Philip Smith (producer)

Philip Smith is a New Zealand film and television producer and writer. He is the founder and co-owner of Australasian media company, Great Southern Television,^[1] with offices in Sydney, Auckland and Queenstown.^[2]

In 2008, Smith was awarded the Independent Producer of the Year Award by the Screen Production and Development Association.^[3] In 2018 he was named New Zealand Drama Writer of the Year, for the telemovie Why Does Love at the NZTV Awards. In 2020, he co-created the NZ drama of the year, One Lane Bridge.

As a writer Smith has created or co-created 42 television series in New Zealand and Australia. He was previously a journalist at the New Zealand Herald. He left to join the Financial Times where he worked as a foreign correspondent from war-zones including Burundi and Rwanda .^[4] He was the Financial Times correspondent based in Tanzania, East Africa.^[5]

Smith was later a journalist at TVNZ and broke the "Bad Blood Scandal" - an award-winning news investigation. He worked for TVNZ in London and covered the Romanian revolution and also reported from Hungary. He won a New York Film and Television Award for his reporting on the Vulcan volcano eruption in Papua New Guinea.^[6]

Smith formed his first television company Uplink Sport with sports presenter Phillip Leishman. He sold the company to UK based sports marketing company .^[7] He started up a second television production company, Great Southern Television in 2002 with retailer Sir David Levene.^[8] The company produces drama, factual and entertainment shows globally. In January 2018, the National Business Review reported that Smith and Levene had sold 70% of Great Southern to Seven West Media in Australia, the owner of the 7 Network.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[]

Smith lives in Queenstown with his wife, Leanne Malcolm, a television presenter, and their son.^[9]

References[]