Bailey Mackey is a former news reporter on Te Karere and 3 News, who is now producing and directing commercial Māori series through Black Inc Media. He is the main creative force behind controversial show The GC, and new reality series The Life and Times of Temuera Morrison.
Bailey Mackey has spoken of wanting to help New Zealand “better understand Māori — the world that I grew up in and the world now”. Mackey founded company Black Inc Media in 2008. Later, after the company was bought out by Eyeworks, he became company director alongside Eyeworks NZ chief Julie Christie.
Mackey found himself in the media in 2012 after his reality show The GC won a high profile and controversy (mostly for the $420,000 of New Zealand On Air funding it received). The series followed the lives of a group of young Māori ‘Mozzies’ (Māori-Aussies) as they worked, worked out, partied and invested in property on Australia’s Gold Coast.
The son of a “humble low key” shearer, Bailey Mackey went on to represent Ngāti Porou East Coast at rugby, and do time as an iwi radio DJ in Ruatoria. In his early 20s he hitched to Auckland to successfully audition for Te Karere as a reporter. Mackey says he was “rough around the edges” but that the job taught him much about storytelling in the tight production timeframes of television.
After time as a reporter in the TV3 newsroom, Mackey spent three years working mostly on sports shows, including time as a presenter on TV3′s Best Damn Sports Show. As head of sports at Māori Television he created hit sports show Code. Realising the importance of language and that a slogan would help the show “have a life of its own”, he expanded the words “Mean Māori” used by a friend and came up with memorable catchphrase ‘Mean Māori Mean’. The phrase entered popular culture. Code won a 2007 Air New Zealand sports award as best sport programme.
Since then Mackey has executive produced a range of shows across local television networks, from game and reality shows (including Qantas award-winner One Land) to docu-drama What Really Happened: Waitangi. He has taken the directing helm on The Life and Times of Temuera Morrison and during extended Māori Television Anzac Day coverage.
Mackey is also proud of Black Inc’s Beneath the Māori Moon and anthology series Atamira. A year in the making, the 15-part Beneath the Māori Moon chronicled the history of Māori rugby, winning a Māori Sports Award in 2010. Atamira put six plays by Māori playwrights on screen.
2012 saw the headline-grabbing debut of The GC, which Mackey described as “simply a show” about a contemporary Māori subculture. Mackey felt that some of those who reacted negatively to it were viewers adjusting to seeing images of brash, successful Māori on their screens.
source – http://www.nzonscreen.com/person/bailey-mackey/biography
