Penny Spence, one of the first female newsreaders on Australian television, has died.
From her hometown in Melbourne, she made the move to Sydney in the 1960s to study at the National Institute Of Dramatic Art (NIDA). At the end of the two-year course she decided acting was not for her and auditioned for a TV presenting role at TCN9. She hosted various programs including Comedy Capers, Breakfast With Penny, Playroom, Jackpot Quiz, Look Listen Laugh And Learn and Nine Will Fix It and an ABC series, Gala Performance.
She also read daytime news bulletins, making her one of the first female television newsreaders in Australia, presented weather reports, appeared in commercials and was a continuity announcer. She won two TV Week Logie Awards for Best Female Personality In New South Wales — in 1969 and 1972.
In 1974 she was a reporter for the Sydney-based edition of Nine’s afternoon current affairs program No Man’s Land and later that year was a presenter on TCN9’s first colour sports telecast.
She later became an executive in children’s television and chairperson of Nine’s Children’s Advisory Board at a time when minimum content standards and quotas for children’s television were being applied to commercial stations. She produced programs including Falcon Island, Danny’s Egg, Colour In The Creek and Shipmates. She then went on serve as an executive producer at the European Broadcasting Union’s children’s unit.
She was the first wife of former Nine musical director, the late Geoff Harvey, and had two daughters, Eugenie and Charlotte.
Source: TV Tonight, NFSA. TV Week, 9 June 1973. The Australian Women’s Weekly, 28 May 1969, 16 January 1974, 23 October 1974.
3 thoughts on “Obituary: Penny Spence”
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I was only a little girl when Penny was on TV but I remember her well and when I saw the obituary I could immediately recall her face. Lovely, gentle, feminine, a safe presence on television for a little girl whose family was imploding in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Women like Penny, Marilyn Mayo, Liz Harris and our Romper Room and Mr Squiggle hostesses did more than present television programs – they presented femininity, care, fun and gentleness and to a little girl it meant a lot. At age 61 and now with grandchildren, I realise what a blessing they were.
Very disliked from some quarters I believe. She married well. That’s all.
I remember watching Penny on Playroom as a little girl and was once on the show where she read a book. Many years later my letter
To her about my cat Princess was read out on tv and I was estatic. When I saw the obituary on tv Logies it all Came back to me . She was sish a beautiful Person.