From handy cam to telly land

Not many television personalities began their careers after being whacked by an uncle brandishing a cricket bat during a 'family friendly' game on Christmas Day that resulted in an all-out brawl. Neither are there many television producers who cracked the industry using a handy cam for the very first time.

But Matt Watson - presenter and producer of the ITM Fishing Show in New Zealand - tends not to do things by halves. His swashbuckling tackle of a marlin catapulted him on to the world stage but a cursory look at his formative years hints that he always going to succeed at something, if not everything.

He sat bursary at James Cook High School in Manurewa and wanted to go commercial fishing. But the boat belonged to the bat-and-smack uncle so with that prospect untenable he became a roof tiler. By the age of 23 he had his own company employing nine staff, a mortgage-free house and some sections he wanted to build on. His future looked set except....

"I wondered what the hell I was doing breaking my back tiling. I had always wanted my own boat so I decided to sell the business and sections, come to the Far North, get my skipper's certificate and go fishing."

First, though, he took off to England to play rugby in Lancashire because he'd told someone he met in Rarotonga that he would, as you do. He came home, got married and he and Kaylene started a family before he even had a job which shows that edginess again, the risk-taking. After a stalled start because he had busted his knee at a bierfest in Germany, he landed a job on the charter boat Prime Time and how appropriate that name would become to his life. A couple of years later he joined another charter boat, Ultimate Lady.

"The crew were all under 26 and had the run of this incredible boat. We discovered the Wanganella Banks in2003 and were averaging 12 marlin a day which was out of this world. On our best day we caught 21 and I was pinching myself that we were pioneering new fishing grounds."

After a couple of years he realized going to sea meant leaving the family behind and coming home made him more excited than departing port. He felt he had to do something different. He'd watched fishing shows and always thought he could make a goodie and the small point that he'd never touched a handy cam before didn't stymie his belief. This naïveté, as it turned out, was probably his greatest asset. He bought a camera by borrowing on the equity in his house and went home to tell his wife he'd got them into debt and was throwing in his only paying job to make a television show. In a remarkable demonstration of faith, Kaylene said she knew he would do it.

"I taught myself how to use the handy cam then got a pencil camera and made a housing for it out of an old torch to film under water because no-one on those other shows was getting close to the fish. I approached everything as a fisherman not as a television producer."

There were other aspects to television production he knew nothing about so he roped in a mate knowledgeable with computers. They got some pirated editing software out of Thailand for $5, loaded it on to the PC and used up so much RAM it crashed every five minutes. They were working in a laundry and in between crashes taught themselves how to edit.

Finally they had a 30-minute show but rolling the credits with just two names didn't seem right says Matt Watson, exhibiting a mastery of understatement. Network executives would never believe so much could be done by so few.

"We watched the credits on Days of Our Lives and wrote the jobs down on the back of an envelope. We used the names of our mates as lighting director and key grip and all that stuff and they stayed there for about three years. When we finally took them off they got upset!"

The show was funded through sponsorship and offered free to the networks. Matt Watson still rolls his eyes at how much things cost in 'telly land' and how much agencies charge to create the graphics he and his mate produced in a day. Today, Tightlines Television employs five full time and several part-time staff and the shows are sold to 16 countries worldwide. The show is on Discovery Channel, the largest network in the world, and was the first show to be aired concurrently with Animal Planet. That's in addition to winning numerous television awards.

Who said it couldn't be done? Not Matt Watson. He dived in hook, line and sinker and this is the result.