Otago was an important centre of early amateur radio experimentation in New Zealand.
In the early 1900s, local enthusiasts began sending and receiving messages over increasingly longer distances. Experiments with broadcasting live voice and music followed, leading to the establishment of several radio stations in the 1920s and turning Dunedin into a radio city.
Experiments with television also began in the 1920s but it was not until the 1960s that the government brought television broadcasting to New Zealand. Dunedin's television studios, established in the 1960s, went on to produce some iconic New Zealand television programming, notably children's programmes and natural history documentaries. On Air is our tribute to Otago's pioneers of wireless communication and the history of radio and television broadcasting in Dunedin.
