Oct 24 2020
[This is a revision of posts that were published in 2010 and 2015] It is 40 years today since Bruce Gyngell (pictured) announced “Good evening, and welcome to multicultural television,” on the opening night of Channel 0/28 — the network that is now SBS. The birth of 0/28 and multicultural television came five years after …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/10/sbs-television-turns-40.html
Oct 08 2020
In 1976, the Variety Club of Australia, TV Times and the Seven Network launched The Australian TV And Film Awards, nicknamed “The Sammys”. The name was derived from the trophy’s design in the shape of a seal — Sammy the Seal! The awards were a rival to the long-running TV Week Logie Awards, which were …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/10/classic-tv-guides-the-sammys.html
Jun 01 2020
The launch of the Seven Network‘s Temptation in June 1970 marked the beginning of one of the most successful game show franchises on Australian television. The show was a creation of producer Reg Grundy, “inspired” after seeing the American game show Sale Of The Century. He revised the format and came up with the new …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/06/the-temptation-that-led-to-a-sale.html
Feb 17 2020
Ronne Arnold, dancer, choreographer and actor, has died in Sydney. Born in the US in the late 1930s (“it could be 1938 or 1939,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2013), he came to Australia in 1960 to star in the stage production of West Side Story. What began as an intended six-month stay …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/02/obituary-ronne-arnold.html
Jan 26 2020
Nine Network newsreader Peter Overton (pictured), veteran performer Noeline Brown, transgender actor and activist Georgie Stone and TV presenter Johanna Griggs are among television identities to feature in this year’s Australia Day Honours List: Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO): Ian Healy (AO) — “For distinguished service to cricket at …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/01/tv-names-in-australia-day-honours-list.html
Jan 20 2020
By the turn of the ’80s it was the unofficial benchmark for each commercial network to have two successful soapie dramas in the schedule. Seven had Cop Shop and Skyways, and Nine had The Sullivans and The Young Doctors. The then 0-10 Network had the popular Prisoner and teen drama The Restless Years. For some reason, …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2020/01/arcade-going-from-hero-to-zero.html
Dec 19 2019
Pardon, Miss Westcott! was billed as Australia’s first locally-written musical production for television. Pardon, Miss Westcott was set in the Rum Rebellion days of the early 1800s and told the story of Elizabeth Westcott, the daughter of an English inn-keeper deported to Sydney for a trivial crime. Playing the lead role was Wendy Blacklock, who …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/12/classic-tv-guides-pardon-miss-westcott.html
Oct 14 2019
Actor Patrick Ward, star of various Australian films and television series, has died at the age of 69. He left school in Sydney at the age of 14 and at the age of 16 began as a dancer before joining the Independent Theatre in Sydney and trained as an actor. He starred as lawyer Mike …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/10/obituary-patrick-ward.html
Mar 20 2019
In the 1980s one of the Nine Network‘s many strengths was its early afternoons. The Mike Walsh Show, which became Midday with Ray Martin, followed by US soaps Days Of Our Lives and The Young And The Restless constantly beat anything thrown at them by rival commercial networks Seven and Ten. When Christopher Skase took …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/03/sevens-battle-for-high-noon.html
Feb 03 2019
Australian film and television actress Carmen Duncan has died at the age of 76. The actress died in hospital in Sydney on Sunday afternoon. Duncan first came to fame in the late 1960s appearing on dramas including The Battlers, You Can’t See Round Corners, Delta and Hunter. She went on to play the part of …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/02/obituary-carmen-duncan.html
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