NHNZ: Three decades of natural history

It's hard to imagine that a small natural history prodco based in Dunedin, New Zealand - population 118,600 - would become one of the world's largest factual producers and be on track to celebrate its 30th anniversary this year. It's not often that any company lasts for 30 years these days, but NHNZ has managed to survive three decades of trends, new technology and devastating financial changes.

So realscreen took this opportunity to delve deep with MD Michael Stedman and director of marketing and development Neil Harraway to find out just how they've managed to not only survive, but flourish.

NHNZ began life in 1977 as the Natural History Unit of Television New Zealand. With a four-man team and a focus on New Zealand-themed nature programs, directors Harraway and Robin Scholes, producer Graeme Wilson and cameraman Robert Brown turned over a small number of films, but the filmmakers were already showing their talent with award-winning programs like the 4 x 15-minute series Hidden Places.

At the time, Harraway had no idea what sort of longevity the unit would have. "It never crossed my mind. Then, I was just excited about finding these great conservation stories and telling them, and I knew there was plenty to tell," he says.

A year later the NHU welcomed Stedman onboard as the unit's new head and production picked up with a Wild South brand that imbued a new sense of creativity into the natural history genre. (He was there until 1981, at which point he was wooed away to Australia.)

But more people came onboard with NHU and the company had success making popular series about New Zealand for New Zealand audiences. Ten years after Stedman had originally joined NHU, he was brought back from Australia by TVNZ's director general Julian Mounter to revitalize and expand NHU into its own company. That's when a key thing happened: the NHU turned to global subject matter and global audiences.

Stedman credits adaptability as one of the keys to NHNZ's success, and the turn to international subjects was just another instance of adapting to the world market. "We had to learn how to work with a range of broadcasters around the world and, unlike being at the public broadcasters, we couldn't make what we wanted. We had to make documentaries that would appeal to an international market."

That made the Dunedin-based company a small fish in a very big pond. "When I first started going to the markets internationally," recalls Stedman, "it was 'New Zealand? Where is New Zealand?'" There were plenty of refusals before they heard a yes.

In 1997, the NHU changed names and became Natural History New Zealand after being bought by 20th Century Fox.

The state(s) of natural history

Back when the NHU started, the genre was fairly staid. Since then, there's been a world of change in natural history. Summing up the early days of the genre, Stedman remembers, "I think anybody over 40 would remember the 'voice of God'. There was only one style of documentary, typically the BBC style, with the 'voice of God' narrator. The assumption of that was there was one audience. That has changed completely."

Since then, NHNZ has seen many natural history trends become wildly popular only to peter out. Harraway notes that blue-chip, ocean docs and conservation stories have all had their moment in the cyclical nature of the genre.

Sometimes trends make it difficult for NHNZ to conduct business. "In Europe right now there are two things making it harder for us to sell natural history coproductions," says Harraway. "One is they want to make more themselves within Germany and France, which is understandable. The other thing is there's been a wave of popularity of zoo soaps which kind of peaked in America years ago, but they're still very popular in Germany, so that is feeding their domestic desire for natural history. That makes it harder to do big global copros within."

As a result, NHNZ turned to different markets for business. The company had to do more commissions out of America and France. A few broadcasters dropped off their natural history programming, like Canal+ and France 3, so that NHNZ worked with France 5 and ARTE. "We were doing more commissions because copro was harder and that was one way we adapted," says Harraway. "When the ocean stories fell off, we just went to other stories. Our slogan for a few years was 'There's a world of stories,' and that's the great thing about our background. We don't just focus on one way of telling stories or one kind of story."

To its credit, NHNZ also recognized that it was a good business decision to produce in genres beyond natural history like science, history and geology. "When natural history had that downturn we were pre-adapted for it, we were looking out [at other genres]. We'd been doing adventure as well so we were ready to go and we could see the nature market wouldn't support a business on its own," says Harraway.

Stedman believes that assessing NHNZ's skills, filming in specialized ways, storytelling, interpreting science and deciding to diversify are the reasons the company still stands. "Natural history was enormously popular and I looked ahead and believed that can't last because television is an industry of fashion," he says. "With those core skills, you can apply them to medicine, science, history and engineering. We broadened out the base of the company so that natural history wasn't our only output. For those who didn't adapt to a changing market, they became extinct and disappeared."

Technology

The advancement of technology has greatly assisted NHNZ, especially in matters of communication devices. The company went from existing pre-fax machine and global phones to becoming early adopters of the newest technology.

"From color reversal film, not even negative in the early days, to hd and looking beyond with some trepidation to some super-HD and 3D, the technology has changed hugely," says Harraway. "There weren't even satellite phones or faxes when we started, and now we email our rough cuts and fine cuts to broadcasters - the communications technology has helped us at the bottom of the world to be very efficient in world production."