Tracking Shots
Close Ups on NZ Film History
What About Their Eyes?
“It’ll be lovely. It’ll be gorgeous. We won’t have to go out. We can stay home and be entertained.”
Will children stop playing sport? Will families stop talking to each other? Will delinquency increase?
That was what New Zealanders worried about with the coming of television. It started very quietly in 1960 screening just two hours a night, two nights a week. Commercials started the next year and by 1963 they were on three nights a week.
By 1968 it was estimated that more than 75 percent of New Zealand homes had a TV. And it crushed the movies. Between 1960 and 1966 a third of picture theatres closed as the audience halved.
