Tuesday 1 April 1975
from the NZ Listener
TV One
2.00pm News
2.05 Harriet’s Back in Town
2.33 Medical Centre
3.30 Prisma (B&W)
3.45 Play School
4.10 Spot On
4.35 Filopat and Patafil
4.40 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids
5.05 The Kids from 47A
5.30 Something Else
6.00 The Amazing World of Kreskin
6.30 News
Includes regional news from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin
7.00 TV One Opening Special (aka “This Is Television One”)
9.00 Tonight
9.30 War and Peace: Preview
10.05 Justice
11.05 Closedown
All programmes on TV One were broadcast in colour, unless otherwise specified.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are very welcome. Television One is here at last.” - Dougal Stevenson
TV One began its first day of transmission at 2pm on the afternoon of Tuesday 1 April 1975 with a news summary read by Bill McCarthy. There was also a two-hour opening night special later that evening (at 7pm); it was broadcast live to air from the Avalon Television Studios in Wellington - which although officially opened a fortnight before nowhere near ready for transmission.
Dougal Stevenson was the host of TV One’s opening night special, which was executive produced by Roy Melford, produced by Tony Rimmer and directed by John Whitwell. However, the two-hour special was not an auspicious beginning, with fluffed lines, faulty microphones, a camera failure and an atmosphere of uncertainty among many of the performers themselves about the hyped-up image they were called on to present. The phones went crazy with complaints as viewers reacted to TV One’s deliberate effort to establish that it was not simply a continuation of the NZBC TV network under a different name.
Alan Morris, who had returned from a senior executive position with ABC television in Australia, was appointed CEO of TV One. Bill Munro, an ABC colleague, was appointed TV One’s controller of programmes and brought his knowledge of the competitive Australian television scene with him.
The result was that TV One went to air with a strongly competitive style and an emphasis on personalities and personalities which took us as New Zealanders by surprise - particularly as there was no competition at the time. The image softened in response to the outbreak of criticism from what Munro identified as “the clobbering machine”, but it certainly served to shake viewers loose from NZBC expectations.
The approach eventually developed over the next few months was to present a coherent, packaged, competitive television network, lead by identifiable personalities like newsreaders Bill McCarthy and Dougal Stevenson, and weather girl Tina Carline.
News and Current Affairs
When it came to news and current affairs programming, the NZBC’s Doug Eckhoff was appointed TV One’s controller of news and current affairs. TV One had the advantage with a full national network and several months’ lead before TV2 would be on air, and it set out to make the most of it.
TV One would open its daily broadcasts at 2pm with a five-minute news summary, with the main evening news to follow later in the evening (at 6.30pm). The network employed the youngest of the NZBC television newsreaders, Dougal Stevenson, who alternated with Bill McCarthy fresh from his Commonwealth Games success. It also replaced the regional news magazines with a local breakout of up to 10 minutes within the main evening bulletin.
The evening news bulletin was followed at 9pm with Tonight at Nine, produced by Bill Earl. This was New Zealand’s first serious effort at nightly current affairs. The team included Terry Carter and Shaun Brown as associate producers, and Ian Johnstone, Spencer Jolly, Murray McLaughlin, Barbara Magner, Gillian Woodward and a young Lindsay Perigo and Simon Walker as reporters - with occasional contributions from Fred Dagg (alias John Clarke). It was a hard-working and energetic team which proved that nightly current affairs could work in New Zealand - sustaining it was the problem.
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