by Nick Place
‘Now we have a director half my age who asked me to be a farmyard chook aspiring to be a ballerina. It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done!’
ON DEBUT
> Extra Dimensions – a show ‘looking at the unexplained’, presented by Richard Neville
> Rafferty’s Rules – series about a magistrate in Manly
> Sportsworld – replaces the long-running World of Sport on Seven in Melbourne
> Billboard – arts and entertainment program on the ABC
> Mike Walsh – Saturday-night one-hour talk show hosted by Walsh and standup comedian Gretel Killeen
> The Factory – show for teenagers hosted by Alex Papps and Andrew Daddo
> Captain James Cook – $12 million, eight-hour mini-series
> Burke’s Backyard – lifestyle show presented by Don Burke, covering pets, plants, recipes, travel and celebrities’ gardens
> Fields of Fire – historical series set in a Queensland cane-cutting town in the 1930s to 1950s
> Shorts – innovative series of short dramas
> Relative Merits – political mini-series about problems for Australia in dealing with its neighbours
> The Harp in the South – historical mini-series; based on the novel by Ruth Park
> Poor Man’s Orange – sequel series to Harp in the South, set in the same Sydney suburb but now in the 1950s
> Kaboodle – children’s drama series including puppetry, animation and claymation
> Vietnam – mini-series on Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War
> The Far Country – historical miniseries starring Michael York and Sigrid Thornton
> The Petrov Affair – political mini-series about the 1953 defection of a minor KGB agent
> Nancy Wake – historical mini-series on of the most-decorated woman in World War II
> In Between – mini-series
Skase: Seven’s saviour?
July: The sale last night of Channel 7 in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from Fairfax to Queensland millionaire Christopher Skase is the latest chapter in a tumultuous year of media ownership; every commercial TV station in Sydney and Melbourne has changed hands since February for a total of about $2500 million.
In January, Alan Bond bought Channel 9 in Melbourne and Sydney from Kerry Packer. Combined with his existing interests in STW-9 Perth and QTQ-9 Brisbane, Bond effectively took control of the first coast-to-coast Australian TV network, with access to 59 per cent of the Australian television audience. Amid industry whispers that Bond may have paid too much for TCN-9 and GTV-9, the showy businessman has shouldered some of the cost by creating and listing on the stock exchange a new company, Bond Media.
Fairfax, meanwhile, acquired HSV-7 in March during the carve-up of the Herald & Weekly Times group. It immediately implemented a number of unpopular changes, including numerous staff cuts and a major shake-up of the news service. Popular newsreader Mal Walden was out and headed for ATV-10, while his replacement Greg Pearce battled to read the day’s top stories over the din of industry picketers. The strike-ridden news led to a huge drop-off in viewers, barely registering a point in the ratings at its worst.
When the government’s new cross-media ownership laws forced Fairfax to choose between its print and broadcast operations, HSV-7 and Fairfax’s other TV stations, ATN-7 and BTQ-7, were the obvious choice to go. But one media empire’s trash is another media magnate’s treasure, and Skase says he’s excited by the possibilities of his new acquisition.
Handsome Larry Emdur is relishing his new role as a roving reporter with Good Morning Australia. The 22-year-old former newspaper copy-boy is gaining a legion of fans thanks to his natural disposition, quick wit and winning smile. Bouncing off hosts Tim Webster and Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Emdur’s reports are not exactly hard-hitting – he once did a piece on a day in the life of a coconut – but his growing popularity suggests we’re going to be seeing a lot more of those pearly whites in the future.
Evans struggles to find perfect match
December: Greg Evans has been doing it tough after switching from Ten to Nine at the start of the year in a reputed $1 million deal. His first project for his new network was Say G’Day, a mix of interviews, comedy and stunts that said goodbye when it went head-to-head with Perfect Match and lost out badly after less than six months.
Not to be disheartened, Evans has bounced back with Crossfire, a new weeknight quiz show where students test their general knowledge on topics ranging from rock’n’roll, world affairs, movies, sport and comedy.
But initial reviews do not bode well for the handsome 33-year-old host, with critic John Laws describing the show as ‘another dud’.
