Shortland Street

Shortland Street is a New Zealand prime-time soap opera centring on the fictitious Shortland Street Hospital, first broadcast on TVNZ 2 on 25 May 1992. It is New Zealand's longest-running drama and soap opera, being broadcast continuously for over 7,700 episodes and 31 years, and is one of the most watched television programmes in New Zealand. The show was originally screened as five half-hour episodes each week, and received mixed reviews on its premiere. After its launch, it dropped in ratings and would have been cancelled if TVNZ had not ordered a year's worth of episodes in advance. TVNZ renewed the production in early 1993 when the show's rating had picked up, and it now has "long-term public enthusiasm". Today, it is one of New Zealand's highest-rated shows, frequently making AGB Nielsen Media Research's top 5 programmes of the week, achieving an average linear daily reach of 345,000 viewers (in the year up to June 2021) and is TVNZ's "most streamed show". Development After the cancellation of Gloss, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) noticed the lack of New Zealand content on their channels, and in 1990, set about creating a local equivalent of the Australian soap Neighbours. Greg McGee at South Pacific Pictures wanted to do a series about the new private clinics emerging under New Zealand's Labour government, and suggested the idea to scriptwriter Dean Parker, who declined due to a dislike of private medicine, so TV2 and South Pacific Pictures purchased a formula from Grundy Television, who get a royalty cheque for every broadcast. $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 straightforward 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.