by Nick Place
> Larger than Life and Col’n Carpenter – two new programs from Mark Mitchell and Kim Gyngell
> In Harmer’s Way – talk show hosted by Wendy Harmer
> Lateline – late night current affairs program hosted by Kerry O’Brien
> Come In Spinner – WW2 mini-series starring Kerry Armstrong, Lisa Harrow and Rebecca Gibney
> Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Video Show – viewers’ home videos
> Skirts – police drama centred around a welfare-based Community Policing Squad (below)
> Let the Blood Run Free – outrageous hospital-based soap-comedy
> C Company – kids show
> The Private War of Lucinda Smith – miniseries set in the South Pacific in 1914
> Elly and Jools – children’s mini-series
> Round The Twist – children’s series about kids who live in a lighthouse
> The Home Show – real estate/ property/DIY show
> Jackaroo – mini-series starring former Neighbours star Annie Jones
> The Book Show – interviews with authors and talk about new books
> Catalyst – ABC science show hosted by Kaarin Fairfax
The King is dead. Long live Robbo!
In a spectacular turnaround, idiosyncratic newsreader Clive Robertson has gone from being thrashed in the ratings by Graham Kennedy’s Coast to Coast to swapping networks and replacing that show on Nine.
Twelve months ago, Robertson’s Newsworld on Seven was being hammered by Kennedy’s eccentric rival news service. Coast to Coast won fans across the country for its irreverent approach, where the news of the day was almost always lost in a stream of jokes, one-liners and offbeat items. It was a winning formula and proved far too hot for Robertson’s Newsworld. He took five months off after his show was axed, but then switched to Nine and is now preparing to front The World Tonight.
The new show will be a virtual replacement for Coast to Coast, which itself died quickly after Kennedy’s sudden departure. His replacement, Terry Willesee, struggled to work out whether he should try to somehow produce as many anecdotes and jokes as The King used to regularly drop on the show, or just get on with the news.
Poor John Mangos looked even more at sea, as he tried to change gears from Kennedy’s giggling sidekick to his old role as a serious newsreader. And comedienne Gretel Killeen walked after only two weeks on the show.
Kennedy’s reasons for leaving the show were shrouded in mystery and rumour, as is often the case with The King. There were reports that Kennedy had asked for a substantial pay rise that he didn’t get, that he had taken six months off for health reasons and that he has been drained by a court case battle with his former manager, Harry M. Miller.
There is now talk that Kennedy might be back on air before the end of the year with Graham Kennedy’s Funniest Home Video Show.
Embassy to continue despite Asian tensions
December: The high quality but controversial ABC drama, Embassy, is to record a second series, despite the diplomatic tensions with Asia sparked by the first series.
Set in the Australian Embassy in Ragaan, a fictional south-east Asian country, the series eventually forced the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, to personally assure Malaysia that it was fictonal and not making fun of that country. Malaysia had suspended trade talks and cancelled any official visits between the two countries, as a protest to the perceived slight Embassy was delivering.
Dad will be dishing up the lamb roast from now on
August: The Aussie girl who said no to a date with Tom Cruise in an ad for Australian lamb, Naomi Watts, is joining the cast of Hey Dad! as Belinda, the new girlfriend of Simon. This represents a big break for the 21-year-old former model, who previously had a small role in Return to Eden.
Watts will also be up on the big screen soon, alongside former modelling pal Nicole Kidman in Flirting, and hopes to gain international exposure through her appearance in the latest Craig McLachlan and Check 1-2 video clip, Amanda.
‘We were shooting the video at five o’clock on this freezing cold morning. It was done on the beach and we were in the water cuddling as the waves rolled in,’ she said. ‘We look passionately in love. Actually we were freezing our butts off – it was very difficult for both of us.’
Network finances in critical condition
December: Australian television is in its most parlous financial state since the medium began in 1956. With networks Ten and Seven now in receivership and Nine recently bought back from Alan Bond by Kerry Packer for a fraction of the price Bond paid for it only a couple of years ago, there is a real danger of a network, or networks, falling over.
