Material relating to TV history added to archives

Beauty and the Beast host Selwyn Toogood and his beauties, clockwise from left, Jean McLean,...
Beauty and the Beast host Selwyn Toogood and his beauties, clockwise from left, Jean McLean, Denise Brady, Lorraine Isaacs, Shona McFarlane, Johnny Frisbee, photographed in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
For archivist Vivienne Cuff, cataloguing more than 2000 photographs and negatives of Dunedin's television broadcasting industry has been a trip down memory lane.

Many of the programmes and presenters depicted were familiar visitors to her living room when she was growing up in Milton in the 1970s, she said.

She recalled programmes such as 7.30 South, Town and Around, The South Tonight, Songs from the Shows, Note for Note, You Must be Joking, Any Questions?, Kaleidoscope, Playschool, and Spot On and, later, It's In the Bag, Beauty and the Beast, Top Town and What Now.

She also remembered personalities such as Alison Holst, Derek Payne, Jim Mora, Jim Sullivan, Warwick Slyfield, Cathy Dowling, Eileen Cook, Selwyn Toogood, Dougal Stevenson, and Colin Lehmann.

"I've seen those programmes and those people and I can identify with them. I think it will be the same for a lot of Otago people."

The photographs and negatives were handed over to Archives New Zealand in 2002, after a reunion marking the 40th anniversary of DNTV2's launch on July 31, 1962.

They were a mix of studio publicity shots and photographs taken by staff members.

There were also many scenic shots of Otago taken by the Dunedin outside broadcast unit and a 1962 visitor's book from the DNTV2 studios.

Miss Cuff's job was to catalogue the material and she has also tried to add captions and other information if possible.

Cataloguing was completed last month but Miss Cuff said it would be three or four months before the public could access the material through Archive New Zealand's Dunedin office on George St.

It would add to what Archives New Zealand already had on local broadcasting, Miss Cuff said.

That included many letters written by viewers to the Beauty and the Beast panellists.

 

 

 

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