Chris Nichol

Chris Nichol's CV is as diverse as it is long — from musician, Presbyterian minister, and Praise Be presenter, to documentary director and university lecturer. Nichol's screen career began in 1986, when he joined TVNZ's Religious Programmes Unit. He went on to produce long-running religious series Praise Be from 1991 to 1994; from 2007, after the death of presenter Graeme Thomson, he hosted the show full time until it ended in 2017. Nichol also did many interviews for long-running series My God, was the New Zealand producer for BBC Waitangi Day documentary A Land of Our Own, and joined the directing team on New Zealand Stories. 

A lot of our present audience are people who don’t go to church; and that’s a lot of our future audience too. This is why we can’t simply stay with traditional or even contemporary hymn forms. If people don’t recognise the music, they won’t watch it. Chris Nichol on Praise Be, in an interview with Methodist Church newspaper Touchstone, July 2006