Pick of the week: Cheers to 50 Years

Fred Dagg (alias John Clarke). Photo / Supplied

On June 1, 1960, AKTV-2 made its first scheduled black and white broadcast from its Shortland St studios. It was two hours long and, for the next four months, Aucklanders could tune into local broadcasts for two hours, twice a week. In October, they were treated to two hours of broadcasts, five days a week. Christchurch and Wellington were able to watch television from 1961 and Dunedin the year after.

It was all very exciting, but New Zealand was a bit behind the times - the British and Americans had been watching the telly since the late 1930s.

Still, New Zealand would never quite be the same - the Goodnight Kiwi and theme songs to local shows like Country Calendar and Shortland Street would make their way into the national psyche. Dinners in front of the goggle box would become acceptable. You would eventually be able to find something on television at any hour of the night or day.

Despite newspaper articles in the lead-up to that first 1960 broadcast warning of mushed brains and disorders like the dreaded "TV Eye", Kiwis rushed out to buy sets. For a while, New Zealand had the most television set manufacturers per head of population in the world.

Coronation Street arrived in 1964 and the longest local running show, Country Calendar, went to air two years later. Fred Dagg arrived in the 1970s and Billy T James in the 80s.

Shortland Street, the soap, not the studio, first aired in the 1990s - remember Rachel McKenna and Chris Warner?

Oh, wait, some things don't change. But Robyn Malcolm was wearing a nurse's outfit, not leathers, and Blair Strang was driving ambulances, not kissing one of the Go Girls.

This Tuesday night, to mark 50 years since that first broadcast from Shortland St, TV One will get all nostalgic with a game show hosted by Jason Gunn.

Gunn will put trivia questions to teams, led by One News' Simon Dallow and presenter and radio DJ Simon Barnett.

On Dallow's team is comedian Dave Fane and actress Lucy Lawless. On Barnett's, Jackie Clarke and Jordan Vandermade. The teams will be thrown questions about historical trivia - like what time the Goodnight Kiwi made his appearance and how Paul Holmes signed off his current affairs show.

More than 100 of television's most momentous clips and advertisements will be scattered throughout the programme to give the audience either a history lesson, or take it on a trip down memory lane.

When: Tuesday, 7.30pm
Where: TV One
What: TVNZ turns the big Five-O