What Now is New Zealand's most successful and longest running children's television show and this year celebrated 40 years. Rex Simpson who founded it says it was a platform to grow new talent, and a place where kids were encouraged to get off the couch.
What Now is New Zealand's most successful and longest-running children's television show and this year celebrated 40 years on air.
Rex Simpson, who created the show, says it was a platform to grow new talent and encourage kids to get off the couch.
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Simpson, a former presentations director, started his TV career after making a sideways shift from live radio to state television in 1976, when there were only two channels.
"I was only 21 or 22 years old at the time. There was more of an opportunity to experiment and people were more prepared to take risks," Simpson says.
Experimenting is what Simpson does best.
During his early days as presentations director, he created what he refers to as a segue slot that bridged the gap between a couple of other programmes.
That was a show called Nice One Stu about a cheeky schoolboy who gets up to all sorts of mischief.
When the segment launched, Simpson hadn't informed the executive team who were in shock when it went to air for the first time.
But while they might have been thrown by Simpson's experimental programming, the show became an instant success.
"I recall one time we went to Gisborne and it was like we were The Beatles - we had to have security guards to ensure we weren't being trampled. It was just nuts."
Nice One Stu's popularity gave the executive team the confidence they needed to let Simpson do what he does best - create new content.
And later, that would lay the foundations for What Now, which launched on Saturday 9 May, 1981 from a Christchurch studio.
Starting out as a half-hour show, What Now was founded on Simpson's belief that children's television should be educational, informative, and entertaining. And more importantly, it would also provide children with inspiration and ideas of what to do once they turned the television off.
The irony of making a show that encouraged kids to get off the couch while also transfixed by the show wasn't lost on Simpson.
"It was an interesting conundrum," he laughs.
"By actually having a programme that was all about young people showing what young people could be doing, we actually garnered a large audience."
Getting kids moving, especially in those early days, was a high priority for What Now. At the time, aerobics was taking the world by storm, and for Simpson, it was a no-brainer to incorporate it into the show…