Gregory, Prudence

Stimulating talks and interviews for afternoon TV

From the New Zealand TV Weekly. March 20, 1967

Towards the end of next month the NZBC will start broadcasting 2 p.m. on week days. The programmes will be slanted towards women and each channel will have a charming, well-groomed lady to introduce an afternoon edition of talks, interviews and demonstrations. Miss Prudence Gregory, who has been put in charge of these new television hostesses, is known to have a rather strong aversion to the label "Women's Programmes" and other, similarly limiting titles, because they are inclined to suggest to viewers entertainment restricted to flower arranging and dress-making classes. As Miss Gregory enjoys the cut and thrust of debate, she hopes to include panel discussions as well as political comment and it would therefore be misleading to think of afternoon television as being only ‘of interest to women.' But, at the time of writing, no one in the NZBC has thought of a title for the new weekday afternoon programmes. It would be refreshing if the Corporation followed the lead of one of the brighter London newspapers, which has decided women's pages are a journalistic anachronism and has thrown them out. Good wishes to the NZBC if it also strikes a blow for the emancipation of the sexes and dreams up a title for week-day television that neither includes the word "women,' nor the adjective, 'feminine.'

From all accounts, good thinking is going into week-day, afternoon television, and viewers, male and female, should find each daily edition stimulating, especially as Miss Gregory hopes to get her television hostesses riding around the countryside in OB vans, picking up bright stories outside the studios. As many interesting people as possible will be crowded into each programme and we suspect that the Town and Around team on each channel is going to discreetly 'borrow' some of these afternoon interviews for re-screening in the evening.

Q. What was your earliest ambition?

A. I can remember when I was in Standard 2 in a Napier school, I wrote an essay on "What I Want to Be" and that was, "A Famous Novelist." Not just any old novelist. I haven't achieved that objective. But I liked writing and even freelanced at High School and got some bits published, including one terribly sentimental piece about Napier having risen from the ashes of the 'quake. Everyone said a girl couldn't be a newspaper reporter and there was nothing else I wanted to be. Then, on holiday at Palmerston North I saw an advertisement for Lady Editor for the Evening Standard. Applied for it and got it. Then, ten months later, I became a general reporter on the Gisborne Herald.

Q. When did you move into broadcasting?

A. I had left my newspaper job and gone over to Australia for four months. I did not like it very much and so returned to Gisborne wondering what I should do. It was 1949 and I heard about the new radio station being built. It was 2XG. I went along, up stairs covered with shavings and paint cans, and found the officer in charge. I asked him for a job as programme organiser, not really certain what that title really meant. Turned out that job belongs to the station manager's deputy and so I became a shorthand typist. Last thing I wanted to be . . . but as things turned out I did all sorts of other things. Then, when the station held auditions for the new women's programme, I asked if I could apply, did, and to my utter stupefaction got the job. I stayed a year and then was transferred to Wellington to assist the Supervisor of Women's programmes. Principally a scriptwriting job."

Q. At what time were you first introduced to television?

A. I stayed in radio, moving about different stations . . . At one time I was Women's Hour personality at 4ZB and I also took 15 months leave to look around England and Europe. On my return, I suddenly found I was in television. In August, 1961 I joined WNTV1, three weeks after the station went on the air. It was dreadful and marvellous being in at the beginning. We had one studio and one office. How the technical people and Ashley Lewis, the programme organiser, got the programmes on, I will never know. On the whole, I just did what I was told. I did a lot of internal things that don't show: programme logs and writing continuity, for example. I did some news work. Somewhat unnerving to find myself, as I truly did, down at the Cenotaph expected to direct a very good and very experienced cameraman from the Film Unit to get a newsclip on some visiting sailors laying a wreath. Out in the middle of the street, a small island of two and a huge tripod camera, me with my arms full of film. I think Cyril Townsend and I did the first really topical SAME DAY news item at WNTV1. That dreadful storm when the Canberra couldn't berth. But as she decided not to come in, We covered the storm instead. That was the day the All Blacks actually played the French in a 90 m.p.h. gale at Athletic Park. I can still see the goal-posts waving in the wind. Was blown flat against a fence . . . Then visited other places, yacht harbour and so on. At each point a dreadful struggle to get Cyril and camera out of car without losing door, then getting door closed, then getting me out. After a while we left me in the car and I just helped from the inside dragging him back in. We rushed the film back to the studios, but we had so little time that in the end the film was screened and I spoke the commentary, live. I wouldn't have missed that year.

(Just as Prudence Gregory was contributing towards the pioneering days of New Zealand television she was presented with the opportunity of administering women's radio programmes. She accepted the position as Head of Women's Programmes and held it for three years. In 1964 she was granted leave to go to America to study radio with a State Department Grant under the American Cultural and Educational Programme. There she spent most of her time ‘donkey-deep' in non-commercial television which produces many top-quality shows on a shoe string budget. While visiting Denver she heard a radio programme that gave her the idea of "Person to Person," the telephone talk programme that is broadcast each afternoon from the commercial network.

Listeners are invited to telephone their local station if they are seeking some specific information or advice and other listeners are invited to phone in replies. It has been a great success. About a year after returning from America, when the NZBC had decided to extend television broadcasting hours to week-day afternoons, Prudence Gregory was asked to supervise the women who will present the afternoon programme from each of the four channels.)