Classic TV Listings

I think that was the night ATN7 went down for several hours during the Commonwealth Games.

The good old days without endless news/talk programs in the morning and afternooon.

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Rolf Harris on the ABC at 6pm, Iā€™m sure any network will not repeat anything starring him today!

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and primetime had more than stripped reality, even Big Brother was only 30 minutes!

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Iā€™d imagine that all programing featuring Rolf Harris is in the ā€œNot For Broadcastā€ section in the network tape archives, probably alongside all programing featuring another now-infamous individual who shares the same initials.

Rita Hayworth?

Iā€™m going to be devastated if we never see another rerun of ABBA: The Movie on free to air television again.

Rudolf Hess?

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I know the cricketers are on strike/unemployed right now but Ryan Harris isnā€™t infamous from my knowledge.

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Todayā€™s TV: 27.7.1976, Melbourne:

and Regional Victoria/SA:

Source: TV Week

  • Olympic Games coverage on Channel 9 (including overnight) and Channels 7 and 2.
  • The National Football League is live from Norwood Oval, Adelaide. The competition featured teams from Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
  • The Norman Gunston Show returns with a new series, with Gunston recently the winner of the TV Week Gold Logie
  • Lots of familiar names in the news lineups: Eric Pearce, Peter Hitchener, David Johnston, Brian Naylor, Bruce Mansfield, Geoff Raymond. But not one female newsreader. Women reporters were still much of a novelty, but they dominated the weather, with Ilona Komesaroff on 7, Kerry Armstrong on 9 and Briony Behets on Eyewitness News.
  • Interesting to see that GMV6 is on the same episode of The Box as ATV0. Very unusual to have metro and regional channels in sync in those days.
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Was this the last Olympic TV coverage to be shared with Seven covering Moscow exclusively?

Yep. 7 paid $1m in 1977 to secure the rights to Moscow in 1980. A lot of money back then but the price shot up to $9.2m paid by Rupert Murdoch for the Ten network for the 1984 Olympics and then $10m for the 1988 Olympics.

Then Christopher Skase went against a gentlemanā€™s agreement between the three networks when he bid something like $40m? (Citation needed for I canā€™t remember for certain) for Barcelona. Not sure if that amount included Atlanta and Sydney although I think they were locked in later.

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I think that coverage was quite successful; though potentially it could have been otherwise if Australia had joined the US boycott. The Russians were the first to put more effort into the presentation with a spectacular opening ceremony (Misha the bear) and a live cross to space.

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I just remember that freakinā€™ Moscow Moscow song was ubiquitous.

Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah, hey!

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I believe that Seven secured the rights to Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 in February 1995.

Amazingly by January 1996, Seven had secured the Olympic rights up until 2008 judging by this.

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Voiceover was Craig Willis. The deal covered all Olympics from 1996 to 2008

Atlanta 1996
Nagano 1998
Sydney 2000
Salt Lake City 2002
Athens 2004
Torino 2006
Beijing 2008

3 Summer Games and 3 Winter Games

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Todayā€™s TV: 28.7.1989, Melbourne (minus SBS), regional Victoria and South East SA:

Source: TV Week

  • BTV6, GMV6 (and SES8, judging by other days in this edition) appear to be screening episodes of Neighbours only a day behind Ten. So given recent discussion in another thread, aggregation would have no impact in these areas at least in maintaining continuity with Neighbours, assuming that BTV/GMV6ā€™s successor VIC TV kept running the show up until the changeover.
  • Prime is also screening Home And Away in sync with Sevenā€¦ well, actually, 30 minutes before Seven to account for local news.
  • Prime Television (AMV4) is pretty much relaying the Seven schedule, 3 years ahead of aggregation (which at the time was intended to happen January 1993). There are some exceptions during the week: 60 Minutes (delayed to screening after the Sunday movie), Turn Round Australia (Sunday morning religious series which aired on Nine), Good Morning Australia, Days Of Our Lives, The Cosby Show and its spin-off A Different World, Rugby League Test Australia v New Zealand (from Nine).
  • BTV6, GMV6 and Southern Cross Network all showing an hour of news at 6.00pm although in reality this was regional news at 6.00 followed by National Nine News from Melbourne on delay at 6.30.
  • RTS5A showing Ten News, presumably from ADS10 in Adelaide, and SES8 I believe relaying National Nine News from Melbourne.
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ā€œBizarreā€ showing late night on Ten was a Canadian sketch comedy series best known for producing the character Super Dave Osborne. It had been off the air in Canada for 3 years by the time the above episode was aired.

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Not a Classic TV Listing, but Iā€™ve noticed that the ā€œNewcastle Heraldā€ is no longer listing programming differences for the Sydney channels. Though the only real differences these days are late at night, particularly with Prime7ā€™s penchant for all night TV shopping.

Of course, pre aggregation, ATN-7, TCN-9 and TEN-10 and also ECN-8 used to get the same amount of space for listings as NBN-3 in the Heraldā€™s TV guide.

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That series lasted 3 years, but 1976 was the only year where the VFL teams were involved. In 1977 the VFL installed lights at their ground at Waverley, had a night series involving their own clubs covered on Channel 7 on Tuesday Nights, the NFL (which at the time was the supposed governing body of Australian Rules Football) invited the VFA clubs to fill the breach and the coverage was switched to Channel 0. Eventually the NFLā€™s competition was absorbed into the VFL series, and for 3 years all 12 VFL clubs, the 10 SANFL clubs and 8 WAFL clubs plus representative teams from Tasmania, NSW, Qld and ACT competed in the series run by Channel 7. Eventually the representation outside of the VFL clubs dwindled to Grand Finalists (with the exception of Swan Districts in 1982/83 who were banned for fielding a weakened team) from the SANFL and WAFL until the WAFL clubs pulled out after 1985.

The NFL ran the night series in conjunction with the VFL until 1986 (when North Adelaide made the semi finals), after which the VFL ran the series from 1987 when the Eagles and Bears joined the comp. It was moved after 1986 from a midweek format with a GF in June to firstly a pseudo pre-season format in 1987 (covered by 7 even though they lost the rights to the expanded VFL comp EXCEPT for the final which due to industrial action ended up on the ABC who had secured Victorian rights for the VFL that season), then to a full pre-season comp until the competition became a series of practice matches.

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I was largely oblivious to the whole NFL competition, so thanks for the background :slight_smile:

So how did the NFL night competition work in with the Tuesday night VFL competition that used to take place on Tuesday nights? I think it used to be called the Escort Cup, named after a brand of cigarette I suppose :wink: