Various feature articles written for the legacy Television.AU website. Reproduced here for archival purposes.
Aggregation: For thirty years viewers in regional areas in the eastern states had a limited choice of TV channels. Aggregation changed everything and for the first time these viewers enjoyed the same choice as their capital city cousins.
Bert Newton: In over fifty years of Australian television only one name has been an almost constant presence during that time — Bert Newton.
Cop Shows: Australian TV was almost ten years old before the first police drama hit our screens. Since then police and crime dramas have been almost a constant presence on TV.
Game Shows: In 1956, the first game show to appear on Australian television was TCN9’s Name That Tune, hosted by Bruce Gyngell. Since then game shows have become a popular fixture with Australian viewers and have featured regularly and prominently
Home And Away: Seven’s evening soap, set in the fictional beachside town of Summer Bay, has become an international success story.
Neighbours: Famously axed by the Seven Network after 170 episodes, and picked up by Network Ten, Neighbours has gone on to become Australia’s longest running drama.
Network Ten: The ups and downs of Australia’s third commercial television network.
Number 96: In the 1970s, a new evening soap opera dared to shock on the night ‘Australian television lost its virginity’ and would set the pace for many others to follow.
Soaps — The First 40 Years: Australians have seen soap operas evolve from wholesome fare in the Fifties and Sixties, through the sexual revolution of the Seventies, the glitz and glamour of the Eighties and the sun and surf settings of the Nineties.
The Logies: From humble beginnings to becoming Australian television’s night of nights — love them or loathe them, the Logies have survived when others have come and gone.
Top 40 TV: From Bandstand and Six O’Clock Rock to Countdown, MTV and Australian Idol, TV and popular music have grown up together.
TV’s Hall Of Shame: When you look back at the history of Australian TV it’s easy to look only at the success stories, the shows that were groundbreaking, popular and successful. It’s easy to forget the shows that didn’t have such a long life, the ones that seemed “a good idea at the time”.
TV Week: Australia’s sole surviving national television magazine publication.