If people in more recent times wanted to dub Eddie McGuire as “Eddie Everywhere”, then they would find McGuire to be an amateur compared to Bert Newton in July 1973.
Newton had less than a year earlier lamented in a newspaper interview that he’d not had a lot of TV work during 1972, with his presenting commitments not extending much further than the TV Week Logie Awards and a series of commercials for TV rental company Canberra Television.
Go forward to July 1973 and it’s a different story. In the time since that newspaper interview Newton had reunited with his former TV partner Graham Kennedy for The Graham Kennedy Show.
And in mid-July Newton was appearing on not one but three rival channels — at a time when Melbourne only had four.
As well as The Graham Kennedy Show, Newton had a seven-week variety show on ABC, The Bert Newton Show, screening on Monday nights.
Newton (pictured above with models Jan Murray and Jill Considine) was also the host of ATV0‘s one-hour special Gown Of The Year, an awards presentation for Australia’s fashion industry. The 1973 awards marked the Gown Of The Year‘s 20th anniversary.
One program that didn’t feature Newton this particular week was a comedy special The True Blue Show. The one-hour program, produced at Sydney’s ATN7, was a sketch comedy production featuring Gerry Gallagher, Sue Walker, John Derum and Emma Gray. The special was the precursor to a regular series to go to air on the Seven Network later in the year.
The Gown Of The Year and The True Blue Show screenings are among the ten listings now added to the Classic TV Guides section:
- Sunday 1 May 1960 — MELBOURNE The live production of Seagulls Over Sorrento, marking Crawford Productions‘ first television drama.
- Wednesday 24 December 1969 — SYDNEY. Three versions of Carols By Candlelight on three separate channels on Christmas Eve — including the telecast of Melbourne’s traditional Carols By Candlelight in its first TV coverage since 1956.
- Saturday 3 April 1971 — ADELAIDE
- Saturday 3 July 1971 — VICTORIA Australian John Newcombe wins the Men’s Singles Final at Wimbledon, broadcast live via satellite on ABC.
- Wednesday 18 July 1973 — MELBOURNE. Bert Newton hosts Gown Of The Year; and Seven screens comedy special The True Blue Show.
- Sunday 14 October 1979 — SOUTH AUSTRALIA The Adelaide debut of US mini-series Roots: The Next Generations.
- Friday 1 May 1987 — VICTORIA Rage, MTV and Night Shift present the broad shift in music television from studio productions to video clips.
- Monday 28 March 1988 — SYDNEY Four Corners discusses the role of the ABC in a studio discussion, Whither The ABC?.
- Tuesday 31 December 1991 — MELBOURNE
- Monday 6 July 1992 — MELBOURNE
