50 Years of Television in Australia

by Nick Place

  In amazingly dramatic scenes that occurred at dawn in Australia, astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first hesitant steps by a human on the moon’s surface as the entire world watched, live. In a brilliant combination of science and logistics, Armstrong was able to talk to NASA and the global TV audience, while cautiously descending from the Apollo II lunar module.

  TV Week’s Paul Edwards said the telecast was better than anything Alfred Hitchcock could have created. ‘Most Australians were up at the crack of dawn to watch the module land and the fact that we didn’t actually see it only exaggerated the excitement. While we were in the dark – almost literally – we could hear the astronauts on their foot-by-foot descent, talking their way into the record books from a quarter million miles away. But nothing could compare with the instant that Armstrong stepped on to the moon. This was television’s finest hour.’

  Schools and factories had hired every available TV set for Monday’s telecast and hotels reported strong business as people stayed and stayed to watch the events unfold.

  Australians had the thrill of watching events unfold fractionally sooner than other parts of the world because of our geographical position and the fact that six to 10 direct telecasts from deep space were being received by the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek.

  Nine’s new cops hit the beat

  Nine finally has a cop show to challenge Homicide. Division 4 stars the immensely popular Gerard Kennedy as Detective Sergeant Frank Banner. The actor will know he’s in for an intense ride on this show as the scriptwriters killed off Banner’s wife in episode one.

  The show has been in development for months, under the working title Saints and Sinners, and was originally envisaged as being based on Sydney’s famous 21 Division but set in Melbourne’s dubious suburb of St Kilda. However, it has finally made it to air as a drama based around the fictional police station, Yarra Central.

  Others starring include former newsreader Chuck Faulkner, singer Ted Hamilton and actor Terence Donovan, who returned from England last year. Division 4 gives the Logie award-winning Kennedy a new chance to be a lead actor, without the script baggage of Hunter and his enigmatic character, Kragg.

  The change between series was so fast that Kennedy has apparently spent weeks filming both series at once – meaning he had to keep Kragg’s crew cut for the new role.

  Mike Walsh: I’ll bounce back

  May: Viewer favourite Mike Walsh believes he may have a future as a ‘light compere’, maybe even hosting chat shows, after being surprisingly dumped from Nine’s Today show. Despite being hugely popular,Walsh was axed in favour of the straight-talking, no-frills news delivery of Tony Charlton. Listener In-TV reported that Walsh’s treatment of the news had been regarded as ‘flippant’ and that he ‘wasn’t socking it to the viewers hard enough’.

  The sacking has produced such controversy that Walsh, who was previously best known in Sydney, has now become a national personality. And he’s already talking to two networks about new national programs.

  Where there’s smoke …

  Anti-smoking bodies have pledged to continue pressuring the government to introduce legislation banning TV celebrities from smoking on air.

  One man hoping the proposed ban on cigarette advertising and on-air smoking doesn’t happen is Tony Barber, better known as the Cambridge Whistler. The fresh-faced Sydney man left the advertising agency which came up with the Cambridge cigarettes campaign after his popularity as the whistler from the commercial increased. Barber is now singing in Leagues clubs around NSW and there is talk of his own tonight show at Wollongong Channel WIN-4.

  ON DEBUT

  > The Entertainers – musical and variety show compered by Tommy Hanlon

  > Arnott’s Big 9 – quiz with Athol Guy

  > The Match Game – game show

  > The Mike Walsh Show – variety

  > The Rovers – Australian drama series

  > Journey to the Unknown – drama series

  > The Greater Illustrated History of the Glorious Antipodes Show – satire of Australian history

  > Newsbeat – exposé news program

  > Woobinda – Animal Doctor – adventure series about an outback vet

  > The Tommy Leonetti Show – music and dance (below)

