Martin, Marama (1930-2017)

Marama Martin was the first person ever seen on colour television in New Zealand.

Born in New Plymouth on 3 April 1930, she was the eldest daughter of George Te Oti Koea (1900-1980) and Isabel (Belle) Paorahu Te Moananui a-Kiwa Koea (nee Falwasser) (1900-1989). Marama came from a high-achieving family: her brother George was one of only a few Māori newspaper editors in New Zealand when he took over the Taranaki Herald in 1973, and her sister Moana was appointed head of the physiotherapy department at Taranaki Base Hospital.

After attending Fitzroy School and New Plymouth Girls’ High, Marama Koea trained to be a teacher in Auckland, working at a number of schools around the North Island and in the UK, where she travelled on her OE in 1953.

Marama was working at Devon Intermediate School in 1958 when her career took a left turn. She recalled how it happened in an interview with fellow broadcaster Jim Sullivan nearly thirty years later:

I was living in New Plymouth and wanted a job, something I could do in the evenings when school was over because I was teaching at that time. My brother worked on the newspaper so I wasn’t going to go to the newspaper and ask for a job! The only thing else that was happening in New Plymouth at night was a bakery… I didn’t really want to be a baker but there was still the radio so I went up to the radio and said “Is there anything I can do here at night?” The station manager said “Yes, you can have an audition”. 

Marama’s audition was a success and she did contract announcing for Radio Taranaki in the evenings, on weekends and during school holidays for two years before becoming a full-time broadcaster. It was still rare to hear women on provincial stations like 2XP at the time:

So rare in fact that on the kind of station where I was, an ‘X’ station, in a place like New Plymouth, only one female announcer was permitted, apart from the shopping reporter and the Women’s Hour personality.

But Marama proved her worth and loved the work, voicing everything from commercials to gardening reports:

We did interviews, we did documentaries, we went out and compiled our own documentaries, sat with the technician and put all the little cuts that we’d made together, we did the whole lot. And if you were me and the shopping reporter was going on leave and there was no-one to take her place you did the shopping reporter’s session. And you did the Women’s Hour session. We had men doing the Women’s Hour programme, it wasn’t just confined to women doing it, you know! So everybody was really versatile because you had to be.

In 1965 Marama was offered a job in Wellington, continuity announcing on the exciting new medium of television for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC). She began on 16 September that year and became an instant star. Only the second ever Māori television announcer, following opera singer Tui Uru who had briefly filled that role on Christchurch’s CHTV3, Marama told viewers which programmes were coming up as well as presenting weather reports and interviews.

Marama continued to cover events like royal tours and American President Lyndon Johnson’s visit to New Zealand – during which she fell off the top of a van while broadcasting outside – for radio. She also appeared on the BBC request programme Family Favourites every Sunday, providing song contributions from New Zealand.

By the time she married television director Bertram Martin (1936-2024) in 1968, she was so well-known that their wedding made national news.

When colour TV began broadcasting in October 1973, Marama was the first person Kiwis saw on screen, wearing a mauve dress she’d sewn herself. The switch from black-and-white to colour had unexpected consequences:

It meant that you had to be very careful what you wore because up until then there was the greyscale, what you wore came out in varying shades from black to quite light depending on what colour it was. Then we had to be a little bit more choosy about what we wore in colour, because some colours didn’t react terribly well. You actually had to get to know so that on a night’s transmission, first of all one took in two or three things to wear and rushed upstairs and said “Which one of these looks best?” and the technicians would say “No, no, don’t wear that” or “That’s fine, that’s fine, that’s good”.

In an equally historic moment, on 31 March 1975, Marama was the last person ever to appear on the NZBC, before the channel was split into TV One and TV2. Her final words after the late news bulletin were to thank viewers for watching followed by “I suppose we might as well now go home”.

Marama continued working for Radio New Zealand, presenting everything from children’s shows about Māori legends to the opening of Parliament, until 1978 when she went back to teaching, working for the Correspondence School.

Six years later she returned to radio, but not as an announcer. In 1984 she was appointed one of the directors of New Zealand's first commercial FM station, Coast FM. She was still occasionally seen on the nation’s screens, including on the popular panel show Beauty and the Beast and the 1981 Telethon, but for the most part her broadcasting days were over.

Marama and Bertram retired to the Gold Coast in 1987 then to Nelson, where she died on 10 July 2017.

Marama Martin’s face and voice – invariably described as soothing, warm and dignified – made her famous throughout the country. She received fan mail from listeners and viewers and there were complaints when she was let go by what later became TVNZ. Credited with establishing a presence for both women and Māori in New Zealand broadcasting, she described herself as “very, very lucky” to have worked in the industry during a time of enormous technological and social change.

NB: Quotes are taken from Marama’s 1985 interview with Jim Sullivan available on the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision website here.