Book CoverOne of New Zealand’s longest-running television programmes, this documentary series on rural and farming life, which has been screening since the 1966, originally fronted by Fred Barnes. Its continuing popularity suggests that even though most viewers are urban dwellers, they still feel an affinity with country life.

tvnz.co.nz - Country Calendar

nzonscreen.com Country Calendar

Early opening sequence

Country Calendar and Hyundai celebrate a 15-year partnership with the much-loved TVNZ series in 2025

With the highly regarded series set to return to TVNZ in 2025 on Sunday 16 February, Country Calendar and Hyundai are celebrating a successful 15-year collaboration with a brand-new season of Hyundai Country Calendar.

The partnership began in 2011 and remains one of the few New Zealand primetime local shows with naming sponsor rights.

Since its inception in 1966, the iconic show has become the longest running programme on New Zealand television and one of the most watched. On TVNZ 1 each premiere episode of the 2024 season gained an average audience of over 550,000 AP 5+ and on TVNZ+ Hyundai Country Calendar had a total reach of over 176K viewers who generated over 1.59 million streams in AP 13+.

Kiwi audiences return every week to engage with tales of real-life people in farming, fishing, and forestry, as well as horticulturalists, conservationists, new generation farmers, beekeepers, foragers, and sustainability and technology innovators.

Since coming onboard as the naming sponsor of the locally funded and award-winning series, the collaboration between Hyundai and TVNZ remains highly valued and respected by both parties.

“We are incredibly proud to be going into our 15th year of partnership with Hyundai Country Calendar. As a Kiwi owned company, we are passionate about supporting locally produced content and rural New Zealand through our partnerships and our vehicles,” says Hyundai NZ CEO Scott Kelsey.

The Hyundai Country Calendar team has mastered the art of telling stories of interesting New Zealanders against a backdrop of our stunning landscapes. It is quintessentially New Zealand and offers great family viewing.”

Hyundai Country Calendar producer, Dan Henry says “Long standing programme partnerships like this one are rare, and having the unwavering support of the team at Hyundai NZ for the past decade and a half has been fantastic for the show.

TVNZ’s Head of Agency, Karl Laurence-Anderson adds “For 15 years, Hyundai New Zealand has been a proud partner of Hyundai Country Calendar. The show is a cornerstone of our local content, and our partnership with Hyundai has been instrumental in ensuring its continued success. We look forward to many more years of working together to bring these local stories to our audiences."

The 2025 season of Hyundai Country Calendar premieres on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+ on Sunday 16 February at 7pm. Made with the support of NZ on Air.

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Available on DVD:

Country Calendar items at Might Ape.

Music

The theme tune was released as single back in 1979

Calum Henderson at the Spinoff reported that the artist behind Country Calendar’s iconic theme tune is an English production music composer named Alan Moorhouse. The song, originally titled ‘Hillbilly Child’, was the third track on Side B of a record of production music he made for the KPM label in 1970 titled The Big Beat Volume 2.

Books on the show

Book Cover
Barnes, Fred (ed.) Country Calander (1987)

An excerpt from Fred Barnes' informative Introduction in the book Country Calander (1987) which describes the early years of the show...

In the beginning Gilbert Stringer set up Country Calendar. He was an autocratic and shrewd Director General who did his sums well for New Zealand broadcasting. He followed a line of Directors General who had particular abilities in the arts, but it was his strong accounting skills that enabled broadcasting to give substantial support for the Symphony Orchestra, drama and other activities associated with the arts.

Gilbert Stringer's wise husbanding of funds helped us when we started to pay the bills for introducing television to New Zealand. He wanted a rural programme on television and so he set the grinders to work on putting it together. He kept a fatherly eye on it for ever after. Gilbert Stringer's Director of Television was Noel Palmer, who was an excellent boss and very well liked. He encouraged his staff in their programme activities and did his best to provide the equipment and administrative support they needed. In those pioneering days he was just the right person to control and steer a team of swashbuckling extroverts through unknown waters.

Bruce Broadhead also had an early involvement with Country Calendar. He knew the rural scene very well. After graduating in agricultural science from Lincoln College he was persuaded to move north and start rural broadcasts on Radio Station IYA Auckland. His Country Journal programme was a winner because he dispensed with long-winded talks and uninspiring studio interviews and replaced them with lively and informal over-the-fence chats to farmers and the like. Whenever possible he produced radio documentaries about our rural industries and life on the land, and became a familiar sight driving his old bomb along country roads up north and in the Bay of Plenty or lugging his heavy L2B tape recorder around Waikato farms or visiting farmers' field days. He worked hard and well and made his act a hard one to follow. I know! I had to.

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