  > Joan and Leslie – sitcom

  > Pastures of the Blue Crane – ABC mini-series

  > Riptide – adventure series

  > Good Morning, Mr Doubleday – comedy

  > Delta – adventure series

  > Big Nine –game show

  > The Celebrity Game – game show

  > The Generation Gap – game show hosted by Jimmy Hannan

  > Musical Cashbox – musical quiz

  > Family Bowl Quiz – part quiz show, part test of 10-pin bowling skill

  > Good Morning – children’s program

  > GTK (Get To Know) – magazine style music program

  > The Kevin Sanders Report – review of the week’s news and events

  > Maggie – afternoon show with Maggie Tabberer

  Liquid crystals could lead to wall-hanging TV

  Marconi researchers say they have had a breakthrough in their work with ‘liquid crystals’ that could have far-reaching effects on the televisions of the future. Speaking from the company’s British research laboratory, the Marconi spokesman said liquid crystals that change colour if an electrical current is applied might one day lead to television sets so light and slim that they could be hung on a wall.

  The latest breakthrough is being able to make the crystals turn green and blue, as well as white and grey.

  Rival Sound of Musics duke it out

  The fight between TCN-9 and TEN-10 over who has the better Sound of Music is becoming increasingly bitter, with Ten host Bobby Limb lashing out at his former employer. Limb has called Nine’s use of the title and format of his show ‘childish and unfair’, even resigning from the board of the show’s production company in protest.

  After being lured by Ten to take his Sound of Music away from Nine, Limb and his wife and co-presenter, Dawn Lake, were astonished to find that Nine had scheduled a new Barry Crocker music show carrying the same title. Nine have made no secret of the fact that they are going all out to kill off Limb’s Channel 0 version.

  ‘This seems a deliberate attempt to confuse the public and it is not in the public’s interest,’ Limb told TV Week. He was supported by Dawn, who said: ‘The whole thing is unfair and confusing to viewers.’

  Nevertheless, Nine appears determined to win the tussle. In Sydney, the two shows’ timeslots overlap and recently Nine offered invitations to a media cocktail party – starting two and a half hours before the same Ten cocktail party. Ten had sent out invitations to its function before the Nine function was announced.

  The Sound of Music veteran said moving to Ten had made a huge difference to his career, and had allowed both him and his show to get out of a rut. ‘Since I have changed networks I am firing much better,’ he said. Limb said he was confident that Ten’s version of Sound of Music would prevail. ‘I put my faith in the public.’

  Our favourite roo hits the big screen in Skippy and the Intruders. Is there no stopping her?

  Goodbye to the King as Kennedy walks away

  December: 23 December1969 will always be remembered as the night the King abdicated. After 13 years, Graham Kennedy has left In Melbourne Tonight, literally walking out of Nine wearing a crown, formerly worn by Sir Laurence Olivier and Robert Taylor, and offered as a parting gift from GTV management.

  Kennedy told journalist John Hamilton that he had to quit. ‘You know, I was 23 when I started this thing and I’ll be 36 in February. That is a lot of one’s life in the entertainment business, especially in the one medium. The program has now become so slick and so professional that a lot more effort is required to do it two nights a week than there was when I did it five nights a week a couple of years ago.’

  The King admitted he could remember his first show vividly. �
�It was a relief to get through it without fainting. I wasn’t funny. In fact, I didn’t come good until the show had settled down after several months.’

  Several comperes are being considered to replace Kennedy on the show, including his long-time sidekick, Bert Newton.

  Police foil Fredd Bear kidnap attempt

  The man behind Fredd Bear is a relieved quasi-bear today after police foiled a university student plot to kidnap his alter ego. Ted Dunn, who has guided Fredd to TV success on The Magic Circle Club and now Fredd Bear’s Breakfast A Go-Go, said he could have been killed had the plot gone ahead.

  ‘If they had got me, and kept me in my suit for any length of time, I could have died,’ Dunn told TV Week. He wasn’t joking either. He once passed out in the suit during a Moomba Parade in baking sun, and ended up in a coma when his blood boiled. He also feared drowning if the uni students had carried through on their hint that they might throw him in the Monash University pond if they did not receive ransom money.

