It’d be better than Studio 10.
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includes the debut of Daily At Dawn, which I wrote this startling recollection last year. Literally the only line I remember from the show.
What about a test pattern?
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Why not both?
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Don’t think it lasted too long. I only ever remember seeing it during the summer non-ratings period.
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Was the official ratings period always the first week of February as far back as the 1980s?
From what I can see, the typical season premiers of shows are not advertised or just summer repeats… Am I missing something here?
Survey dates back then varied between different cities. In Sydney and Melbourne the survey year usually started on the 2nd Sunday of February and went through to about the first week in November. Other cities may have started slightly later as they were not surveyed for as many weeks as Sydney and Melbourne. Some smaller markets, like Hobart, were only surveyed for a handful of weeks out of the whole year.
I think it was the late 1980s or even later before the major capital cities lined up in terms of survey dates, etc.
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my partner has just discovered Mother & Son on Stan and we were watching that episode the other night
From the Southern NSW edition for the same day:
Source: TV Week
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Did not realise Bert’s show was directly up against IMT.
Did Bert move to IMT after or did he move across for a while and then come back?
He’d been mates with Graham Kennedy beforehand although they worked at competing radio stations.
He tried to leave 7 a number of times once he realised 9 wanted him but 7 wouldn’t accept his resignation. He ended up resigning from 7 on camera.
9 initially wanted him for a intended daytime show, sort of a companion show to IMT, but he ended up doing a commercial appearance with Graham Kennedy on IMT. Management were impressed enough that they told him to forget about the daytime show and just put him on IMT from then on.
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So technically he started TV at 7? What was the story with him moving to ABC briefly?
Yes he started at 7.
In the early 70s he hosted a short-run variety show on ABC, The Bert Newton Show. He was still connected to Nine but I’d say not on an exclusive basis, because there was a time they didn’t have much for him to do, and he also did some work hosting specials etc for Channel 0 as well.
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Did he go back to IMT or had Graham already left by then?
Graham finished with IMT at the end of 1969. Bert was one of his replacements from 1970, when they had a different host for IMT each night, but the show was soon axed. Nine didn’t have much for him to him to do after that, apart from hosting the Logies and doing some commercials, until they got Graham to come back in 1973 for a series of specials and Bert was involved with those.
After IMT wound up in 1971, Nine did have Bert host a new show called The Acid Test which would put amateur actors into short plays and their performances assessed by a panel of judges. The show was a dud. It would probably work as a reality format these days.
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Thanks #myfriend, I’ve long wondered about that time after watching the 50 Years of TV DVD 9 put together years ago.
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I’m assuming this was the first week that Sunrise went to air with Chris Bath?