Dec 31 2019
New Year’s Eve television in Australia is usually a fairly low-rent mix of re-runs or B-grade filler not fit for broadcast during the high-pressure ratings season. But the global excitement over the year ticking over from 1999 to 2000, twenty years ago, saw some gallant efforts to secure the nation’s viewers on the big night. …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/12/back-to-the-millennium.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 06 2019
ABC‘s relaunch of its late afternoon line-up in October 1966 mostly relied on familiar titles — reruns of British legal drama Boyd QC, the return of children’s science series Why Is It So? with Professor Julius Sumner Miller, and new episodes of Doctor Who. But there were some new shows in the mix — Crackerjack, …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/10/classic-tv-guides-be-our-guest.html
Feb 05 2019
Since its inception in 1964, Melbourne’s ATV0 had struggled to get a significant hold of audiences when it came to news. Different formats, timeslots, newsreaders and titles were all tried and often without much success. A revamp to a one-hour bulletin in 1978 was another in its string of casualties. But there were high hopes …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2019/02/classic-tv-guides-eyewitness-news.html
Sep 24 2018
It is 25 years since the Monte Carlo announcement of Sydney as the host city of the 2000 Olympic Games. Sydney won the vote of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members against competing bids by Beijing, Berlin, Istanbul and Manchester. Speeches by the Prime Minister Paul Keating and his wife Annita, New South Wales Premier John …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2018/09/classic-tv-guides-the-winner-is-sydney.html
Apr 21 2018
Christopher Skase was the Melbourne journalist turned corporate high flyer in the 1980s. His billion dollar corporation was built around lavish hotel resorts and a growing media empire. His purchase of the east coast Seven Network stations in 1987 suddenly elevated him to one of the most powerful media men in the country and he …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2018/04/classic-tv-guides-hinch-chases-skase.html
Jan 20 2018
It was a big deal when Neighbours made the switch from the Seven Network to Network Ten in 1986. Never before had a drama series switched networks and it was a bold move by Ten, particularly as the show’s main weakness at Seven was its ratings performance in Sydney. Ten’s persistence in promoting the series …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2018/01/classic-tv-guides-neighbours-new-neighbourhood.html
Dec 31 2017
Another year is now behind us! No doubt the biggest TV stories of the year surround the Ten Network — going into voluntary administration and then receivership before being taken over by US network CBS. The CBS takeover was a cunning move that caught most by surprise, not least being former Ten shareholders Bruce Gordon …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2017/12/the-year-that-was-2017.html
Sep 19 2017
“How does a beautiful aboriginal girl pick up the dreary threads of her normal life after a brief but heady taste of glory as a film star?” Such was the premise of Oriel Gray‘s play Burst Of Summer, as described in TV Times magazine in 1961. Burst Of Summer told the story of singer Peggy …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2017/09/classic-tv-guides-burst-of-summer.html
Jul 15 2017
In the early days of Australian television, locally-made drama was largely limited to one-off plays — mostly by ABC. One such production was Murder Story, a Sydney-based production that was an adaptation of an English story, based on a real-life murder case. Murder Story starred John Ewart as Jim Tanner, a 19-year-old intellectually-disabled man who …
Permanent link to this article: https://televisionau.com/2017/07/classic-tv-guides-abcs-murder-story.html
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