It was produced at TCN and was moderated by the editor in chief of The Daily Telegraph, David McNicoll. It didn’t always feature politicians. Sporting identities, professors of medicine and entertainers, such as Graham Kennedy, also faced the panel of journos. I don’t think it lasted beyond 1971.
Meet The Press had previously aired in the very early days of Sydney television and HSV 7 had a Melbourne version of the show in the late 1960s. The Sydney show ended up being aired on GTV 9 when that station dropped its live variety shows in March 1971 and was having trouble meeting its local content quota. This necessitated the brief of the program being expanded to cover national issues and Melbourne journos being invited to join the panel.
The format was resurrected in 1976 under the name Face The Nation with Gerald Stone, the architect of the failed News Centre Nine format and founding EP of 60 Minutes, as moderator.
Melbourne TV: Saturday June 22, 1985
Source: The Age
ABV2
9.30am Lawn Bowls
10.20 Buongiorno Italia
10.55 The Media
11.15 Detective
11.35 Flip Slide Turn
11.55 Australian Wildlife Club Bulletin
12.00pm Antenna (pop music clips)
12.25 Roger Ramjet
12.30 Sweet and Sour
1.00 Beatbox
2.55 Rugby League: Penrith v St George (St George won 16-6)
4.35 Skiing
5.00 Countdown
6.00 VFL Football (presented by Tim Lane)
6.30 Wildlife Australia
7.00 Weekend National (ABC News)
7.30 Life on Earth
8.25 Saturday Night: The Fasting Girl
9.50 Movie: The Rocket (1951, black and white)
11.15 Rockline (pop music clips from the UK)
12.05am Station Close
HSV7
6.00am Daywatch (from CNN)
7.00 Football: Herald Shield match Peninsula Grammar v Salesian College Sunbury (curtain raiser to the Foster’s Cup night series matches at VFL Park Waverley)
8.00 The Smurfs
8.30 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
9.00 Sounds
12.00pm NBA Basketball: Boston Celtics v Los Angeles Lakers (LA won 111-100 to clinch the championship)
2.30 NHL Ice Hockey Stanley Cup Final: Edmonton Oilers v Philadelphia Flyers (Oilers win the cup 8-3 in game five)
4.30 Gunston’s Australia
5.00 UFO
6.00 Seven National News
6.30 Seven’s Big League VFL: North Melbourne v Footscray (Foots 11.11-77 d NM 9.21-75), Essendon v Fitzroy (Ess 21.14-140 d Fitz 16.17-113) and Collingwood v Geelong (Geel 13.13-91 d Coll 12.13-85)
8.30 Simon and Simon
9.30 Tattslotto Draw No 409
9.35 Trapper John MD
10.35 Van Der Valk
11.35 Soccer: Newcastle v Everton, Derby County v Burnley and Oxford v Fulham
12.40 Station Close (only night of the week HSV closed its transmission)
GTV9
6.00am Thunderbirds
7.00 Help It’s The Hair Bear Bunch
7.30 Hero High
8.00 Magilla Gorilla
8.30 Sergeant Preston of the Yukon
9.00 Laverne and Shirley
9.30 Movie: Jungle Manhunt (1951, black and white)
11.00 Rockit (pop music clips hosted by Lee Simon, it was sponsored by 92.3 EON FM)
12.00pm Soccer: Scotland v England
1.00 Wide World of Sports
5.00 The New You Asked for It
5.30 Mork and Mindy
6.00 National Nine News
6.30 Hey Hey It’s Saturday (guests: Michael Winslow, Kids in the Kitchen and The Machinations)
8.30 Hart to Hart
9.30 Movie: Psycho (1960, black and white)
11.35 The New Odd Couple
12.10am Movie: Doctors’ Wives (1971)
2.00 Movie: The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949, black and white)
3.45 Movie: Raid (1954)
5.00 World of Survival
ATV10
6.00am Music Video
6.30 The New Three Stooges
7.00 The Early Bird Show
12.00pm Movie: Lions for Breakfast (1976)
1.45 Movie: Dallas (1950 western)
3.45 Bugs Bunny and Friends
4.00 The Six Million Dollar Man
5.00 John Laws’ World
6.00 Ten Eyewitness News
6.30 Young Talent Time
7.30 The Henderson Kids
8.30 Movie: The Horse Soldiers (1959)
10.50 Movie: Johnny Guitar (1953)
12.55am Music Video (all night transmission)
SBS0/28
3.35pm Movie: The Young Teacher (China, in Mandarin)
5.00 Dateline
6.00 World Soccer
7.00 SBS World News
7.30 Ken Hom’s Chinese Cookery
8.00 Lean Times (Germany)
8.30 Curro Jimenez (Spain)
9.30 Derrick (Germany)
10.30 Movie: The Apple War (1971, Sweden)
12.15 Station Close
It’s ATV0’s second day and the channel has clearly kept some of its early program details under wraps at the time TV Week went to press, so some of this is speculative.
They tried the column format in around 1967 when it was still an A5-size, but then reverted back to the US-style bullet listings.
When it became A4-size in 1968 they changed back to the column format again and it’s stayed ever since.
TV Times changed from the bullet listings to columns sometime around 1964-65.
I think Australian TV viewers only got to see the finale of Friends about six months after it had been shown in the US? Nine aired it on 22/11/2004 which as far as I’m aware, was also the final Monday of the ratings year.
An absolutely ridiculous delay by today’s standards, but they were probably able to get away with it because online video downloading wasn’t really a thing back then.
and 6 months was nothing considering the networks routinely delayed series for anywhere up to 2 years after US release around this time period.
As soon as I got ADSL (2003 IIRC) I started regularly torrenting (at a painful 25kb/s - ah 2000s aussie internet) because the networks were so bad with it at the time with a whole bunch of series.
Melbourne TV Guide 22 July 1981. TV is restricted to just two hours a day because of a strike by Victorian electricity workers. Source: The Age 22 July 1981
