A little bit country
It’s a ratings magnet, so what is the allure of Country Calendar, asks Alan Perrott.
Still buzzing from Grace Jones’ festival show the previous night, the lads were off to see the sights of sun-soaked Croatia. Apart from one. He was back in their rented apartment, curtains closed and fussing with the VPN (virtual private network) on his laptop.
‘‘You know how it is,’’ says 31-year-old producer Keegan Fepuleai, ‘‘there’s a point in every New Zealander’s life when they start to get interested in Crown Lynn. I’m like that with Country Calendar.’’
His grandmother’s to blame. When his parents were off out he’d be packed off to nan’s and there it would be, every Saturday night, straight after the news. It moved to Sundays in the 1990s.
‘‘That was Country Calendar o’clock. My nan was an avid fan and I got hooked. I did move away from it for a while, but when I was about 23 I watched an episode I’ve been all about that show ever since.’’
To his mind, his sightseeing mates not only missed out – they were downright unpatriotic.
‘‘I’d been away for six weeks, so I just sat on my own for a few hours and caught up – my mates thought I was crazy. But whatever. I’d like nothing more than to be able to produce an episode of that show, maybe on farmers who rent property for outdoor festivals?
‘‘And I don’t know how many products I’ve bought purely because they’ve been on [Country
Calendar]. Do I really need to buy that boutique olive oil? Well, no, but those people sounded cool, so why not?’’
As a committed city-slicker with a lifestyle that’s as urban as it’s possible to be, Fepuleai’s enthusiasm is, let’s say, incongruous.
While he may not have any particular enthusiasm for messing about with cow teats at sparrow’s fart, few things beat a good yarn on a Sunday night.
‘‘They have this ability to tell interesting stories, sometimes very localised stories that span generations. I love it when they follow some crusty farmer back to his home, all gumboots and singlets, and there’s a McCahon on the wall.’’
Clearly, Fepuleai is far from alone in his gentle passion. Country Calendar out-rated Dancing With
The Stars, and doesn’t that give you hope for the
world?
It’s often claimed to be the world’s second longest running show, which, it turns out, is a case of ‘‘yeah, but very much nah’’.
There’s all manner of shows still running strong despite increasing dotage, ranging from Japanese game and talent shows to an Albanian medical chat show and a French religious programme that’s about to turn 70.
If Country Calendar has beaten the odds by knocking out more than 1100 episodes and counting, others are now well into five figures.
But never mind all that. It would be interesting to see the degree to which those other aged shows have seeped into their national subconscious the way Country Calendar has.
Consider two things, the theme tune (Hillbilly
Child) and the joke about strumming a wire fence. There’s little doubt that if the theme had words it’d be our national anthem and who hasn’t tried plucking a fence? That gag was even spoofed for a sheep drench commercial which is as indelibly Nu Zild as calling for mum to get you out of a tree. Let’s put it into context though. When Country
Calendar kicked off in 1966, Radio Hauraki was operating out of a boat on the Gulf, the Wahine was still afloat, and Star Trek was yet to boldly go anywhere.
So yeah, that’s way back in black-and-white times. But wait, there’s more. Both the rinky-dink theme and the fence strumming cockies were the work of one man, Tony Trotter, or dad as political commentator Chris Trotter called him. Surely that’s worth a gong of some kind?
OK, he didn’t write the tune but he definitely found it and filled in the paperwork. And yeah, the fence thing wasn’t exactly all his own work either. ‘‘That episode was his piece de resistance,’’ says Chris Trotter, ‘‘but I think I was the inspiration.’’
While living in the Hutt Valley, Young Trotter, a budding guitarist, would cross the river to go bush and noticed the musicality of fence wire while traversing farmland.
‘‘I mentioned this to dad and I guess he realised the potential of the idea.’’ Kiwi as, bro.
But none of this is to say Country Calendar is unchanging. Nothing lasts as long as it has without knowing how to bend with the times.
Katie Milne, Federated Farmers’ first woman president in almost 120 years, says the show remains popular with rural folk even if they seldom feel like its target audience.
‘‘Sometimes they do go a bit too ‘lifestyley’ and maybe the focus has moved away from conventional farming, but it’s something all the families I know still watch. And how many shows are there now where the whole family can sit down together? That’s a rare thing.
‘‘But really, if it was made by farmers I think it would be quite different.’’
As a West Coast dairy farmer (when we spoke her husband was crook so she was milking alone) she views Country Calendar as a quasi-advocate for rural life.
‘‘The old rural-urban divide isn’t getting any closer to narrowing so it’s a good way to remind people that we’re here. It might only be half an hour a week but I reckon it gives everyone a sense of ownership and hopefully pride in what we do.’’
On the North Island’s East Coast, Esther and Neil Henderson run a 400 hectare sheep and beef farm. They’re so deep in the sticks they don’t have television reception, so they binge watch the show on demand.
Like Milne, they don’t really feel as though the show is for them, but when your nearest neighbour is almost in a different time zone it’s nice to be reminded that you’re part of something bigger.
‘‘And,’’ says Esther Henderson, ‘‘it’s always fun to see people you know on the telly.’’
Even if they seem unlikely to get a go themselves.
They were approached, but the producers backed off when they learned of her husband’s strong beliefs around climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and the ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme).
‘‘They didn’t want to touch a hot potato like that so I guess if we could change anything about
Country Calendar it’s that we’d like to see it tackle some of the big issues. It’s not always sunshine and ‘feel good’ times down on the farm, you know.’’
Expat Dr Donald Reid, now a lecturer in
‘‘Most of the core audience are 9-to5ers who wouldn’t know one end of a sheep from the other.’’ Dr Donald Reid, lecturer in journalism at the University of Tasmania
journalism, media and communications at the University of Tasmania, studied the show’s evolution as part of his PhD into the impact of ideology on New Zealand television.
‘‘To be clear, I don’t want to give the show a kicking, I really like it, but there is no doubt that it is an idealised version of New Zealand. It’s a lifestyle show for people who don’t have that lifestyle.’’
He draws a direct connection between Country
Calendar’s enduring popularity among urban dwellers with the rise of farmers’ markets. It’s all about the image we like to have of ourselves.
‘‘You see stories about farming families where free-range kids ride horses and motorbikes – all the things the city dwellers jammed into cramped houses with no backyards can only dream about.
‘‘We don’t hear if these people inherited their multi-million dollar property or went into huge debt to achieve a certain lifestyle, but the overall narrative is that rural life is more wholesome and healthy than where the viewer is living.
‘‘It’s funny that it celebrates rugged individualism, innovation and this relationship with nature when most of the core audience are 9-to-5ers who wouldn’t know one end of a sheep from the other.’’
Fair enough, as Keegan Fepuleai suggests,
Country Calendar almost serves as his shopping channel. ‘‘There was a great episode about growing hops near Nelson, and who doesn’t like beer? I went out and bought some because of it, job done. It’s all about diversification isn’t it? We have to stop thinking that everything revolves around cows, but it’s also good to be reminded that cool things are happening out in the country.’’