This week marked the 50th anniversary of Green Guide, the weekly television insert that appears in the Melbourne newspaper The Age every Thursday.
In 1976, it was something of a minor generational shift in the local press. The 50-year-old weekly newspaper Listener In-TVÂ was revamped to become Scene (later TV Scene) in April 1976. A month later, The Age’s long-running insert — which began life as The Age Radio Supplement in 1949 and expanded to television in 1956 — also got a revamp of its own with a bold new masthead, Green Guide. The new name, which debuted on 13 May 1976, formalised the supplement’s familiar green pages that separated it from the main newspaper.
Like its predecessor, the Green Guide kept Melburnians informed on all the news and reviews, comings and goings and highlights and lowlights of television, radio, movies and music. It covered the advent of SBS television, pay-TV, digital television and streaming. For years, a keen eye was focused on covering and reviewing children’s television at a time when networks and regulators seemed to care about it. Technical coverage went from hi-fi stereo systems and mastering reception of the new FM band to later innovations like home computers and software, VCRs, CD and DVD players and the internet.
Before social media gave everyone a megaphone, the Green Guide Letters page featured passionate critiques and compliments, and even some rebuttals or corrections from media executives with their nose out of joint seeking to set the record straight.
But it hasn’t always been a dream run for the Green Guide. At attempt to de-green the pages, defying the guide’s own title, was met with mass outrage and a quick reversal. Even the removal of staples prompted a huge backlash from loyal readers used to having their guide’s pages neatly bound.
Ratings figures for both television and radio were reported and analysed. Though, as times have changed, radio coverage and program listings are now gone. The focus is now on television, both free-to-air and streaming, and in a digital-first world where breaking news and analysis doesn’t fit the weekly publishing cycle, the Green Guide comes in now at only 16 pages. But it is still part of Melbourne’s media landscape.
The Age’s tribute to the Green Guide is available to read (though may be behind a paywall) at The Age website.
