The 7pm NSW bulletin tonight used a retro style opener with 1980s theme music in recognition of the 90 Years celebration. The closer included more of the theme music including footage from past bulletins.
It was great to see!
I did see one newsreader in the closer whose face I remember but not her name. Does anyone recall who she is?
I found this on one of my Adelaide tapes (which I recently purchased off eBay for a bargain price) a few days ago; an ABC News SA newsbreak from the 29th January 1998.
At first I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about it, but SydneyCityTV informed me on Twitter that this update may have aired just days after the 1998 on-air package was launched, so I thought some of you may be interested to see it as a result.
And a trailblazer for ABC, she was ABC TV’s first female newsreader back in 1978. (Susannah Carr in Perth apparently made her newsreading debut for ABC TV a day later!)
Pretty much everyone of a certain age is familiar with the legendary ABC News television theme composed by Peter Wall & Tony Ansell that was used in ABC News television bulletins from 1985-2005 (If you aren’t you can find it in the link below)
But what a lot of people may not know is that the original version was only used up until the end of 1997.
From 1998 until 2005 a slightly different mix was used which removed much of the 1980s synth sound while also adding in brass horns. This version of the ABC News theme has for want of a better word been lost, as no clean recordings can be found anywhere online.
There are several YouTube videos (linked below) of news bulletins from 1998-2005 that do include the theme but all are either extremely short, poor quality or have the newsreader talking over the music.
Pretty much all other ABC News themes are available online in a clean instrumental form. I’ve been personally searching for the 1998-2005 version for many, many months now and have even contacted the ABC Archives who have informed me that the only way to get a copy is to licence it.
If anyone out there for one reason or another has access to a clean copy or has any old recordings of ABC News bulletins from 1998-2005 please do get in touch.