Asia Downunder : Series 13 Episode 40

Asia Downunder (ADU) is a weekly magazine programme for and about Asian New Zealanders. ADU covers a range of stories from news and issues to profiles, arts, sport, business and travel.

Asia Downunder is produced by Asia Vision, a company owned by Melissa Lee and business partner Robin Kingsley-Smith. Kingsley-Smith was hands-on in the making of the programme for its first few years. Lee went on to head up the production team.

Asia Downunder produces 40 episodes per year of ADU, though with some repeats the series usually runs longer than 40 weeks. About 35 episodes are in a magazine format, with a handful of half-hour specials, usually documentaries. Henna On My Hands is an example of an ADU documentary that explored an issue in depth - in this case an Indian arranged marriage. Henna On My Hands won a Japan Prize for Educational Media in 1998.

As a well-established programme with extensive networks within the New Zealand Asian community, ADU has been able to gain access to stories that may not otherwise have aired. The moving profile of young actress Yvonne Tan, filmed as she was dying of a brain tumour is an example of this. ADU has also broken stories that have been picked up by major news outlets, such as the story about the availability of abortion pills on the internet amongst young Asian women which hit the headlines in 2004.

In 2008 for the first time ADU began to film stories from Asian countries on a regular basis. Street Talk is a segment added in recent years, where people on the street are given an opportunity to air their views on a particular topic from whether boy racers should be banned, to "how safe are Asian students in New Zealand?"

Like many of New Zealand television's special interest programmes, Asia Downunder has been a training ground. Many young reporter/directors of Asian descent got a start on ADU. It has also attracted the talents of more experienced Asian media professionals. The ADU roll call includes the likes of Lynette Forday, Bernadine Lim, Kim Webby, Solina Song, Geeling Ng, and many others.

Asia Downunder began on TV  ONE in 1994 under the title Asia Dynamic, which changed in 1999 to Asia Downunder. When the programme began, NZ's Asian population numbered around 100,000, by 2006 it was 355,000 and growing. By 2021, the Asian population is predicted to number 14 per cent of the total New Zealand population.



Presenter Melissa Lee has been with ADU since the beginning and she has become an icon in New Zealand's Asian community. In 2008 she entered politics with a placing on the National Party list. Reporter/director Bharat Jamnadas has also been with the programme since it began. He often fronts the weekly cooking segment, which is one of the programme's most popular features.



Since its inception ADU has screened in a weekly Sunday morning timeslot on TV ONE. More recently the series has been picked up by a range of regional channels where some of them screen it in primetime. In September 2008, Asia Downunder was introduced to television viewers in Queensland, Australia.