The end of the World
March: The final siren sounded for a TV sporting institution this week, when the last episode of World of Sport hit our screens. Starting life as a one-hour Saturday show in 1959, the program was originally hosted by Ron Casey and soon grew into a two-hour, then a three-hour, program from 11 am on Sunday.
Fondly remembered will be the show’s enigmatic personalities – Doug Elliott, Bob Davis, Jack Dyer and Lou Richards among them – and the slightly bizarre sporting contests including the handball competitions, woodchop, roller-cycling and tug-of-war. It will be missed.
Having another go
October: Following the demise last year of Late Night with Jono and Dano, Jonathan Coleman and Ian ‘Dano’ Rogerson have bounced back with their new show on Seven, Have a Go. A mix of The Gong Show and Red Faces, the celebrity judges have helped Have a Go out-rate the Cameron Daddo-fronted Perfect Match in the 5.30 pm weekday timeslot.
It’s been a ripper year for Coleman, who’s also penned the lyrics for Seven’s much-hyped new soapie, Home and Away. After the success of the pilot made in July, the drama, which centres on Tom and Pippa Fletcher and their assorted foster children, will become a regular series on our screens next year.
MEMORIES
> Cameron Daddo and Kerrie Friend are the new hosts of Perfect Match.
> Nine’s coverage of the Adelaide Grand Prix is voted the best Grand Prix coverage in the world for 1986.
> Amanda Keller joins Richard Neville’s Dimensions after two years on Ray Martin’s Midday.
> The ABC gains live coverage of Australian Rules Football from Seven and televises the VFL Grand Final.
> Kylie Minogue is set to launch a singing career after signing a recording deal with Mushroom Records.
> 60 Minutes is toppled from its mantle in Sydney by the new US show about an alien, Alf.
> Richard Carleton is thrown out of South Africa.
> Australia’s first heart transplant patient, 17-year-old Fiona Coote, makes a guest appearance on Neighbours.
> Derryn Hinch goes to jail after comments on radio 3AW.
> Geraldine Doogue moves from the ABC to Ten to host a new holiday show, Holiday Australia.
> Sons and Daughters finishes its much-heralded run.
> Northern Star buys TVQ-0 Brisbane from Darling Downs Television and re-badges it as the Ten TV Network.
> Gold Logie: Ray Martin
> Hall of Fame: Paul Hogan (below)
> Most Outstanding Achievement in News: Channel 10 Melbourne for its coverage of the Russell Street Bombing
ARTS
The story of arts broadcasting and Australian television is a patchy one. While audiences have been hard to seduce with the niche interests of the arts world, there have still been shows that captured the local imagination.
For the culture vultures
How the wobbly makeshift studio floorboards at St David’s church hall managed them is a little hazy, but when Australia’s first trio of entertainment shows waltzed on to TCN-9 in 1956, art in its many forms on Australian TV was born.
Even if they did hover on the fringes of light entertainment, The Johnny O’Connor Show, Accent on Strings and Campfire Favourites (hosted by Frank ‘I Remember You’ Ifield) have come to be regarded as Australia’s first arts shows. L
acking sponsorship, all three disappeared within just a few months.
And therein lies the story of Australia’s patchy commitment to arts broadcasting. Arts television has been around since the earliest days of the medium, but rarely has it been popular enough to be secure. Too many people switch off – or don’t switch on in the first place – because they believe the arts are elitist, boring, or both. As a result, the commercial networks have barely touched the genre, leaving it primarily to the ABC and more recently SBS. It’s a problem as prevalent today as when The Johnny O’Connor Show et al. bit the dust. As Brian Courtis noted in The Age in 2004, ‘The words “the arts” are, it seems, the dirtiest you can utter on mainstream TV.’
Part of the problem, of course, is that ‘the arts’ is an amorphous tag. Exactly what does it refer to? What doesn’t it refer to? Further, with ratings often deciding the lifespan of an arts show, programmers have constantly tried to satisfy many different audiences at the same time, while also getting the timeslots right. Sunday afternoons and late-night broadcasts have always been popular for the arts on TV: a good time to unwind, be entertained, widen the critical eye, maybe, but also ideal for the ABC to avoid a ratings hammering by the commercial broadcasters.