  The threat to kidnap Fredd Bear came on top of the actual kidnap of Uptight host Ross ‘D’Wylie by university students, who demanded ransom money to be put towards Aboriginal funding.

  MEMORIES

  > TV Week presents Bert Newton with a special Logie for Outstanding Logie Awards Compere 1969.

  > In a move unprecedented in Australian TV history, the ABC sells Contrabandits to Channel 7. Previously, the rights to shows have been involved but not their ownership.

  > Channel 0 celebrates its fifth birthday by candlelight because of an electricity strike.

  > Jackie Weaver has a big year with appearances in Riptide, Homicide, Division 4, Woobinda – Animal Doctor, Mick Jagger’s Ned Kelly movie and Bandstand.

  > Phones run hot at HSV-7 after the showing of the controversial hypnosis show, Spellbound. Most callers say it was the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. The show stars hypnotist Martin St James.

  > Tony Barber becomes recognisable to thousands of Australians from his role in commercials for Cambridge cigarettes.

  > Australia is to have a Children’s Film Foundation aimed at producing high-quality TV shows and feature films for children, thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Australian Council for the Arts.

  > For the second year in a row, no woman was deemed worthy of the Logie for the National Female Personality of the year.

  > Gold Logie: Graham Kennedy

  > Best New Talent: Gerard Kennedy (right)

  > Best Commercial: Cambridge Cigarettes

  SCIENCE TV

  Along with presenting the world’s great sporting events and the political action of the day, TV has been used to present the mysteries of the universe, the wonders of nature, and ever more complex investigations into the questions that only people with microscopes can answer.

  Why is it so?

  Television is a science. Think about it: the physics of how something in real life is captured, then magically appears on our one-time cathode ray tubes – now plasma flat screens – is pretty amazing. And what exactly is plasma anyway?

  It’s perplexing questions like this that Australia’s stars of science regularly answer each week on our TV science shows. Led by the legacies of science-show godfather, the late Professor Julius Sumner Miller, TV’s white-coat brigade show us how scientific marvels – such as their weekly appearance in our lounge room – are made possible. Or what technologies will power cars of the future, or what happens during a lunar eclipse. Or even how watching television can curb chocolate cravings.

  Not that the professor would support such a theory, given he became famous in later years for flogging Cadbury chocolate with his catchphrase, ‘Why is it so?’ The man whose hair was an experiment in itself originally fronted the ABC science program Why Is It So?, which aired between 1963 and 1986. He even had a little-remembered stint on Channel 9 in 1965 with Great Moments in Science.

  Another science success story started not with an enthusiastic professor, but with a big brown bear. Taking Why Is It So? as its lead, the producers of Nine’s Here’s Humphrey employed the talents of Doctor Rob Morrison to present short science segments on the popular children’s show.

  Morrison was joined by Doctor Deane Hutton, their science spot spawning its own program, the award-winning Curiosity Show, which ran from 1972 to 1990. Nationwide, the show became a hit with adolescents eager to learn why their science experiments involving magnesium and a Bunsen burner were going so explosively astray.

  It wasn’t only kids being wowed by science. ABC’s The Inventors (1970–81) concentrated less on theory lessons and more on backyard science, allowing average Aussie inventors to show off their shed-born creations in front of an expert panel.

  An estimated one in six Australians regularly tuned in to the collective ingenuity of over 750 inventors. One contestant, David Little, went on to win a World Health Organization medal for his Solar Energy Tracker, while other featured inventions are now part of everyday life, including the rotary engine. Strangely, Malcolm Pickard’s ‘Snog-o-Meter’, which measured kiss intensity, never made it to market.

  As ever, the ABC remained resilient, returning to air in 2004 with The New Inventors, hosted by James O’Loghlin and a rotating panel of judges.

  In 1980 Nine’s copy-cat show, What’ll They Think of Next? began. While the format remained the same, the addition of ‘expert judges’, including Logie-winning actor Lorraine Bayly and journalist Helen Wellings, helped increase ratings.

