So it’s like their old ‘For School’ programs?
New season of Hardball.
2 Likes
Are You Tougher Than Your Ancestors?
From Monday 15 June at 6:30pm Weeknights at 6:30pm
Are You Tougher than Your Ancestors? takes today’s kids on a wild ride back through time. Drawing from our rich Indigenous and multicultural heritage, the series celebrates the diversity of Australia’s shared history. We turn stereotypes on their heads and allow our kids to experience the past in ways they never imagined. As a living history series, Are You Tougher than Your Ancestors? is brainy, but fun. Full of gross, “OMG!” moments, each episode takes our modern children into a foreign world. To survive the experience they must take risks, push themselves, trust their abilities and make decisions on their own, without Mum or Dad (or Google!) anywhere in sight.
Each episode is built around a fresh and exciting story that you’re unlikely to find in the history books. Strong historical stories from diverse families and communities provide the narrative backbone of each episode in the series. We employ true stories of amazing ancestors – stereotype busting, heroic and unusual tales of courage, endurance and ingenuity displayed by kids from the past that we ask our modern children to emulate. The experiences our modern children go through in each episode are shaped around this key story, as we look at each historical period through the lens of a specific child’s experience. But while we visit familiar eras and events, each episode looks at them from a brand new historical viewpoint: through the eyes of the children who were there.
Our Guide “G” (Ghenoa Gela) introduces each episode, and provides insight and encouragement as our contemporary kids are enveloped into a specific time and event from a bygone era. Colourful and quirky animated sequences tell the story of our historical child and set the context for each episode. Assisted along the way by expert “History Helpers”, our modern kids wrestle with disgusting chores, master mind-‐bending challenges and perform incredible feats of ingenuity as they get down and dirty walking in the shoes of their ancestors.
Driven by our kids’ firsthand experiences, we seek to surprise, engage, and sometimes horrify modern viewers as they watch what their lives would have been like had they been born in another era. The difficulty of the tasks escalates through the course of the episode, with the achievement of their ultimate goal complicated by a final curve ball mission that tests our child participants to their limits.
At the end of each episode we find out whether today’s kids are tougher than our ancestors… and what they discover might just surprise us all!
Episode 1 – KERNEWEK LOWENDER!
Location: Moonta, South Australia Makayla and Jack
Mine work, night school, chores… and goat racing! Makayla and Jack tackle the 1898 life of Cornish kid Robert Richards.
Episode 2 – OLYMPIA!
Location: Wylie’s Baths, Coogee, Sydney, New South Wales Sienna and Paige
Sienna and Paige attempt to beat the 1912 Olympic Medal winning time of one our first female Olympic swimmers, Wilhelmina Wylie.
Episode 3 – LENNIE THE LEGEND
Location: Leongatha, Victoria Gracie and Mikey
Gracey and Mikey tackle 24 hours of Lennie Gwyther’s epic 1932 solo ride from Leongatha to Sydney for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Episode 4 – PIONEER LIVING GERMAN STYLE!
Location: Rodert’s Farm, Hahndorf, South Australia Harper and Maeve
Maeve and Harper follow in the footsteps of 1850s Lutheran refugee Thekla Staude, trekking 26 kilometres along bush tracks to take their homemade produce to market in Adelaide.
Episode 5 – THE ORIGINAL “GHAN” TRAINS
Location: Beltana, Outback South Australia Ezekiel and Nathaniel
Ezekiel and Nathaniel guide a camel train through Australia’s harsh desert country following the route taken in the early 1900s by teenage Afghan Aboriginal cameleer, William Satour.
Episode 6 – DANCING ON WHEELS!
Location: Adelaide, South Australia Charli and Matthew
Charli and Matthew attempt to master the moves that won their coach, world champion artistic rollerskater Tammy Bryant, the 1989 Artistic Rollerskating Championship when she was only 12 years old.
Episode 7 – PLANE SAILING!
Location: Sydney Harbour, New South Wales Caitlyn and Stella
Caitlyn and Stella learn the ropes on board the three-‐masted sailing ship the “James Craig” in an attempt to match 1912 sailor Douglas Bull’s seamanship skills.
