Shortland Street - History

History

After the cancellation of Gloss, Television New Zealand noticed the lack of New Zealand content on their show and in 1990 set about creating a local equivalent of Australian soap Neighbours. $10 million was given for an initial 230 episodes. Caterina De Nave was hired as the show's producer and subsequently travelled to Australia to work with Grundy Television to work out an idea for the five times a week soap. TV2 programmer Bettina Hollings suggested the setting of a hospital after reading an article detailing ideal locations of a drama, which included a hospital, a police station and a school. De Nave worked with several storyliners including Jason Daniel and they worked out an outline of the show.

De Nave noticed Neighbours and Home and Away had a generally straight forward Australian cast and wished for the cast of her show to be culturally diverse to reflect New Zealand. She also wanted the cast to have strong female characters to attract the necessary female audience. Daniel created the character of Kirsty while De Nave created Meredith and Ken Catran created Hone. The character of Stuart was originally planned to be gay but the plans made TVNZ nervous and were scrapped. De Nave also wished to counter-stereotype races and made Polynesian Sam Aleni a paramedic as there was only one paramedic of Polynesian descent throughout New Zealand. De Nave decided to make the setting that of a private hospital as it reflected New Zealand medicine at the time.

The working title was The Shortland Street Project after its planned filming location in a TVNZ-owned studio at 74 Shortland Street in Auckland Central. However, the studio was found to be too small for the required sets, and the production studio was moved to a warehouse in Browns Bay. After running through many name options, the original working title was chosen and subsequently truncated to simply Shortland Street. The name subsequently is a homage to the Shortland Street studios, which were home to New Zealand's first regular television broadcast in 1960, and were home to TVNZ and its predecessors Auckland operations until TVNZ moved to its new purpose-built television centre on Victoria Street West in 1990.

Ratings were originally high after a successful marketing campaign but fell steadily throughout the year until 1993 when they rose dramatically. The show would have been cancelled in the first year if it was not for the fact TVNZ ordered a years worth of episodes.

With high public interest in the show and a viewing figure of a constant 600,000, Shortland Street received more sets and the nursing uniform which was considered outdated was redone. In 2000 an Australian consultant drastically changed the show so that it would suit the 21st century tone of New Zealand. This included transitioning the hospital to a public hospital, bringing in low income families and writing off 14 characters. Michael Galvin and Angela Bloomfield were brought back as their characters Chris Warner and Rachel McKenna and the show received a new producer.

The show reached huge ratings in 2007 when a serial killer storyline was introduced, with five characters meeting their demise. Episode 4000 saw the return of series original Dr. Hone Ropata for a six week stint in 2008.

Shortland Street aired its first ever 90 minute episode on 2 August 2010. The episode featured Chris discovering he had a son with series original Alison Raynor in 1996, and the conclusion to the three-year Kieran Mitchell storyline which saw the shows second highest ever ratings. On 18 April 2011, Shortland Street screened its first episode in high definition.

In July 2011, Shortland Street achieved a New Zealand first when it made its 2011 feature length episode available to purchase via Facebook, becoming the second ever TV show in the world to utilize this technology. In August 2011 All Blacks Keven Mealamu, Anthony Boric and Jerome Kaino filmed a scene that aired on the opening night of the 2011 Rugby World Cup on 9 September. The show would also have reshoots to incorporate the wins or loses the All Blacks endure during the tournament.