WhitebaitMedia
New Zealand independent production company
WhitebaitMedia is a local independent New Zealand production company producing children's programmes. It was founded by Janine Morrell-Gunn in 1998.
History
Morrell-Gunn worked as an executive producer for TVNZ's Children's Unit while it was based in Christchurch, New Zealand. When the Unit moved to Wellington's Avalon studios, in 1998, Morrell-Gunn remained in Christchurch to start her own company, Whitebait Productions.
Whitebait's first commission was Bumble, a preschool series about a bee and his friends. The first actor to wear the Bumble suit was her husband, Jason Gunn. Whitebait Productions has also produced the Jessie.com series for TVNZ (which sold to Disney Australia, and English programmes for Japan), the interactive pop talent quest Wannabes for Three, and the series Tuhono, a youth hip-hop show, for Māori Television. The show Animal Academy was produced by Whitebait also for TVNZ and is screened regularly on TVNZ 2.
Whitebait Productions has produced What Now? since the shows relaunch.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “WhitebaitMedia” is new Zealand independent production company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through WhitebaitMedia, Zealand and independent, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7995730. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “WhitebaitMedia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.