d do what they do in the UK. I’d have a shorter news bulletin, and I’d give Campbell a 15 minute slot within that 6-7pm hour. Whatever the interview of the day is, he should do it.

I’d lose a news anchor too. You don’t need two talking heads. You’d save a lot of money that way – and then at 7pm, the network can play whatever it wants: a soap, Jono and Ben/ X-factor, the type of show that will bring in a big audience.

But here's the thing - enough of the petitions and the campaigns to lobby a commercial broadcaster to save a programme that doesn't make commercial sense.

Enough of the conspiracy theories too that John Key is on the phone to Mediaworks management telling them to axe Campbell Live, because Mediaworks and the Government didn't kill current affairs in this country, the public did.

Kiwis, it seems, just don’t care enough about news.