  At this time, it was perhaps ABC’s Towards 2000 (1981–87) that made science on TV sexy, placing as much emphasis on the art of storytelling and drama as on scientific merit. Based on the UK’s Tomorrow’s World, Towards 2000 launched the careers of Carmel Travers, Jeff Watson and Iain Finlay, who all turned coats when Seven decided the format was exciting enough for commercial TV and created Beyond 2000 in 1985. It thrived, becoming even more magazine-like until switching to Ten in 1993.

  With Towards 2000 poached, the ABC went suitably cerebral, chasing the frontiers of science both locally and internationally with the weekly half-hour program Quantum (1985–2001). From genes and climate change to outer space, it explored ideas, ethics and challenges and for the first time examined the implications of scientific advancements.

  The controversial demise of the ABC’s Science Unit ultimately led to the axing of Quantum, with the then ABC Director Gail Jarvis reportedly saying its format was old and tired, and that it was time for something new and innovative. And so Catalyst was born in 2001, a science show that in many respects could have been Quantum’s twin brother.

  Meanwhile, Seven decided our techno-savvy world once again needed a techno-savvy show, reinventing its Beyond 2000 format in yet another Eureka! naming moment with Beyond Tomorrow. Proving that you don’t have to be a boffin to get a science-show guernsey, the program featured Olympic sprinter Matt Shirvington. Maybe his close working knowledge of space-age materials, such as Lycra, secured him the job.

  The inventions that made it …

  > Glook – A fuzzy soft toy that, according to one psychologist, became a sex symbol.

  > Stiffies – Erection direction underwear. Seriously.

  > The Liberty Swing – Allowing wheelchair-bound children to enjoy the playground.

  > EcoKeg – Environmental beer delivery? Whose round is it?

  > The Picketup – A farmer’s favourite, designed to lift and drive star pickets in and out of the ground.

  And those that didn’t …

  > The Unsinkable Suit – Sank without a trace.

  > Portable Shirt Dryer – Couldn’t match the old clothes hanger.

  > The Aqueon – A swimming device to make people more porpoise-like.

  > The Wave Pillow – A surfer’s dream – a pillow that creates waves to let you know the real surf’s up.

  > Room with a Viewfinder – Mirror tricks to change your lounge room view.

  1970

  This was the start of AK: life After Kennedy. While a smooth Ceylonese singer set he
arts a-flutter, the church, politicians and even the coroner took issue with the television’s goings-on. But at least a couple of in-house drama productions promised to give the industry a much-longed-for local content boost.

  IMT adjusts to life after Graham

  In Melbourne Tonight may have marked its 13th birthday and 3000th episode this year, but there’s been little else to celebrate as the show floundered without its prodigal son, Graham Kennedy. Kennedy, who resigned from Nine last year and turned down lucrative offers from both Seven and 0/10, has been raking in the big bucks appearing in commercials.

  Meanwhile, Nine’s flagship program, of which he was such an integral part, has struggled to establish a winning new identity and has all but disappeared, metamorphosing into three distinct variety shows.

  Throughout the year, comperes came and went, rose and fell. In January, Nine decided not to invite a disappointed Mike Preston back to host Monday’s IMT, with the job going to Ugly Dave Gray.

  Stuart Wagstaff took Tuesdays, Bert Newton Wednesdays, Jimmy Hannan Thursdays, and Don Lane was to compere a late-night variety show produced in Sydney on Friday nights, but unfortunately that failed to be a winning mix.

  Gray had a difficult year, initially fighting hard to retain his ‘ugly’ moniker, then getting embroiled in a contractual dispute before finally learning that TCN-9 had dropped the now-renamed Ugly Dave Gray’s National Nine Show in October, without even consulting him.

  Things didn’t turn out any better for Newton. ‘Mr Wednesday’ proved to be one of IMT’s casualties and the ‘greener pasture’ to which he left – The Acid Test, which invited non-professional actors to perform short plays before a judging panel – turned out to be nothing more than a barren wasteland. The IMT curse also claimed Lane, who left Nine in August, stating ‘all the magic – all the fun – has gone out of TV’.