[5][6] Trotter also chose the Country Calendar theme music, Hillbilly Child by British musician Alan Moorhouse, which is still used by the show today.
[4][12] A Country Calendar exhibition opened at Waikato museum on 11 June 2016, to celebrate 50 years of the show.
[citation needed] Country Calendar is one of the longest-running television series in New Zealand (by number of years on air), after Coronation Street.
O’Brien, Henry and Edmond also direct the show, along with directors Kerryanne Evans, Richard Langston, Celia Jaspers, Roz Mason, Howard Taylor, Robyn Janes, Vicki Wilkinson-Baker and Kirsty Babington.
According to Country Calendar's production blog, the show will have crew on the road for close to 250 days, in order to produce the 40 episodes.
Country Calendar is known to sometimes feature spoofs, where the series will occasionally break format and air an unannounced satirical episode.
[19] In 1974, a spoof episode aired focusing on the fictional character Fred Dagg (portrayed by satirist John Clarke).
A spoof was first aired in 1977 with a farmer playing a fence as a musical instrument, and since then have included sheep dogs controlled by radio and a high fashion range of rural clothing, among others.
[20] While the spoofs were generally well-received, the radio-controlled dog episode resulted in numerous calls of it being inhumane.
[20] The last part of the 2016 program marking the show's 50th anniversary was a spoof featuring an app designed to let farmers talk to their working dogs.
[21] The NZ On Screen website also features some archived special episodes of the show which can be viewed online.