Early on, the ABC filled its arts broadcasting promise by forging relationships with many of the local symphony orchestras. There was live and recorded music, literary broadcasts, productions of original dramatic works and even an acoustic arts unit. Channel 7 even chimed in with a series of plays performed live to air in 1962 called Shell Presents. In 1964 the ABC launched a general arts program called The Critics – a panel discussion about art, literature, drama and music. Two years later they tried again, this time with a program called Survey hosted by Mungo MacCallum.
It was a concept the national broadcaster never lost sight of. After a couple of decades of predominantly single-focus programs, the 1990s saw the re-emergence of shows dedicated to showing all of the arts, from music and performance to movies, criticism and analysis. Review, Express, The Arts Show, Coast to Coast, Critical Mass, Vulture and the three-hour Sunday Afternoon omnibus all covered bits of everything. But most didn’t stay on our screens for very long, no matter how ‘funky’ the manner in which they tried to portray the arts.
Some areas of the genre have been more successful at attracting their own specialist programs. Books and literature has been a staple, especially over the past decade or so, with programs such as Between the Lines, Books with James Griffin, The Last Word, Words and the one-off special, My Favourite Book, in 2004.
But unquestionably the one big winner of arts TV in Australia has been film shows. As early as 1958 one of the top five programs on Australian TV was Nine’s Hollywood Movie Parade. While Sunday Night at the Movies, Academy Theatre, Midday Movie and Channel 2’s Screenplay were all-encompassing programs used by the TV networks to introduce films, it was the shows with hosts, many of whom became cult figures themselves, which had the longest and most successful runs.
There was Two on the Aisle co-hosted by Jim Murphy and Ivan Hutchinson, followed by Ivan’s Movie Classics; David Stratton’s Whole World of Movies and his and Margaret Pomeranz’s The Movie Show (which started at SBS in 1986, was transposed to the ABC in 2004 and renamed At the Movies); and John Hinde’s Talking Pictures. Perhaps the most iconic was Bill Collins’ Golden Years of Hollywood, the successor to The Bill Collins Picture Show. In Golden Years, who could forget Bill’s name up in lights, the ‘That’s Entertainment’ theme, his emphatic improvised musings, the Oscar perched behind him, and the ubiquitous red sports coats – all very golden indeed.
TV’s virtuosos
> Often remembered as Australia’s finest screen composer, Brian May was a long-time ABC Showband leader who also penned theme songs for Bellbird, Return to Eden, The Last Frontier and Countdown. After topping the music charts with his arrangement for the period drama Rush (1974–76), he left TV in 1984 to focus on film. Film scores for Gallipoli, Mad Max and Nightmare on Elm Street were among his greatest hits.
> Born in Hungary, Tommy Tycho was the court pianist for the late Shah of Iran before arriving in Australia to compose thousands of orchestrations for Australian TV: think all ABC orchestras, Paul Hogan TV specials and Number 96, to name a very few.
> While tinkling the ivories at the helm of his eponymous orchestra, Eric Jupp hit plenty of right notes as the host of the ABC’s long-running light orchestral program, The Magic of Music (1961–74), but his most lasting impact echoes through the banjo twangs of his famous Skippy the Bush Kangaroo composition.
> Musical director Geoff Harvey started at the Nine Network in 1962 and left in 1999. Involved with Bandstand, The Sound of Music, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, The Don Lane Show, the Logie awards and conducting for most of the midday shows, he also composed the themes to The Sullivans, A Current Affair, Midday with Kerri-Anne, Today and Sunday.
> Most people remember Paul Grabowsky as the early ’90s ‘Count’ in his lead role with the Groovematics on Tonight Live with Steve Vizard. The same era saw him compose music for Fast Forward, Phoenix and the children’s TV series Lift Off. The highlight of his brief follow-up stint as ABC’s commissioning arts editor was giving the nod to the highly successful A Long Way to the Top music documentary series.