The fallout from the networks’ financial plight is affecting all levels of the industry, with estimates that up to 1000 have lost their jobs over the past 12 months.
Things are particularly bad at Ten. The station often runs a bad third in the ratings and there’s not much production money around to stop the slide. In fact, in one week late last year, Ten axed Perfect Match, Body and Soul, Ford Superquiz, Australia’s Most Wanted and several news bulletins as the money ran out.
Wild about Mild?
The team that produced Mother and Son have created a zany new sitcom called Howard – The Mild Colonial Boy, to premiere on the ABC.
Set in 1878, Howard Kelly is a butcher’s apprentice and dedicated socialist in Ballarat. He wants to form an animal liberation society, but because he’s poor decides to follow the example of his famous cousin Ned and turn to crime. So Howard becomes Captain Leadlight, Australia’s least-known and most socially aware bushranger.
With a set-up like that, how could the show fail?
MEMORIES
> Tina Turner’s Simply the Best highlights the official 1990 NSW Rugby League commercials.
> Dannii Minogue announces she is leaving Home and Away to pursue her singing career.
> Nine unveils its ‘stump cam’ cricket camera.
> Pat McDonald, who played Dorrie Evans in Number 96 and Fiona Thompson on Sons and Daughters, dies from cancer.
> Former Wombat reporter Bob La Castra joins Neighbours.
> It’s reported that a $20 million deal for hundreds of Home and Away episodes to be screened in Britain over the next few years saved the soap from getting the chop.
> Bouncer the dog gets married on Neighbours.
> Craig McLachlan and Rachel Friend become engaged, after meeting on the set of Neighbours. Fellow Neighbours stars Stefan Dennis and Gayle Blakeney also become a couple in real life.
> Singer Brian Mannix from The Uncanny X Men makes a guest appearance on Skirts, appearing as a drunk.
> A third Daddo brother, Lochie, hosts the ABC’s Countdown Revolution. His brother Andrew was dropped from hosting the series a year earlier.
> James Reyne joins the cast of The Flying Doctors.
> Rebecca Gibney wins an AFI Award for Best Actress in a mini-series for Come In Spinner.
> Ten goes into receivership.
> Gold Logie: Craig McLachlan
> Hall of Fame: John Young (right)
> Most Outstanding Actress: Nicole Kidman
TV IN PRINT
The story of Australia’s TV magazines has all the intrigue of a great melodrama. From their early battle for supremacy to giving viewers the chance to vote for their favourite actors and shows at the Logies, our TV glossies offer much more than a pleasing distraction in the supermarket queue.
Read all about it
In their heyday, they had the power to make or break a TV actor’s career. In recent years, they’ve been at the centre of the biggest dogfight in Australian magazine history. For almost as long as we’ve been watching TV, we’ve been flicking through the pages of TV magazines, getting tips on what to watch each week, and what to avoid.
Australia’s first TV magazine was the result of fierce competition between rival Melbourne networks. HSV-7 held the monopoly with its Melbourne newsprint TV bible, Listener In-TV, until GTV-9 rushed its pocket-sized
, one-shilling TV listing magazine called TV-Radio Week onto Melbourne news stands in 1957, before relaunching it in Sydney as TV Week a year later. While the TV listings section came in handy for planning a night in, the personality features and behind-the-scenes gossip made TV Week an instant hit, kicking off the TV Week Awards that same year, which soon became the Logies.
A new player hit the ground running in 1959, boasting more news, less gossip and a better program section. The ABC-Packer joint venture, TV News-Times, later retitled TV Times, went head-to-head with TV Week for over 20 years. As TV stations expanded across Australian states, both titles launched state-based editions.
Behind their glossy covers was the dirt on the latest love affairs and weddings between cast members, upcoming episode spoilers, introductions to TV’s newest faces and the real reasons why shows were axed, stars were dumped, or ratings were diving. Embarrassing photo shoots of TV celebrities wearing skimpy bikinis and super-tight budgie smugglers featured heavily. The publications also provided a platform for stars to build a profile beyond their TV characters, explain their side of a dramatic real-life situation, or let networks know they were ‘available’, if their latest soapie role were to wind up.
