V Is for Vintage: Shortland Street TV Studios, Auckland (1960-89)
Channel: Patrick Te Pou
Date: 2020-09-13

Full-time television broadcasting was first introduced in New Zealand in 1960 and transmitted from a converted radio studio at 74 Shortland Street in Auckland. Built in 1934, and registered by Heritage New Zealand as a Category I building, it was once the home of Radio 1YA. These days, it's now known as the Kenneth Myers Centre of the University of Auckland and home to the Gus Fisher Gallery.

It happened on the evening of Wednesday 1 June 1960 at 7.30pm. The small staff collected around the studio included Ian Watkins, an announcer transferred from 1ZB, and Sam Gardiner, a New Zealand broadcaster who had just completed a one-year course in television production in Melbourne.

For their first night they put together a varied package. New Zealand television opened as it was to continues for most of the following 60 years, with an episode of an imported serial. The honours went to the British programme, "The Adventures of Robin Hood".

The next item was "On Our Doorstep", in which Ian Watkins interviewed British ballerina Beryl Grey in Auckland for the Auckland Festival. Watkins earned his claim to be New Zealand's first live television interviewer and Miss Grey pleased the audience as a vivacious and entertaining guest.

Then another import, this time from the US - "The Malls of Ivy". Meanwhile, the studio crew were readying themselves for another insert, and the Howard Morrison Quartet stepped into history as the first New Zealand entertainers to appear on New Zealand television.

As the adrenalin eased in the studio, the programme went on with a British documentary called "Your Children's Eyes", and then the final show for the night - "Four Just Men", an episode from an American adaptation of the Edgar Wallace novel.

New Zealand television was officially on air. However, the big event of 1966 was the commissioning of Studio One at the Shortland Street studios. For nearly a decade it was to remain the largest television studio in the country until the Avalon Television Studios in Wellington were officially opened in 1975, and, before the opening of the state-of-the-art Television Centre in 1989, it was still the largest TVNZ studio in Auckland. For the first time it gave producers and designers some adequate space to work in, i.e. about 240m² of space.

Studio Two was where TVNZ's news and current affairs programmes - such as the Network News (at 6.30pm), Top Half and Eye Witness News - were produced.

Special thanks to NZ On Screen and the staff of Gus Fisher Gallery for the use of these clips. Archive footage courtesy of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (TVNZ Collection).