Ron Pledger: Praise Be for live TV…

Interview – 2014

Got a major live event you want to put on television? Ron Pledger has long been one of the first people to get on the phone. The MBE-awarded director has commanded live coverage of Sir Edmund Hillary’s funeral, Kiri Te Kanawa in concert, This is Your Life and roughly 20 Anzac Day ceremonies. His screen career also encompasses church choirs, Canadian soap operas, the infamous GOFTA awards, and the madness of Top Town.

In this ScreenTalk, Pledger talks about:

How the music mad saxophone player walked into his first broadcasting job, at Radio 2ZB in Wellington
July 1, 1961: on location for Wellington’s first night of television
Scoring a gig on Canadian-shot soap Moment of Truth
Moving into directing
Golden days in the TVNZ entertainment department, where he created programmes showcasing jazz and dance
Rushing around NZ for town versus town hit Top Town
His take on the infamous, booze-laden Gofta Awards of 1987
The key to pulling off This is Your Life
How he sets about covering major live events
His biggest live gig to date: three hour epic Tomb of the Unknown Warrior
Travelling the country for Praise Be
Leadership lessons learned from his time in television

This video was first uploaded on 31 March 2014, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview and Editing - Ian Pryor. Camera - Jess Charlton

I started to get a little bit frustrated. I'd look through the control room wall to what the director was doing, and Ithought 'oh my god, I could do better than that'. Some of them were just making fools of themselves;they didn't understand where the cameras were, they were crossing them and doing all sorts.
– Ron Pledger on making the move into directing

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