Columnists gained power too. A few taps on their keyboard could see a show bomb in the ratings, and that power wasn’t used sparingly by TV Week columnists like Lawrie Masterson, or by John Laws, who usually had a show in or out of the sin bin after its first episode.
TV magazine popularity peaked in the 1980s when a cover splashed with the ‘wedding of the decade’ between Neighbours stars Charlene Ramsay (Kylie Minogue) and Scott Robinson (Jason Donovan) shifted 860,000 copies of TV Week. And when Frank Packer agreed to kill off his half-share in TV Times for a 50 per cent share in TV Week that same decade, both TV Times and TV Guide were soon swallowed up by the TV Week banner.
As newspaper TV supplements expanded their content with straight-up show reviews and info on new entertainment technologies, they slowly began grinding away glossy mag domination, a situation later intensified by online programs. The Age’s Green Guide, launched in 1969, became so entrenched in Melbourne TV-watching culture that a colour change in 1998 was rejected by readers as the wrong shade of green. The Sydney Morning Herald’s The Guide became home to Peter Luck’s ‘Fifth Column’ for seven years, and was the place where TV critic Doug Anderson turned television knowledge into an intellectual sport.
Having a TV glossy that cornered the market in its magazine stable was also good business. In 2002, after a 20-year deal that saw TV Week co-owned by Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and Pacific Publications, Packer launched a shock $60 million bid to buy out the remaining share, just as Pacific’s sale to the Seven Network was being finalised. In retaliation, Pacific developed, compiled and launched a rival TV magazine, What’s On Weekly (WOW), in the space of three weeks, and a legal battle raged through the Supreme Court over who owned the Logies. TV Week won and WOW bowed out.
At their best, TV magazines have shocked and entertained us, even echoed Australia’s changing attitudes over the last 50 years. Nowhere is this reflected better than in one of TV’s most controversial modern moments, when Sale of the Century hostess Nicky Buckley appeared on the cover of TV Week under the headline ‘Pregnant Nicky’s Sale Shock’ in 1997. The shock wasn’t that the show was being axed or that she was being traded in for a younger model, but – in an Australian first – a TV presenter planned to keep working through her pregnancy. News of the glossiest, indeed.
Great headlines from Australia’s TV magazines
> August 1969 – ‘Fredd Bear in Kidnap Scare’ – University students threaten to abduct the popular kids’ show bear.
> October 1969 – ‘From Fags to Fame’ – Cigarette commercials were a legitimate place to start one’s TV career back in those days.
> February 1970 – ‘Laws Sparks Religious War’ – John Laws causes furore by saying on air, ‘Priests would do anything for money.’
> April 1970 – ‘Spellbound Star in Death Probe’ – Hypnotist Martin St James has to give evidence about two people who died after attending one of his shows.
> April 1971 – ‘Slaughter on Bendigo Street’ – What?
A massacre at the famed Channel Nine studios? Not quite. Just a few big names being axed.
> August 1981 – ‘Pamela Hides Her Wiggly Bits’ – Blonde bombshell Pamela Stephenson tells TV Week she’d prefer to exercise her mind than her ‘wiggly bits’.
> August 1981 – ‘Newsgirls Break the Sex Barrier’ – Not a story about newsreaders and frenetic copulation, rather Jana Wendt and Katrina Lee breaking into the boys’ club of Australian news presenters.
> June 1982 – ‘Beauty with a Super-Charged Beast’ – One of John Laws’ beauties on Beauty and the Beast, Helen Coonan, drives a white Porsche. Light bulb moment! Let’s publish a story about it.
> October 1986 – ‘Gorilla Chiller!’ Tense moments as 60 Minutes cameras catch Jeff McMullen being ‘savaged’ by a gorilla. Thankfully, the gorilla escaped the encounter unharmed.
1991
Proving there’s never a quiet year in television, 1991 duly delivers its share of thrills and spills. From the much talked about Brides of Christ and the often-replayed stoush between Normie Rowe and Ron Casey, to the glitz and glamour of Hey Hey’s 20th birthday and the sad passing of Hector Crawford, 1991 is filled with memories.
