How a local TV station became a global powerhouse

Otago Daily Times

6 days ago

By Eva Kershaw for Frank Film
It's hard to compare Dunedin to Hollywood.
However, for four decades, the small, academic city in New Zealand's deep south was home to a powerhouse of global documentary filmmaking.
Born in Dunedin's TVNZ studios in the 1970s, Natural History New Zealand – known globally as NHNZ – developed from a government-run unit to an Emmy Award-winning international producer, reflecting not only the growth of an industry, but the evolution of New Zealand's place in global media and the emergence of a strong conservation movement.
One of the unit's earliest series followed the critically endangered Chatham Island black robin out of extinction. There were only seven birds left.
'We came in at exactly the right moment to start telling these stories of hope,' says former frontperson Peter Hayden, 'and the audiences around New Zealand loved it.'
It was new territory. Dunedin TV was known for children's programme production. TV audiences were not used to seeing their own natural environment on screen; and natural history was virtually unknown.
Hayden, now 76, began working for TVNZ's Natural History Unit in 1980. 'Coming down here I thought I'd better go and buy a bloody book about natural history,' he tells Frank Film.
'I went to the Heinemann's Bookshop... and there was no such thing as a natural history section.
'That reflected the knowledge of New Zealanders at the time. We knew nothing.'
On the team with Hayden were producer/director Neil Harraway, film-makers Rod Morris and Max Quinn, and the charismatic and committed Dunedinite, managing director Michael Stedman.
'[Michael] was our leader,' says Harraway. 'Quite a stroppy little guy.'
Using the hidden camera as a 'silent witness' to the natural world, the team put together personable documentaries of the wildlife of Aotearoa: rare footage of takahē and kākāpō, films on bats, sharks, locusts and a range of birdlife.
In looking for a logo, they hit upon the kea, chosen for its intelligence, inquisitiveness, and adaptability – critical traits, says Hayden, for the company's survival.
From 1981 until the early '90s, what was then called the Natural History Unit produced Wildtrack – a nature programme for both children and adults that won the Feltex Television Award for the best children's programme, three years running.
In 1989, the unit produced Under The Ice, the first nature documentary to be filmed under the Antarctic sea ice.
'I don't know what we were thinking,' says Harraway.
Under-water camera housing units were yet to be commercially available, 'so some of the local geeks climbed on in and whipped stuff up like this,' says former NHNZ technician Wayne Poll, gesturing to an early model unit kept in the basement of the company's Dunedin offices.
Despite NHNZ's ingenuity, television was changing, and production in New Zealand was migrating largely to Auckland. In 1991, TVNZ closed its Dunedin studios. While the Natural History Unit escaped closure, its future was uncertain.
Undeterred, Stedman began looking for new funding relationships overseas. Harraway recalls him picking up business cards from the floor and out of waste baskets at a Cannes event.
'Darwin said, it's not going to be the strongest or the most intelligent animal that survives on the planet, it's going to be the most adaptable,' says Morris. 'Michael sort of understood that intuitively, really, that adaptation was where survival of the unit rested.'
And adapt they did. In 1992, in an early co-production with Discovery and Rai3, NHNZ produced the Emperors of Antarctica documentary – a pioneering film on Emperor penguins.
'I think Emperors of Antarctica sold to over 100 different territories around the world,' says Quinn, who devised a hand-made cover to insulate the moving parts of his camera in Antarctica's sub-50 degree temperatures.
In 1997, the Natural History Unit was purchased by Fox Television, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch 'brought a bucket of money,' says Morris, and supplied the team with funding for equipment they desperately needed.
Stedman forged co-productions in the USA, Europe, Japan, and China. As a fan of science communication, he helped build a post-graduate diploma in natural history film making at the University of Otago.
'We were into science, we were into health, we were into adventure,' says Hayden.
As Stedman said in a 2001 TVNZ interview, NHNZ focussed on reading the market in order to make programmes that would appeal to their audiences, 'as opposed to a British system where they would make a programme that they wanted to make and then go and look for a market for it.'
At its height, NHNZ had $50 million worth of documentaries in production. It was working on up to 20 films at any one time and employed 200 people.
'When it started, there was about five of us,' recalls Hayden.
New Zealand was a hard audience to break into.
'I don't think New Zealanders were seeing a lot of these programmes,' says Hayden. 'I remember Michael saying, you know, you're selling to so many countries, but one of the hardest countries to sell to is your own country.'
Internationally, NHNZ's reputation shone. Among numerous other awards, the company's films earned multiple Emmy nominations, and won Emmy awards in 1999 and 2000.
In 2011, Stedman's health declined.
'The golden years were over,' says Morris.
'From Fox buying us in 1997, those fantastic years of growth and spreading its wings had sort of got to the end of its road,' says Harraway. 'The market had changed from the good film-making we liked. Reality kind of took hold.'
Stedman resigned in 2013, and in the decade following, NHNZ scaled down.
In 2022, a much smaller NHNZ was sold to Auckland-based Dame Julie Christie. With the company re-branded to NHNZ Worldwide, just three staff remain in Dunedin.
With this month marking three years since Stedman's death in 2022, the original NHNZ team gather around a TV unit, watching a video of Stedman giving a speech.
'It sort of brings the dear old man back to life again,' says Quinn.
'He was an extraordinary person,' says Morris. 'He sponsored us for a period of time so that we could fulfil our dreams.'