2012 was rumoured to the last Big Day Out in New Zealand, but I wasn’t expecting to be the first media to hear the news at 4pm Tuesday.

“Part of the problem you’ve got is that we started here when it was 92 cents to the dollar.

“Now it’s about 72 cents to the dollar. And the reason why either a Laneway or a nothing comes here, or comes here once, is that it’s just as expensive to put on as any other country is, and the audience base is quite small.”

That’s what Big Day Out organiser Ken West told me yesterday when I asked why we’re losing the festival, and not getting others like, say, Download or Soundwave.

During my time at TV3, The Big Day Out has been a really hot, sticky, ridiculous event to cover. The best part is most the TV3 crew are mates – so despite the “work”, it’s always felt like a Big Day Out.

I’d gone to the venue to meet with West, who’d just flown in from Australia. I wanted to interview him about the changes that’d been made to the Auckland format.

It was an odd atmosphere – the New Zealand contingent behind the Big Day Out came down to meet me, and looked gutted. In other years, it’d been all smiles.

Then West – the man responsible for the festival – joined us in the middle of an empty Mt Smart Stadium. He also looked gutted.

Then they told me, off-camera, that this was it. The last one. Then I was gutted. We talked about our memories from events gone by, and the roller-coaster this year’s been to actually put on. Then we rolled the cameras – and he told everyone.

“Here’s the hard thing, I've had to make this decision probably in the last half hour after sitting down and being here... this is the last Big Day Out in New Zealand”.

Watch the full interview here.

In Australia, they play five massive shows. Five Big Day Outs.

Then there’s New Zealand: A whole other country, and one show that has a capacity of about 45,000. It’s not massive. It’s New Zealand – we’re a small place. The dollar isn’t with us, either.

Of course people are going to say “publicity stunt”. It’s no secret tickets weren’t flying out the door once Kanye West and Odd Future were axed. These were the acts that made this show feel edgy and exciting. And while they’ll inevitably sell more tickets with this news, the fact it’s cancelled isn’t a stunt. It’s simply sad news for music fans like me.

I talk to one the kindest, funniest men I’ve met at the Big Day Out, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello.

After the cameras stopped rolling, Ken hugged the Kiwi contingent. The confirmation was still relatively fresh news. Everyone still looked gutted.

But West also looked a tiny bit relieved.

“I’m happy,” he said. “I’m happy I don’t have to think about it anymore. Because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time”.

The ‘long’ came out in a long Australian drawl.

So it’s over. But will it ever come back? Ever? The way West answered my question was far from clear – but made it obvious he’s concentrating on Australia’s shows.

But still. There’s some hope to be found with this comment: “I just want to make sure you know that the Big Day Out has an incredible future. And maybe sometime in the future it can come back here. But we’re in a global business now and we’ve got global partners and we have to look at what the world offers.”

He told me he wants to make this last show a good one. That he wants to go out with his legacy intact. And I think he will.

“You should be really proud of the fact we’ve been managing to get 5 percent of Auckland’s population on a Friday - virtually 70 percent of the time. And even then when you go, ‘Oh God that was hard work’, to only lose ‘x’, that’s never the point.

“Art’s art. And it was an artistic creative process that created it in the first place. And it was embraced here. And it stayed here because it was embraced and supported. And it still is supported. But it’s still a business. That’s why they put ‘business’ after music instead of ‘practice’.”

I missed Soundgarden back when the festival started here, and I’m brimming with excitement to see one of my favourite bands ever this Friday for the first time in my life. Sure, the wildcard excitement of Kanye and OFWGKTA won’t be there, but I’m happy to end this festival with Soundgarden, before sneaking over (heck, sprinting over) to see Noel Gallagher.

I hear he even plays a bit of his Oasis stuff. Imagine if it all ended with 'Don’t Look Back In Anger'?

That’d be pretty sweet.

A photo I took of the TV3 Big Day Out team a few years ago. Sam Hayes is in there… and editor extraordinaire Dave Walker. The tanned one in the singlet is Tim, one the sexiest TV3 employees ever… who abandoned me for TVNZ U. The bastard.