Robert Boyd-Bell

A keen believer in television’s power to communicate, Robert Boyd-Bell has done time in journalism and educational TV, during an extended broadcasting career spanning radio, television, cinema and the internet.

Born in the Taranaki town of Inglewood in 1943, Boyd-Bell grew up in the Waikato before attending Auckland's Dilworth boarding school, where he was head prefect. After studying English and History at Auckland University, he flirted with thoughts of teaching or following his father into the Anglican priesthood.

But broadcasting won out. In mid 1965 Boyd-Bell began at the NZ Broadcasting Corporation, initially as a radio reporter specialising in education and the arts. There were stints at stations in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington. By 1969 he was in Hamilton. Station manager Bren Lowe had established a regional television studio there, and Boyd-Bell joined Tom Bradley and others to create a nightly five minute news insert to cut into the Auckland news.

At the time programmes had to be physically transported round the country's various TV stations before they could go to air; Boyd-Bell recalls that when international news footage arrived by aeroplane in Auckland, it was forwarded to Wellington for local screening, then sent out to Auckland and the South Island to screen the following day.

In the 70s he was back in the Auckland newsroom as a TV reporter and subeditor. He was also active in union matters, as chair of the Radio and TV Journalists’ Association; he recalls meeting opposition from Public Service Association secretary Dan Long after leading NZBC journalists out of the mainstream PSA, and into the more industry focused Broadcasting Group.

In 1974, thanks to a NZBC International Study Award, Boyd-Bell spent six months studying newsroom operations and management in the UK, North America, Japan and Australia. By the time he returned, a new second television channel had launched. Boyd-Bell was appointed News Editor for TV One in Auckland, covering the North Island above Taupo.

Inspired by management systems he’d witnessed in the US, and keen to avoid the hierarchies of the BBC, Boyd-Bell rejected the system of assigning stories to journalists each morning. Instead the team — which included Richard Long, Rob Harley, Chris Harrington, Kevin Milne and veteran police reporter Graham Booth — proposed their own stories each morning. “It worked very well,” recalls Boyd-Bell. “It was a very tight little team.”

In 1976 Boyd-Bell was seconded to Wellington to produce current affairs show Tonight, best remembered for this feisty interview between Robert Muldoon and Simon Walker. It was in its producer's opinion “a classic example of all the mistakes a production could ever make”, including Muldoon being permitted to see his questions in advance.

In 1977 Boyd-Bell returned to Auckland, and the following year he moved to South Pacific Television as Senior News Programme Editor. When the two television news services were combined in 1979 as TVNZ News, he left journalism and began a decade at Auckland University.

Boyd-Bell did time as a Deputy Registrar and Head of the University's Audio Visual Centre, planning media facilities and services for several campuses. Alongside professors Roger Horrocks and Bob Chapman he established the Post Graduate Diploma in Broadcasting — New Zealand's first University level course involving radio and television production.

In this period Boyd-Bell wrote New Zealand Television – The First 25 Years, the 1985 book which is referred to on a near daily basis at the offices of this website. Written for the general reader and commissioned by TVNZ, the book ably met the challenge of summarising a major topic in 200 pages.

Boyd-Bell spent five years as a member of the Broadcasting Tribunal, the Government body then tasked with handling radio and television licences. In 1992 he began five years back at TVNZ. As General Manager of Education Television, he led a new public service broadcasting project. Launched initially in a Saturday morning slot, eTV included open learning courses and minority interest shows covering everything from languages to statistics. “By the time we finished five years later we were running two or three hours a day, seven days a week — profitably.”

When TVNZ made the final call to scuttle eTV in 1997, Boyd-Bell ensured his staff had other jobs and moved to Communicado, where he spent time as head of production, then acting chief executive. There was a brief overlap where he continued to supervise eTV from Communicado’s offices.

During this period Communicado made what Boyd-Bell described as its “biggest TV drama commitment”: back-to-back mini-series Greenstone and The Chosen; he also convinced Robin Scholes that Once Were Warriors should be the company’s first feature film, after being captured by the book en route to a natural history conference.

Boyd-Bell also came up with the idea for a Communicado documentary on the Lawson quintuplets. A later discussion with cartoonist Malcolm Evans over the wartime exploits of their fathers resulted in the award-winning, Evans-narrated documentary My Father’s War in Italy.

2002 Saturday morning show The Knowledge Breakfast proved a harbinger of change in how television would be delivered to audiences. Thanks to the initiative of Boyd-Bell's longtime e-television colleague Gresham Bradley, the show marked the first time a New Zealand programme went out live on both television and the internet. Presented by Liam Jeory and netballer Bernice Mene, The Knowledge Breakfast chronicled developments in education.

Boyd-Bell also spent 12 years as co-director (with Bradley) of company e-cast, plus e-cast's non-profit trust, eTV (not to be confused with the TVNZ slot of the same name). E-cast specialises in hosting and streaming programming over the internet, while e-TV, formed in 2010, took over the task of getting programming to Kiwi educational institutions.

In 2011 Boyd-Bell joined former Billy T James Show producer Tom Parkinson to produce feature-length chronicle Billy T: Te Movie. Long fascinated by “the extraordinary story” of Kiri Te Kanawa, Boyd-Bell then came up with the idea of providing a fresh angle on Te Kanawa, by chronicling her conducting a masterclass of young singers. To be directed by cinematographer Michael Seresin (Angela's Ashes), the film is provisionally titled Kiri Te Kanawa – My Breathing is Singing.

Sources include
Robert Boyd-Bell
'Robert Boyd-Bell: Veteran TV newsman...' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded 28 July 2014. Accessed 28 July 2014
John Drinnan, 'Battle on three fronts' – Sunday Star-Times, 25 May 1997, page F11
Reuben Schwarz, 'E-cast offers TV downloads' – The Dominion Post, 6 March 2006, page C7
Phil Wakefield, 'Multi-million dollar funding for mini-series' – The Evening Post, 26 August 1997, page 10
'Education for early birds' - The Press (TV Week pullout) 21 May 2002, page 1
'eTV introduces distance education this weekend' - The Dominion, 18 January 1996, page 27