The History of Australian Television
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It is no surprise that the Apollo 11 mission dominated Australian television. After all, for a lot of the time, the pictures that the whole world were seeing were received on Earth by the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station and Parkes observatory in New South Wales, before being relayed to the world. All four networks mounted various levels of coverage, including a mix of direct feeds and pre-recorded documentaries and specials.
In Melbourne, GTV9 stayed on the air continuously 24 hours a day while Apollo 11 was in progress — a rare feat, if not a first for Australia at a time when all TV stations traditionally closed down overnight. Both the Nine and Seven networks had reporters based in the US to file special reports, while ATV0 set up an “Apollo News Centre” in its main studio. The channel had also made a model of the Saturn rocket and the lunar module which could be broken into sections to show viewers where the astronauts will work from.
The coverage began at 7.30am on Tuesday 15 July with live coverage of the press conference with the Apollo 11 astronauts, broadcast on GTV9, HSV7 and ATV0. National broadcaster ABC (ABV2) presented a delayed coverage later in the day, while HSV7 replayed it at 8.00am and 8.20am.
Highlights for the following days’ coverage — as listed in TV Times and The Age Green Guides for Melbourne, though similar schedules may have applied in other cities. All times were subject to last-minute changes in the Apollo 11 progress:
Wednesday 16 July
Thursday 17 July
Friday 18 July
Saturday 19 July
Sunday 20 July
YouTube: Australian Television Archive
Monday 21 July
Tuesday 22 July
Wednesday 23 July
Thursday 24 July
Friday 25 July
In 1970, the Apollo 11 crew receive a special edition TV Week Gold Logie for “Providing TV’s Greatest Moment In Their Moon Telecast”.
Source: The Age, 10 July 1969, 17 July 1969, 24 July 1969. TV Times, 16 July 1969. TV Week, 26 July 1969.
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Great news, I am proud of this event. But now the memory of the Apollo’s flight to the moon has been revived, but in a bad way. The concept of “Lunar conspiracy”. The debaucher of miracles and superstitions believe that no people flew to the moon and the whole Apollo program is, by now, a solid fake made in NASA cabinets and Hollywood studios. When they really lie a lot, a disoriented person is frightened of the most consoling conspiracy, which has several advantages over traditional knowledge. Good luck!
When I was a student of Electronics Engineering at Granville College of TAFE, one of my lecturers at Granville was Mr Ritchie Norman. All the TAFE lecturers in Electronics Engineering were university-qualified.
Before Mr Norman went into TAFE lecturing, he was an engineer at the ABC. One of his jobs in 1969 was to convert the TV signal from the Australian telescope(s) (Parkes? Tidbinbilla?) pointed towards the moon to a signal that was a 625-line compatible.
While GTV-9 had the world record in continuously broadcasting the moon mission, I believe that the ABC had a more important role in delivering the signal for Australia if not the world and that the ABC is one of the unsung engineering heroes.
Thank you,
Anthony, from exciting Belfield.