Samoan-born New Zealand actor, writer and director, Oscar Kightley, will front the first-ever Pacific focused sport show on New Zealand television.
Oscar Kightley Photo: Supplied
The show, Pacific Brothers, produced by Kava Bowl Media in conjunction with SKY TV, looks to take a deeper dive into the Pacific world of both past and present athletes across the globe.
Kightley said he was looking forward to having deeper coversations and showing aspects of life other shows wouldn't.
"Kiwis are sports mad, Pacific people are sports mad, but we don't often get to participate when it comes to media coverage or media shows about sports," he said.
"As more of us [Pacific Islanders] kind of get into the media, we're able to cover stuff like sports and things in a way that maybe is more true to us and resonates with how our community approaches these things.
"I think we're able to look a bit deeper and ask those questions but also look at aspects of life which other shows maybe wouldn't."
Making the set for the first ever Pacific-focused sport show on NZ TV, 'Pacific Brothers'. Photo: Facebook / Kava Bowl Media
The new sport show is the latest venture of Kava Bowl Media Productions devoted to sharing Pacific stories for the world.
The company is built on the hard work and success of founder and managing director, John Tapu, who flipped his garage into a state of the art music studio, podcast studio and show set.
Nate Nauer's newest podcast 'Run It Straight' filmed in Kava Bowl Media studio. Photo: Facebook / Kava Media Bowl
Joined by a Pacific panel, Kightley said the show was an opportunity for Pacific stories to be told by Pacific people.
"Who's telling the story makes all the difference," he said.
"When you look at the participation, especially in professional sports [and] the ranks of people from the Pacific, we feature quite a lot. But when it comes to media which covers sports, we don't seem to be as represented."
"We've had very talented broadcasters throughout the years, and a Pacific presence that's always been a part of mainstream coverage but with this, we wanted a specific show where there wasn't kind of the one token Pacific guest but the whole panel was and where we looked at things from a Pacific perspective."
Kava Bowl Media's excited to launch its latest series: PACIFIC ORIGINALS with a celebration of Tonga's Boxing Story, including long unseen footage from a 1946 championship fight in Nuku'alofa. #PacificOriginals #Boxing #Tonga #Throwbacks #TagTheAncestorshttps://t.co/mjObR4ykUw
— Kava Bowl Media (@KavaBowlMedia) April 12, 2020
Kightley said the show would add to the mainstream landscape, without reverting to default representations.
"We can't let everyone else tell all our stories, we've all got to jump in there and get involved and we can't complain about how we're represented or how stories might be misrepresented," he said.
"Everyone is kind of used to how those shows look on SKY or on TVNZ, the kind of panel type shows where they're discussing issues and this specific show is going to be along that ilk, but we want to make and add to the mainstream ideal."
"We don't need the white guy on our right shoulder kind of running their view over everything and making sure that it fits the mainstream... It's 2020, I think the audience has diversified a big deal... it's important to have the media that cover the sport as diversified as the people who are playing it."
Kightley said the show would bring that Pacific humour and, more importantly, wouldn't have any issues misprounouncing Pacific names.
"If all we can achieve is pronoucing our names properly then that would be amazing. I'm so sick of having our names mispronounced or even worse, the pronounciation turned into a joke or some oddity, so at the very least we can get that right," he said.
"There's already a lot of real cool work being done by our young Pacific talent and we're just some old guys that are trying at it as well."
"This is a fun show that I'm coming out of retirement to front and I think it should be cool."
Pacific Brothers is set to screen this June, 2020.
