New Zealand television's few weeks of retrospection, as the country celebrated its 50th anniversary of that most pleasing medium, had another go on Prime on Sunday.
Its documentary, 50 years of New Zealand Television, featured archive footage, re-enactment and interviews with the faces and personalities of the past half-century of broadcasting, providing the viewer with not just a hefty dose of nostalgia, but a hardy little twinkle of hope in the darkness.
First though, it is worth calculating the change between July 31, 1962, when the telly first flickered into life in Dunedin, and today.
Back then, viewers had a full four hours of television.
Today, a rough count shows 48 or so channels I have to turn to, each running 24 hours a day, total 1152 hours of television a day.
That's 8064 hours a week, 35,712 hours a month, or 420,480 hours a year.
It's almost enough.
To watch that much television, it would take 144 people working three eight-hour shifts to take in the lot, repeats and all, and there would be no holidays, much less maternity leave or sick days.
It's mind-boggling, but somehow comforting.
Also comforting, after watching the sometimes bumpy ride this country's television industry has taken, was hearing the words of South Pacific Pictures head John Barnett near the end of the show.
His comments followed former TVNZ chief executive Ian Fraser talking about the friction created between charters and public broadcasting for public good on one side, and state-owned enterprises and profits on the other.
"You can't have proper public broadcasting without proper public funding, and you never come anywhere close to it," Fraser opined.
But despite any lack of support from on high, as Barnett's comments suggested, there should always be a market for local content.
"New Zealand content attracts audiences," he said.
"Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune are the top raters on TV2 and TV3, bar none."
50 years of New Zealand Television was a sometimes fascinating look at our television history, with the brazen meddling during the Robert Muldoon years a timely reminder of how far we have come since the country had one state-owned station, with some disturbing political interference.
Timely also was the reminder of the four-hour broadcast time in the early 1960s.
How did people survive?