1988
Laughs aplenty, but not all this year’s pranks have been received in such good humour. We tuned in to the Fletcher family and their foster kids, switched off from the cops of Richmond Hill and watched the Logies mark a milestone with a barbed speech and a punch-up!
There’s something funny going on
The team behind The Comedy Company is enjoying the last laugh. Having had a pilot made after The Eleventh Hour was knocked back by Seven three years ago, the band of comic performers switched to Ten and have been whooping their way up the ratings since their February debut.
The show originally struggled to find its feet in a Tuesday night timeslot, but its larger-than-life characters such as Kylie Mole (Maryanne Fahey), Con the Fruiterer (Mark Mitchell), Colin Carpenter (Kim Gyngell) and Uncle Arthur (Glenn Robbins) are now as synonymous with Sunday nights as baked beans on toast.
Mole has been enjoying some spin-off success, releasing her first single, ‘Sooo Excellent’, in September, while Con’s infectious enthusiasm has thrust expressions like ‘bee-yu-ti-full’ and ‘coupla days’ firmly into the common vernacular.
They say laughter is infectious, and so it seems is television comedy. Comedian and impressionist Gerry Connolly launched his self-titled show on the ABC in June, while the D-Generation brought us four Channel 7 specials that were loved by audiences but coolly received by critics. However, frontman Tom Gleisner is not disheartened by playing second fiddle to The Comedy Company, for the time being anyway.
‘They’re broad, aim for mass appeal and tend to explain their jokes. We by-pass that hoping the audience will get the idea. We’re narrower, but our humour isn’t elitist. We’re just as likely to do a drop-your-daks routine!’ he said.
There’ll also be a new kid on the block next year, hoping to send some comedic feathers flying. Fast Forward, which will star Steve Vizard, and Magda Szubanski and Marg Downey from The D-Generation, promises to leave no sacred cow unturned. And, with over 30 sketches packed into every hour, plus a strong music element, Vizard says the show will be ‘pacy, topical and ruthless’. Vizard is so confident the show’s going to be a hit that upon signing his contract, he promptly tossed in his law practice. ‘I am convinced the market is there for this type of show,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t right for me before. I had a specific show I wanted to do and this is it – the right time and the right show.’
Rags to stitches
January: During a recent episode of children’s favourite the Early Bird Show, Marty the Monster (floor manager David Triscott) learnt the hard way that not all kangaroos are as peace-loving and genial as Skippy.
In what seemed like a good idea at the time, a wildlife handler was invited to bring Ra
gs, a six-foot grey kangaroo, into the studios to have a chat about the furry Aussie icons. But Rags soon broke away from his handler and launched himself at the man in the yellow monster suit. Pinned to the ground, trapped in a neck hold, Marty was defenceless against the roo’s blows, while host Daryl Cotton doubled over with laughter.
Rags was finally subdued and Marty the Monster limped off, committed like never before to the old adage: never work with children or animals.
That’s Hinch
March: Current affairs personality Derryn Hinch continues to leave a trail of controversy wherever he goes. Having spent 12 days in jail last year for contempt of court after he revealed the name of a convicted child molester on air, the human headline was lured to Seven in a deal reputedly worth $5 million.
Just weeks into his new show, Hinch at Seven, controversy has again tracked him down. Hinch had planned two interviews at Seven’s Melbourne studios, just one hour apart – the first with convicted killer Robert McKie, the second with Brian Littlechild, the son of the man McKie bashed to death 12 years ago. As McKie was being signed in, he was stabbed several times. Shortly after, Leonard Littlechild, Brian’s brother, was charged with attempted murder. Never one to shy away from a good story, Hinch at Seven led last night with footage of the aftermath and McKie slumped in the foyer.
Australia Live
January: Three major networks joined forces to present Australia Live, an extravagant and star-studded 200th birthday present to all of Australia. If scale counts for anything, this was one almighty gift. ABC, SBS, Nine and regional stations broadcast four hours of live entertainment that covered the length and breadth of the country.
Vision was beamed into our living rooms from underwater on the Great Barrier Reef, from Antarctica, down a mine at Mt Isa, from on board the Indian Pacific train and the Prime Minister’s residence in Canberra.
