Roberts, Alan

1960s and 70s TV listings from Christchurch Press hit the web

The addition of late 20th century issues of the Christchurch Press at Papers Past continues. I've noticed that more issues up to the end of 1971 appeared in March 2022, building on the first batch up to 1961 made available the previous year.  Daily listings seem to start from a few days after the first broadcast, but if you hunt around there is mention of earlier screenings and the first official broadcasts including...

Whitemans Valley up for sale

This 10-acre lifestyle block in Whitemans Valley holds a unique piece of our history, having served as a filming location for shows including The Fire Raiser, Peppermint Twist, The Tribe, Wellington Paranormal, Colonial Combat, Country GP and probably a few more.

Filming Country GP at Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

You can have a look online to see if you want to own this piece of local TV history via Opentoview or Trademe. 

Spinning a Yarn ??

Visitor Cory has a request:

I came across your website accidently and was very impressed with the amount of shows that you have in the list and also the amount of shows that good old NZ have made....I have been trying to find a NZ show that was on tv years ago...it was called Spin A Yarn and was only about 20 minutes long.   It features Bruce Allpress and he pretty much told a story to the camera... and it had other actors acting out the story he was telling.   Only myself and a couple of friends remember this show and we can't find it anywhere online or on youtube.  Can you remember this show or does it ring any bells. 

Can't say it rings any bells, and I can't find any mention of a show by this name so it might have another. If you can help leave a comments.

New Zealand's "Lost" TV Shows?

A visitor to the site asked how rare the material in his collection of old beta tapes might be, which got me wondering about the topic of "lost" TV shows.

I know that here in the UK there has been a joint effort between interested parties to try and track TV material down via the Raiders of the Lost Archives List in a similar way to the NZ film archive's film search campaign from several years ago.

I've sent e-mails out to folk I've dealt with in the past asking if there is any coordinated approach between TVNZ, The Film Archive and other interested parties to document which New Zealand shows are missing thought lost (no copies held in archives), and how they might encourage folk to do something with their old off air recording.

Sadly TVNZ never replied.The folks from the film archive and NZ on screen did, saying there's no coordinated approach to the issue, but there was interest in pursuing the idea.

This post from the Mutcat forum gives a good idea of the conditions that applied for TV recordings in local TV stations back in the day:

Subject: RE: BBC Treasure Hunt
From: Little Robyn
Date: 12 Nov 10 - 03:11 PM

Chris, at Channel One, NZBC, in the 60s and 70s, videotape was expensive (2inch wide) and at 15ips, a half hour programme on a metal spool was heavy and took up lots of space.
So unless a producer said "Keep that one" (in which case someone had to find storage space) after a certain period of time the videotape room was instructed to ERASE the tape and put it back in the shelves to use again. Some of the news or sports stuff that they wanted for the archives, was fed through the Telerecorder and a black and white film was made - usually very grainy and of lousy quality.
The methods of recording used today were only a dream then.
I'm sure BBC had the same problems. If a programme was done on film, there was a solid copy, but if it was a studio programme on VT, the tapes were usually wiped. (Except for Wn3366 which I kept hidden behind #1)
Robyn ex WNTV1 VT and Telecine operator, 1968 - 1973

NZ shows were not distributed to other countries in other formats and we didn't have home VCRs until into the 1980s, so no one is sure how much can be found realistically. Most episodes of early shows like Pukemanu, Alpha Plan, Section 7, Happen Inn, seem to be missing, and even later shows like On The Mat, Close to Home etc are for the most part lost as well.

Sadly even with the exposure of some archival material during the celebration of fifty years of TV in New Zealand in 2010 and on the HeartlandTV (2010-2015) channel there hasn't been any great public interest in getting access to the older shows or any strong commercial interest in exploiting the material that does still exist. Even so, if you do happen to have any old New Zealand TV shows on film, beta, VHS, audio cassette, script form, or any other related documents or ephemera please do get in touch so those of us who have an interest can enjoy them.

Televison archives and schedules for New Zealand

The folks at the UKTV focused Mausoleum Club Forum were chatting about where copies of old UK TV shows might be hiding in archives around the world and how to find out what screened in particular countries. I gave them my suggestions for New Zealand as follows:

Archives:
ngataonga.org.nz - New Zealand’s audiovisual archive. Their purpose is to collect, care for and share the audiovisual Taonga (treasure, anything prized) of Aotearoa. They have stewardship of the Television New Zealand video archives which might include a bit of UK material but probably not a lot. Check out the Status of the collection.

Schedules
The Listener was the publication of record for NZ TV broadcasts for most of 20th century. From an archival television perspective their website has always sucked, and the situation is even worse in the aftermath of their temporary closure and sale in 2020/21. As far as I know no one has any plan to digitize back issues so any research on screenings needs to be with hard copies in a library. Pre covid I used the Auckland (NZ) Library collection, and which I lived in Christchurch I would  refer to the University of Canterbury's set. There are some collections of the Listener in the UK llas.ac.uk/resources/ including the University of Edinburgh: discovered.ed.ac.uk.

There are plans in place to add editions of The Christchurch Press up to 1995 to the National Library’s Papers Past website over the next two years, which will help when researching screenings as The Press usually ran daily listings along with some reviews and promotional articles/interviews.

I "borrow" any scans of schedules I happen across on the inter-webs and put them here: TV listings through the years