Here, after many years, is the news, read by...

JOHN SELKIRK/ Stuff.co.nz

TELEVISUAL TREAT: Jennie Goodwin, who in 1975 became the first woman in the Commonwealth to read prime-time network news.

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Do not adjust your set – it really will be Dougal Stevenson, Jennie Goodwin and Lindsay Perigo reading your breakfast news tomorrow.

TVNZ is marking 40 years since beaming its first national network news bulletin by bringing back faces from the past to read the news between 7 and 9am.

"I can tell you the adrenalin and the nerves are working overtime," said Goodwin, 64, the first woman in the Commonwealth to read prime-time network news when she fronted a bulletin in 1975.

Angela D'Audney is credited as the first woman newsreader in the country, but that was regional and it was Goodwin who was first to go national.

Until that time "women were not considered in the mid-70s to have that credibility, that authority" to talk to the entire nation, Goodwin said. "I was quite lucky the public were quite accepting of it." She was a presence on and off our screens till 1982.

The true first face of the news was Dougal Stevenson, 67. New Zealand television began in June 1960 but it was not until 1969, at 7.35pm on November 3, that the first national news bulletin was read by Stevenson, from a centralised newsroom in the Avalon studios in the Hutt Valley.

He remained a fixture as news anchor till 1980. "I'm never allowed to forget it. Oddly enough, all these years later there are still people who go, `Hello, Dougal, what's the news?"'

Neither he nor Goodwin was a journalist – they were professional announcers schooled in BBC pronunciation. They read from paper scripts, not autocues, and had a telephone on the desk that would ring if there was a malfunction, Stevenson said.

Nor was there a wardrobe, hairstylist or makeup – Goodwin had to buy and apply it herself.

Stevenson remembers most vividly the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics and the 1974 death of prime minister Norm Kirk. "It was a shambles because nobody [in the newsroom] knew how to handle it."

Goodwin helped front the hourly news specials after the 1979 Erebus crash, reading out the names of the dead. "It was a very, very busy and emotional time. Everything had to be handled delicately and the news had to be delivered with a certain detachment without losing that human emotion, so it was a fine balance between the two."

Of complaints about decline in standards and dumbing down of TV news, Stevenson says: "I think it's a valid comment. I'm not quite sure whether it can be criticism, because I think this reflects us and so we must look in our own backyards before we start criticising TV news. We've just changed – in some areas for the worse possibly, in some for the better."

Tonight TVNZ stages a mini-red-carpet function for its old hands, who will watch the live broadcast of the news at 6pm from the studio.