Tuned in: New Zealand television celebrates 60 years on screen

History does not record the name of the person who flicked the switch from the "Off" position to "On" 60 years ago and changed New Zealand forever.

We do however know other details. It was June 1, a Wednesday night, and fittingly, occurred smack bang during prime time, 7:30pm. From a building in Shortland Street - the name would later be made world famous in New Zealand when it was repurposed as the title for a soap opera in 1992 - our first official television transmission had begun. Beaming out from downtown Auckland to unite the country.

A mere two hours later the first official television transmission in New Zealand would cackle to a close. Leaving behind only static and a promise of the future.

For six weeks it carried on like that. Two transmissions a week for two hours a pop. The following month, TV gave the people what they wanted: more. Broadcasts cranked up to a whopping four nights a week.

It seems so quaint. Ridiculous even. Here in 2020, we can watch damn near anything we want, whenever we want, for as long as we want, any time we want on any number of devices we own.

Was this revolution televised? Did I miss it? Because my first reaction to hearing that TV in NZ was turning 60 was one of disbelief. 60? Is that all? Are you sure? It feels like it should be much older.

"Yeah, I guess. 60 years is a reasonable stint though," Kathryn Quirk from the online television web archive NZ On Screen says. "But I know what you're saying. It's television in New Zealand. Television was around in the world longer than 60 years."

Quirk and her team at the site, which offers around 4000 local titles from the beginning to the present day all available for free streaming, are celebrating the milestone by releasing a collection of 60 defining moments in New Zealand television. It's a celebration of the serious and the silly side of our broadcasting history.

"It wasn't an easy task," she says of curating 60 years down to 60 memorable moments. "When I first started the list it was pre-Christmas. It was quite hard. The original list happened over a matter of days and it's been evolving since then. It's changed again today actually."

Her natural inclination was towards the lighter and funnier side of our viewing experience, mainly because that content is the most popular on the NZ On Screen website, and who doesn't enjoy a good laugh. But she wanted the list to be well balanced and offer those serious, harder-hitting moments that can be considered pivotal in broadcasting. There also had to be room for important milestones such as the introduction of colour TVs and the launch of TV3 in 1989.

"The list is not all instant gratification. Arguably, it should be in this day and age because that's what everyone wants. But there's deeper stuff in there as well. Given what we do as a site it seemed appropriate to recognise those moments as well," she explains. "Hopefully I've got the mix right. There will be things in there where people go, 'why is that on the list?'. But that will be different for different people."

The hard part, she says, wasn't making sure they had enough moments, nor was it narrowing an overflowing list down. The difficult part was not leaving anyone, or anything, off.

"Honestly, as recently as two weeks ago I went, 'Oh no, I left Billy T. James out!'," she laughs. "How could I have done that?"

She's laughing now, she wasn't at the time. But she says she's "relieved" they had time to catch any oversights before the full list goes live on site on Monday.

"There was no pressure because it's fun. And we're not positioning it as a definitive list. The collection will come out and there will be a dreadful oversight, I'm sure," she smiles. "I hope not, but there may well be..."

That's the other bit of important info. They haven't compiled a ranked Top 60 countdown. Rather, it's intended as a celebration of television and the collective impact it's had on our small nation.

You'll find significant and memorable moments from news and current affairs, light-ent programmes and even some TV commercials. Though, when you think memorable New Zealand television you don't necessarily think of paid advertising.

"No," Quirk agrees. "But the older ones like Crumpy and Scotty are quite significant in television and the history of television. Ghost chips is another one. It would have been wrong not to have them in. At NZ on Screen we're agnostic, we're all about television not a particular broadcaster, and we're about commercials too, to a point, because they are TV moments and they do resonate and have that longevity. They're really popular content on our site so it seemed wrong to exclude them."

Having spent months and months sorting through and viewing our history I wonder if she ever felt like she was living in the past.

"No, I love it," she smiles. "Tapping the nostalgic veins is a really powerful thing to do. There's some absolute gold, not just in this collection, but in a lot of the content we have on our site."

But it's not all bad haircuts and terrible fashion choices in the deep end of the NZ On Screen archives.

"You look at stuff from the 60s and 70s especially and you realise how little has changed," Quirk sighs. "So much has changed and so little has changed. A lot of environmental stuff, a lot of the things we are complaining about now were a problem in the 70s and we've done nothing. Nothing! I find it a really powerful thing to look back at."

But that's the past. What of the future? Where to for television from here? Life begins at 60? In this age of streaming and YouTube and TikTok, the blunt answer is probably not.

The humble TV still holds one ace, however, that not even the ever-increasing number of streaming outlets can match.

"Broadcast television can deliver to a broad audience and offer a shared viewing experience. So long as it has that point of difference it's going to have a life because that's really important for people," Quirk says.

And while there's more content available to watch now than ever before, she questions whether that volume is sustainable or even desired.

"There's only so many hours in the day," she says. "You don't want to spend them all with a screen in front of you."

LOWDOWN
Who: Kathryn Quirk, content director for NZ On Screen
What: New Zealand TV's 60 Greatest Moments
When: The complete collection can be viewed at the NZ On Screen website from Monday.

Go to NZ On Screen from Monday June 1 to vote for your favourite moment and be in to win $5000.

Then listen to Coast Breakfast from Tuesday to enter the Coast Stars Kiwi Icons competition for another chance to win

Watercooler Moments

Behind every great story is... a great story. Here's the inside story on three pivotal moments from the people that were there.

The initial trigger had been the strange phrasing from a reporter who, in describing the bowel movement of an alleged sexual offender at the scene of the attack, called it an "emergency defecation situation".

The fact it was so inappropriate to giggle at the end of a serious story made it even harder to control the laughing. Even more inappropriate was laughing through the story which followed, about a suicide bomber on a plane in Somalia.

As hard as it is to tell yourself sternly that you "HAVE" to stop giggling, you reach a point where you just can't.

It's not my proudest moment but I didn't lose my job that day and, apart from a small handful of outraged viewers, most people forgave me.

On Face to Face, we had a policy of running the interviews as live, even if they were pre-recorded, as this one was. We agonised about it but decided to be true to the policy and leave it as was, and retired to our cameraman's hotel room to watch it go out on-air.

I shut myself in the bathroom with the tap running so that I couldn't hear it, and I've never seen it.

Mind you, I never watched any of them... I have a face for radio!

Havoc and Newsboy's Sellout Tour: Gay Man's Rock

When you arrive in the country music capital of New Zealand and park in the centre of town by the enormous statue of a leaping brown trout, it's easy to be lost for words.

If you happen to be still suffering from a rather boisterous post-Miss NZ Contest night out in Dunedin as well, then identifying which fun facts or fascinating tales about Gore to put in your TV show is challenging.

So... you explore your options. In our case, one of the options was to make something up. So we did. We said Gore was the gay capital of New Zealand. Ha ha, great idea. What could go wrong?

So began an unintended but very timely social experiment, and a gag that just keeps on giving.

We honestly never even thought it would end up in the show, but I'm glad it did. Homophobia has always baffled me and there is no place for it in the world. Although it has caused some prickly moments on occasion since, it's still very funny and I'm awfully proud that it made NZ On Screen's top 60.

*For more of these stories visit the NZ On Screen website.