Television entrepreneur Richard Driver has returned to the production sector and has been appointed to head the prolific New Zealand production company, Greenstone TV.
The owner of the former Documentary channel took over as the boss of Greenstone this week and the new Australian owners said that his appointment signals a new era at the firm.
Some aspects had changed in the eight years since he left the industry but the New Zealand production sector remained a challenging business and was built on low margins.
Driver replaces Greeenstone founder and former managing director John Harris who sold the firm to Cordell Jigsaw Zagruder (CJZ) last November and left the firm at the end of June.,
CJZ is the largest independent production company across the Tasman.
Driver recently returned to New Zealand after of period of illness and after he had sold his privately owned Documentary channel to BBC World, which put BBC Knowledge in its former place.
Driver said he had been looking at other pay tv options but the market seemed crowded and had a restraint of trade in owning channels, but not in production.
Driver made his name in the music industry as the leader of the Hip Singles band then as a host of the cult music show Radio With Pictures.
He moved into and became New Zealand managing director of the Australian production company Screentime.
He left there to head the production company "Visionary" owned by Huljich family financial interests before creating the Documentary channel on Sky
Greenstone has built up a strong line up of commercial TV programming that rates well and has sold well to free to air networks in New Zealand and Australia.
Harris built a firm built around documentaries and then formated reality shows such as Border Patrol, Zoo and Highway Patrol, among others.
Greenstone has benefitted from Closer Economic Relations (CER) legal rulings that have ensured that lower cost New Zealand produtions count as local content making them cheap options for broadcasters.
CJZ says Driver will expand the company's slate of programming including drama. A children's drama - Cul De Sac- is currently in production,
Greenstone owns a considerable library of non- New Zealand intellectual property rights.
Its formated reality shows are not time-sensitive are popular with boroadcasters.
They allows networks to fill large blocks of their schedule at a relatively low cost.
They can be run five days a week on free to air channels and have a market for some pay TV channels around the world.
Other large overseas owned production companies accessing NZ taxpayer funding include Screentime, Eyeworks Touchdown and South Pacific Pictures.