Denis Harvey

Denis Harvey helped make sailing accessible to a wide global audience on both the America's Cup and the Olympic Games. Harvey first got involved with the America's Cup in 1990, after many years directing and producing for TVNZ. By 2000 he was Head of Production and Sport, overseeing multiple departments and negotiating rights for a range of sports. Since leaving TVNZ in 2004, Harvey has continued to provide his expertise with producing sports coverage, through his company Leading Edge. 

Born in Oamaru but raised in Auckland, Harvey got his first taste of television as a competitor on 60s children's quiz series The We Three Show. After high school he headed to Wellington, to work as a production trainee at government filmmakers the National Film Unit. Though Harvey's long sports career wasn't due to kick off for another 15 years, the job gave him an early taste of the challenges of putting sports on-screen. When the NFU made an ambitious feature film on the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games, he was part of the crew, as a production manager.

In 1975 Harvey joined state television. Soon he was soon directing and producing information style shows (e.g. Dig This) that would later disappear as local television grew more competitive. In Christchurch he established a science unit, and produced successful show Science Express. The aim (as Harvey says in this interview) — to show "New Zealand has got all this expertise and all this innovation going on, but nobody knows about it". The show was nominated for three Feltex Awards for Best Information Programme.

While in Christchurch, Harvey also began producing items for TVNZ's flagship arts show Kaleidoscope. By 1986, now back in Wellington again, he was the show's sole producer. He recalls "some great directors, making some really strongly creative television". Attempts to incorporate short round ups of arts events only made him aware that Kaleidoscope should stick to its knitting, and concentrate on more in-depth items.

The following year Harvey was given a new position as TVNZ's Arts Coordinator. As he told journalists late in 1987, the job saw him acting as a central clearing point, channelling information about arts events to regional news, the light entertainment department or Kaleidoscope.

After a four-month Commonwealth bursary in 1989 to study arts and documentary programmes overseas, there was an unexpected change of tack. By the time he returned, the Arts Unit he headed had been disbanded. Instead Harvey moved into sports, and began producing coverage of soccer, Olympics and netball; the latter sport had until then received only cursory coverage by local state television.

Yachts were to become a growing part of Harvey's life. Long a fan of sailing, he headed for San Diego in 1992, and helping lead the team which provided 167 hours of America's Cup coverage for Kiwi viewers. In 1995 Harvey returned to the States, as Team New Zealand won the cup for the first time. Harvey's rise up the totem pole of sports television timed in with major changes in how sailing was handled on television. He became TVNZ's Head of Sport in 1997, and added Head of Production to the title in 2000.

Harvey was part of the leadership team covering six America's Cup campaigns; each time, the TV crews contained a high proportion of New Zealanders. Andrew Hawthorn, another key figure in international yachting coverage, says that Harvey understood the importance of "using cutting edge technology as a tool in the coverage, not just a gimmick" — which led to major breakthroughs in the way sailing was covered on-screen. Harvey writes here about New Zealand's contributions to improvements in sailing coverage. 

Arguably the key advance was real-time graphics, which allowed viewers to 'see' previously invisible elements like wind and tidal currents, and have a much clearer idea which yacht was in front. Unveiled for the 1992 cup and developed by Ian Taylor's company Animation Research Limited, the graphics really proved their worth during the 1995 cup. "They did all the hard work .. my job was to make it work on television." 

Since then, real-time graphics have become a key part of live sailing coverage. When the America's Cup came to Auckland in 2000, Kiwi crews provided race footage which was broadcast around the world, aided by further innovations, involving sending sound and pictures over long distances.

That year, Harvey, Hawthorn and TVNZ veteran Steve Coates won an NZ Television Award for Best Sports Programme for their America's Cup coverage. Hawthorn argues that the success of their work led the International Olympic committee to invite Harvey to oversee sailing coverage during the 1996 Olympic Games. To date Harvey has produced host broadcast coverage of Olympic sailing four times — in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2016 — with Tokyo next on the horizon.

In-between all the drama of live TV, Harvey produced two award-winning documentaries about legendary adventurers. No Latitude for Error (1994) charted an attempt to break the record for circumnavigating the globe: leading the charge, on a 28-metre catamaran, were sailors Peter Blake and Robin Knox-Johnston. Later four-part Edmund Hillary doco Hillary: A View from the Top was named Best Factual Series at the 1998 NZ Television Awards. Harvey was also a producer on two documentaries about America's Cup competitors Team New Zealand. The aim with each was to show "the dramas and the tensions and the passion" of those involved. "Because you've got to humanise it. People relate to people; they don't relate to a boat." 

Harvey left TVNZ in late 2004, but, as colleague Andrew Hawthorn confirms, the sailing world continues to call on Harvey "for top line coverage of sporting events". After a year running daily operations at Prime Television, Harvey set up company Leading Edge Communications (where he is managing director).

Between Leading Edge and international consultancy company Mediadvice, Harvey has continued to advise on and produce a broad range of programmes, much of it involving live events — from Asian and Israeli versions of The Amazing Race ("you survive on very little sleep"), to the short-lived Louis Vuitton Trophy.

In 2013 and 2016 he headed production on the America's Cup. Nominated in multiple categories for both productions, he was one of six people (including fellow Kiwi Ian Taylor) to share a Sports Emmy for new developments in technology, thanks to a mobile app that allowed fans to follow and comment on the races. Harvey had previously shared in another Emmy win, this time for graphics technology which helped make races easier for viewers to follow.

After the 2013 cup, Harvey began working with Attitude Pictures on 50 hours of live streamed coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Paralympic Games.

These days Harvey is Head of TV Production for FISU, a sports federation which runs annual World University Games, in alternating winter and summer editions. He also provides production consulting services to the World Archery Federation.

Profile updated on 9 March 2021

Sources include
Denis Harvey
Andrew Hawthorn
Infofind – Radio New Zealand Library
'Denis Harvey: America's Cup TV mastermind...' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded 29 September 2014. Accessed 9 March 2021
Philip Wakefield, 'Yet more changes for Kaleidoscope' - The Evening Post, 22 August 1986
'New role in arts for producer' (Interview) – The Star, 8 September 1987
'Accent on art' (Interview) – The Auckland Star, 8 September 1987
'America's Cup Goes Mobile with Kiwi App' Animation Research website. Loaded 17 September 2013. Accessed 9 March 2021