Philip Smith (New Zealand)

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, with offices in Sydney, Auckland and Queenstown.

In 2008, Smith was awarded the Independent Producer of the Year Award by the Screen Production and Development Association.

Smith has created or co-created 42 television series in New Zealand and Australia, including Eating Media Lunch, The Unauthorised History of New Zealand, The Cult, The Pretender, The Lion Man, The Kick, Million Dollar Catch.

Smith 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 . He was the Financial Times correspondent based in Tanzania, East Africa. He was expelled from Tanzania and deported from Kenya.

Smith was later a journalist at TVNZ and broke the "Bad Blood Scandal" - an award-winning news investigation that cost Health Minister Simon Upton his job. He worked for TVNZ in London and covered the Romania 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.

Smith formed his first television company Uplink Sport alongside sports presenter Phillip Leishman. After a string of television shows like The Golf Show, he sold the company to UK based sports marketing company Sportsworld Media.

Smith started up a second television production company, Great Southern Television in 2002 along with retail magnate Sir David Levene. The company produces drama and factual series, including Coast Australia for Foxtel and BBC2, Coast New Zealand for TV One and BBCWW, and the drama project Hillary for TV One and Channel 10, Australia.

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.

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