By JAN CORBETT
It has been making wildlife documentaries for more than two decades and boasts 150 international awards, including Emmys won last year by Ian McGee and this year by Mike Single.
But if Natural History New Zealand ever made a documentary about itself, the plot would turn on how this thriving Dunedin television production house was once an endangered species.
Indeed, its history is about as Darwinian as it gets.
It was conceived 23 years ago by the state broadcaster's local manager, who saw that his Dunedin studios could never compete with its northern counterparts when it came to producing news, current affairs and popular entertainment.
The answer was to find specialist niches that its larger relatives were not interested in occupying.
So along with successful children's programmes such as Playschool, the Dunedin studios spawned the Natural History Unit.
But as the sometimes frumpy Government department we knew as the Broadcasting Corporation evolved into the lean and mean state-owned enterprise we call TVNZ, the Natural History Unit feared extinction.
"There have been many times in its life when it has come close to collapsing or being choked to death," says managing director Michael Stedman.
Not that Stedman entirely blames the state broadcaster.
"I'm not bitter about TVNZ," he says. "I'm appalled at Government handling of TVNZ. Every time you get a new chairman you get a change in direction. Every time there's a change of Government there's a change of direction."
Early on, Stedman could see that the state-owned enterprise (SOE) model, requiring TVNZ to pay the Government a dividend each year, made expensive local production vulnerable. His survival instinct told him that the Natural History Unit had to adapt from being entirely reliant on the domestic market to directly selling its work overseas.
The chief factor, though, in its renewed vigour is that three years ago it sold itself overseas and is now part of Rupert Murdoch's Fox television empire.
Being owned by the Hollywood giant has meant "being allowed to get on with it," says Stedman happily.
"You don't have the dead hand of bureaucracy, you don't have the dead hand of ignorance and you don't have the dead hand of politics smothering you.
"I think television in New Zealand has been dominated for so long by political intrigue it has got in the way of the industry."
Stedman and his crew show no sign of developing Hollywood-size egos.
"Individually, there are no great stars here, but collectively we can do really good things. All of us bring whatever skills we have to bear," he says. "Television is by and large driven by prima donnas and egos. What we've done down here is strip all that away so we can use the skills we have to make better programmes."
When Fox bought it, the Natural History Unit employed 40 staff. Now that has grown to 120 full-time positions - jobs taken mostly by New Zealanders, many of whom have defied the trend and drifted from the North to the South.
It employs overseas talent if there's a gap in the skill base.
All Fox demands, according to Stedman, is that the business continue to grow, improve and be self-sustaining.
The last requirement means that "if you make a documentary for $10 you've got to eventually get $11 back from it."
Fox provides the efficient support and distribution systems that make it easier to earn a profit.
Today only 25 per cent of documentaries made by Natural History New Zealand are seen in this country. Stedman has complained loudly that since 1997, TVNZ had bought 29 of its documentaries and then not screened them, including some award-winners.
But TVNZ spokesman Liam Jeory said 18 had screened "or are scheduled to screen" and of the remaining 11 only half have just been licensed for screening. He said: "Programming decisions are made by programmers, not suppliers."
TV3 is currently showing four of the nine-part series Wild Asia.
Right now, Natural History New Zealand has 14 film crews scattered from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to South America and through Asia, making hour-long wildlife programmes for around $1 million each - a third of the cost it takes its largest competitor, the BBC.
At the same time, to guarantee its survival the unit has diversified into medical, adventure and travel programmes, and it also has a publishing arm to preserve in book form the wealth of material its researchers gather for each documentary.
"At the end of the day, we're a group of people who like telling good stories," says Stedman.
Dunedin television unit makes Emmy-winning programmes
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