Setting history straight

The largely damning public response to TVNZ's game show celebrating 50 years of New Zealand television has put a documentary series screening on Prime this Sunday in the spotlight.

Irene Gardiner, executive producer of the historical series Fifty Years of Television, says it should satisfy those viewers who slammed TVNZ's Cheers to 50 Years and said they had hoped to see a more serious analysis of the nation's television history.

"I think in a way that show has acted as a little promo for this series," she says.

Cream Media, the production company behind the documentary, originally offered the seven-part series to TVNZ. It was turned down in favour of something light and humorous - which became the TV trivia game-show hosted by Jason Gunn that aired on TV One last week.

While the producers were originally attracted to TVNZ's larger audience, Gardiner says the advantage of screening on a newer network was they were not forced to skew their story towards a particular channel's history.

"It's not the TVNZ story - although that's obviously a big part of it. But we were able to do TV3 coming on board, Maori Television coming on stream a few years ago. We were able to tell it fairly neutrally because we were doing it for Prime which is a newer, younger channel."

The first 90-minute episode tells television's story from June 1960 until today, and the subsequent six episodes, which are just 60 minutes are built around themes. The seven part series was funded by New Zealand On Air, took a year to produce and comprises interviews with more than 200 faces of television.

Geoff Lealand, an associate professor who lectures in television at the University of Waikato, has built a website for the public to post their views as the series is rolled out.

"I knew the 50 years' celebration was coming up and thought there appeared to be muted response to it. I thought I wanted to provide some space for ordinary Joe Bloggs or Bloggess to share their memories," he says.

Lealand described Cheers to 50 Years as a "missed opportunity" and "faintly insulting". As for whether Prime is the right network for the documentary?

"It's good they are doing it, it would be even better if it was on One or 2 in terms of audience size, but you know, Prime took the plunge. I think Prime generally is quite adventurous in its programming too."

A spokesperson for TV One said the network would have loved to run the documentary on TVNZ 7 but New Zealand On Air rules do not allow a programme to have its first run on their digital channels.

The spokesperson pointed out that as well as Cheers to 50 Years TVNZ had highlighted the celebrations on its news shows, the Ad Show, Country Calendar, The Erin Simpson Show, Studio 2 and currently we have a 5 part series running on its new network TVNZ Heartland called From the Archives, Five Decades.

- NZ HERALD STAFF