Derek Morton
Derek Morton is one of those happily unsung industry all-rounders who has tried a little of everything: from documentaries and children's TV to underground films, doing time as a cameraman, editor, writer, producer and director (from commercials and docos, to trucking drama Roche), as well as running his own production company.
Peter Harcourt
Best known for his many decades in radio, Peter Harcourt's career also included books and varied screen appearances. In the 60s he and his wife Kate Harcourt fronted Junior Magazine, one of our earliest children’s TV shows. Peter went on to act on Gloss and present the Mobil Song Quest, though his most famous screen appearance runs just 21 seconds – a 60s era underwear ad which was originally rejected as too risque to screen.
Douglas Drury
Douglas Drury was one of a group of producers who lead an expansion of local television drama at a time — the mid 60s — where New Zealanders rarely saw their own stories on screen. Later, as second in command of state television’s drama department, he helped launch landmark series Pukemanu and initiated NZ's first situation comedy, Buck House. Drury passed away in Australia on 5 February 2016.
Brian Edwards
Brian Edwards began making his reputation in the late 60s as one of the country's toughest television interviewers. In 1971 an Edwards interview on current affairs show Gallery famously helped end an ongoing post office dispute. He went on to present a host of interview-based shows, and played a big hand in creating longrunning consumer rights show Fair Go.
Barbara Magner
Barbara Magner won many fans when she brought her lively, personable style to 60s era magazine show Town and Around. Born in the Waikato, Magner began her broadcasting career on state radio, then in the 60s moved into continuity announcing on television. Further television gigs followed into the 70s. Magner passed away on 12 July 2014, at the age of 77.
Brian Latham
Brian Latham was behind the camera on some of New Zealand's earliest drama series, including Pukemanu and Section 7. Latham left his native England for Aotearoa in the early 60s. He worked in Wellington for the National Film Unit and the NZ Broadcasting Corporation, then did many more years of television in Auckland. He was also a stills photographer. Latham passed away on 15 June 2018.
Max Cryer
Max Cryer’s career as an entertainer has encompassed pioneering live talk shows (Town Cryer), singing on stage and screen, and extended time in the United States. After a busy decade of television presenting beginning in the late 60s, Cryer went behind the scenes to produce a clutch of quiz shows —before a late flowering as a prolific, bestselling author, exploring his love of words and Kiwi culture.
Bill Sheat
Bill Sheat has applied his legal and organisational skills across the arts in Aotearoa, to influential effect. He was pivotal in the setting up the NZ Film Commission, and was its inaugural chair from 1978 to 1985. Sheat also spent time as chair of the Queen Elizabeth ll Arts Council, helped fund John O’Shea's 1960s musical Don't Let it Get You, and played a role in ushering Geoff Murphy’s Goodbye Pork Pie to the screen.
Peter Coates
If director and producer Peter Coates was a superhero, he’d surely be ‘Renaissance Man’. His contribution to championing the arts on television is arguably heroic, and his career multi-faceted. From 1971 to 2004 Coates produced, directed or scripted hundreds of TV productions covering a smorgasbord of topics, from operas to soap operas, and from portraits of New Zealand artists to rugby coaching films.
Allan Martin
Allan Martin, OBE, worked as a television executive on both sides of the Tasman, but had his roots in programme making. He began making TV in England in the early 60s. Returning home, he developed influential programmes for the NZBC in Compass and Town and Around. Headhunted by the ABC in Australia, he returned to NZ in 1975 to set up the new second channel, and later became Director-General of TVNZ.