Brides gives the ABC ratings from Heaven
September: The ABC has recorded its highest-ever figures for a non-sporting event with the powerful mini-series, Brides of Christ. The six-part drama followed the story of a group of novice nuns living in an inner-city convent in the 1960s. Their personal stories were tangled into a background decade of sexual freedom and political and social change, making for compelling television.
As TV Week described the series: ‘They [the nuns] are bound by their vows which set them apart, yet they are forced to become part of a changing world. For many, their faith will be sufficient to carry them through their personal crises. But some are tormented by questions they cannot answer, disciplines they cannot follow and love they dare not feel.’
The series ran on Wednesday and Thursday nights for three straight weeks in September, and recorded a huge following – certainly by ABC standards. A strong cast included Irish Academy Award winner Brenda Fricker, along with Sandy Gore, and eye-catching newcomers, such as Naomi Watts and Kym Wilson.
Other young standouts among the cast were Josephine Byrnes and All the Way’s Lisa Hensley, who also worked together in Shadows of the Heart, which screened on Ten last year. Rising actor Russell Crowe also gained attention with his performance as a Vietnam conscriptee torn between lust and his religious beliefs. Crowe, 26, has been busy lately, with key roles in two feature films, Spotswood, which starred Anthony Hopkins, and Proof, from first-time director Jocelyn Moorhouse. He also starred recently in The Crossing, with Danielle Spencer.
Watts’s star also seems to be on the rise. She recently appeared in the film Flirting, with close friend Nicole Kidman, and she also appeared in a music video for soapie star Craig McLachlan’s band, Check 1-2. But Brides of Christ has moved her to a new level of performance. The 23-year-old’s portrayal of Frances, a schoolgirl torn between her religion and her dream of becoming a journalist like her father, marks her as one to watch.
Russell Crowe and Kym Wilson confront temptation in the front seat of Russell’s car.
First Liverpool, now The Main Event
He might have starred for Liverpool on a stage as big as the FA Cup Final, but former soccer star Craig Johnston has now turned his attention to TV, developing a new game show called The Main Event.
Hosted by Larry Emdur, the show will feature a panel of celebrities playing for teams who are watching at home – and who then become part of the show when live film crews turn up at their house. It sounds bizarre, but stranger things have worked on TV before this.
Labor in trouble, says Lyneham
January: The ABC’s hard-hitting 7.30 Report frontman, Paul Lyneham, says the Labor Party is running short of talent, with few cabinet ministers likely to still be around when Bob Hawke finally retires. Lyneham says there is no likely successor to Hawke on Labor’s front bench, certainly not Kim Beazley who, he told TV Week, ‘could well lose his seat at the next election’.
Another man considered to be a contender, Treasurer Paul Keating, had left his run ‘much too late’. ‘They [the Australian people] are not mugs. They don’t believe he’s one of us. So many people have made up their minds about Paul Keating – and firmly.’
Boxing for the blue rinse set
July: The usually placid Midday Show with Ray Martin plunged into violence during a debate on republicanism. As temperatures rose, shock jock and avowed republican Ron Casey called ageing rock singer and Vietnam veteran Normie Rowe ‘a bloody hero’.
Displeased, Rowe marched across stage calling Casey a ‘low rat’, before pushing him back into his chair. But with an agility belying his years, Casey sprung out of his chair and landed a clean punch on Rowe’s jaw. Needless to say, chaos ensued. Clearly panicked, Ray Martin threw to an ad break and called for the help of security guards. Heart rates in the nation’s nursing homes are believed to be returning to normal.
Nine high life not for Bush Tucker Man
February: Les Hiddens, better known as the Bush Tucker Man, says it was not difficult to knock back a major offer to move to the Nine Network, with promises of big bucks and a prime-time slot.
‘The ABC were brave enough to give me a go in the first place,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it would be very fair to make a success of something like this with one network and then run with it to another. There’s more to life than money, mate. Money has brought a whole bunch of people undone.’
Hiddens recently received a fan letter from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. ‘I’m really proud of that one,’ he admitted.
