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BettinaHollings

  • Programmer
  • Producer
Bettina_Hollings_thumbnail.KEY.jpg

Pioneering TV programmer Bettina Hollings can list launching Shortland Street and being the first woman to head a major local television network among her credits. In 2000, she left TV channel C4 and formed Imagination Television. The company is responsible for making some of New Zealand’s most popular shows, including MasterChef New Zealand, New Zealand’s Got Talent and Grand Designs New Zealand.

Screenography

Give Us a Clue - excerpt
2021 Executive Producer Television
Mark Hunt: The Fight of His Life
2021 Writer, Producer Film
Heartbreak Island
2018 - 2026 Executive Producer Series
Karena and Kasey's Kitchen Diplomacy - First Episode
2016 Executive Producer Television

Biography

Wellington-raised Bettina Hollings studied advertising and communications at Auckland Institute of Technology (now AUT), before she got a job as a media planner at advertising agency Colenso. Three years later, in 1987, she was hired to become one of two programmers at TV2. A television programmer's main task is to place shows in time slots attractive to specific audiences.  

Awards

2017 New Zealand Television Awards
Nominated for Best Lifestyle Programme: Rachel Hunter's Tour of Beauty

2016 WIFT NZ Awards (Women in Film and Television)
Entrepreneurship Award: for founding company Imagination Television

“We need a five-day-a-week soap.”

— What Bettina Hollings said to NZ On Air to pitch Shortland Street, according to Shortland Street producer Caterina De Nave in a May 2008 Listener interview