Episode 8 -‐ THE BIG MATCH!
Location: Kadlitipari, South Australia Ray Ray and Jaikye
Footballers Ray Ray and Jaikye play for the title of best and fairest in a Kaurna Parntu match that includes everyone.
Episode 9 -‐ MILK RUN!
Location: Melbourne, Victoria Jeffrin and Harry
Jeffrin and Harry have a go at completing Conway Tighe’s milk delivery run, 1940s style.
Episode 10 – DAI GUM SAN! BENDIGO EASTER FESTIVAL
Location: Bendigo, Victoria Avie and Alyssa
Inspired by 9 year old Christina Tie’s performance in the 1889 Bendigo Easter Festival, Avie and Alyssa put on a show!
ABC ME shows Hardball and Little Lunch are among 16 Australian children’s programs that will air in South Africa from next month.
1 Like
The drama series is coming to ABC ME later this year.
1 Like
While ABC Me has definitely had ups from the release of Hardball, The Strange Chores, Little Lunch, Itch and shows from other countries (100 Things To Do Before High School), there are things bringing it way down including its current programming lineup with horrid dramas and other terrible shows. 
As I read through this thread I realised I missed the days of ABC 3 (Prank Patrol was one show I loved)
Odd Squad - Series 3
From Sunday 21 June at 4.30pm
Ms. O recruits kids to be part of an elite team of Odd Squad agents that travels the world to solve odd cases. If something odd happens like your dog is doubled or your spouse is shrunk, not to worry. Simply call your friendly local Odd Squad precinct and those kids will fix you right up. But what happens when oddness doesn’t stay put? Like a globetrotting creature or a villain that is causing oddness across multiple towns? In that case, the Odd Squad Mobile Unit is called in to help.
1 Like
Thalu
From Monday 6 July at 4:00pm
With their country under threat from a huge dust cloud and the mysterious Takers that lurk within, a small group of Indigenous kids make their way to the Thalu, a place of great power, in order to stop the cloud before it destroys everything in its path.
This is a co-production with SBS - was seen on NITV last year.
So what does that mean for the channel?
Channel will continue but with content produced from Sydney and no Melbourne content.
Sacking the whole Melbourne unit for ABC ME contradicts managing director David Anderson’s vow to decentralise (75% of content makers will work away from Ultimo by 2025). It’s really unfair.
1 Like
What I wish they’d do is run ABC Kids and ABC ME on the same channel. ABC Kids 6am-5pm, ABC ME 5pm-12am.
Then have ABC2 or whatever it will be called totally catering for the arts, comedy, youth and other things.
2 Likes
If they were to have that then ABC Kids would need to finish by 3pm at the very latest as school aged students won’t put up with baby programming till 5pm.
3 Likes
Personally I think merging ABC Kids and ME is an idea that should be considered, but no doubt there’d be plenty of parents (especially those who rely on ABC Kids as a babysitter) who’d complain especially when timeslot changes of popular shows like Play School generate feedback!
Without treading too far into the Mock Schedules thread, perhaps something like this could work if ME & Kids were merged into a single channel?
6am-8.30am: ABC ME
8.30am-10am (until 3.30pm on weekends and school holidays): ABC Kids
10am-12pm weekdays during school terms: ABC Schools (BTN and other educational programming)
12pm-3.30pm: ABC Kids
3.30pm-10pm: ABC ME
10pm-Midnight (possibly right through until 6am on Friday-Saturday & Saturday-Sunday, simulcast with the main channel): Rage music videos.
Midnight-6am: Station close.
2 Likes
I agree, doesn’t need ABC Me/ KIDS branding, just the content would change, just give it one name. Even go back to ABC3 seeing as ABC Comedy looks like becoming ABC2 again.
I really don’t think having multiple branded programming blocks on a single channel would matter that much. The children’s programming blocks on the main channel were branded/promoted (and no doubt referred to by much of the target audience) as “ABC Kids” for most of the 2000s, with the standard corporate “ABC” branding only really being used during normal programming for adults.
Talking about channel name
1 Like