TVNZ gives up in fight for Decision 08

It is common practice for a television news show to give their election coverage a catchy title and logo, but what happened when both of New Zealand's major networks decide they liked the sound of the same title? One of them had to give in.

Election coverage titles have differed over the years, in 2005 TVNZ used "Decision 05" while TV3 used "Vote 05". However, for use during the the current general election TV3 decided back in September 2007 to develop the Decision 08 brand with ownership rights and an internet domain.

Paul Gallagher, editor of TV3's Decision 08 website, said that "due to a leak of our sensitive commercial information that unfortunately got into TVNZ hands".

TVNZ launched their "Decision 08" website under the platform of tvnz.co.nz around the same time TV3 launched decision08.co.nz leaving many people wondering why the two networks had given their coverage the same title - especially when it was obvious one had acquired the rights to the internet domain name.

A couple of weeks later, after much discussion of the issue over the internet, it seems TVNZ have realised they were fighting a loosing battle and changed the title of their political coverage to "Election 08" (as seen in the logo above).

This strange turn of events leaves us wondering why TVNZ ever decided to bring back the "Decision" title to their coverage in the first place.