Popular radio and television personality Jennie Goodwin (aka Jennie Forder) became the first woman in the Commonwealth to read a primetime news bulletin. Beginning as a continuity announcer on TV1, Goodwin moved to the fledgling TV2/SPTV channel in 1975 and read the news on the channel’s Two at Seven bulletin until 1982.

In this ScreenTalk, Goodwin talks about:

• How having a photographic memory helped in her pre-autocue continuity announcing days
• Being trained to annunciate perfectly in BBC style
• Having to wear heavy theatrical makeup in the days of black and white
• Being used as model for the change over to colour television
• The excitement and challenge of reading the news on the new TV2
• Not letting the fact she was the first woman newsreader in the Commonwealth go to her head
• Having to remain detached from the emotion of the Erebus disaster when reading news about it
• The reason she left TVNZ twice
• Newsreading becoming more relaxed in the modern era
• The joy of returning to read the news on Breakfast

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside