With that explanation you can see why it failed. I’m assuming there was no local sport or weather report.
If I’m not mistaken, Seven were leading the ratings (largely) at this time in both cities?
I would assume the sport and weather portions of the bulletin would have to have been local. I’d be very surprised if they weren’t given the different codes of football each city follows. I think the Nine Melbourne bulletin would’ve been suffering after the retirement of respected newsreader Sir Eric Pearce. Seven’s Roger Climpson was very popular in Sydney during the 1970s. I recall there was a period during that decade that Seven regularly outrated the Hendo read bulletin on Nine. They certainly would’ve lost viewers with that dual city bulletin.
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My knowledge of the exact timeline is vague, but as I understand it after NC9 flopped, GTV had Peter Hitchener paired up with Eric Pearce (who came out of retirement). Meanwhile, Brian Naylor was winning the battle for Seven by a mile. Getting Eric Pearce out of retirement didn’t do Nine any favours it seems.
I believe Nine pounced on Naylor during 1978 when they realised he was out of contract at Seven and they caught him at a weak moment.
Nine then moved Eric Pearce into an off-air role, gave him a chance to do an on-air handover to Naylor, and put Peter Hitchener on as 2IC/weekends behind Naylor.
Within a year or so, Nine had overtaken Seven in the news in Melbourne. Seven was also hit by an improving Channel Ten.
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According to Wikipedia Eric Pearce was still working at GTV in 1993 as an adviser. I remember him popping up regularly on Hey Hey. Didn’t realise he wasn’t knighted until after his newsreading days. Daryl Somers always referred to him as Sir Eric. Started his career at 2CH. You have to wonder where he would’ve ended up had he remained in Sydney- if his career would’ve followed a similar path.
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Interesting, so GTV9 was broadcasting a 24 hour schedule in 1979, while HSV7 didn’t commence broadcasting until 10.00am.
You really would have thought the owners of HSV7 at the time, would have started earlier in the day.
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they had been since 1976 
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I’m assuming this would have been because GTV9 was owned by the packers, and was part of a Network alliance with TCN9. While HSV7 was still an independent station?
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I think ATN 7 was still closing down at around 1am until News Overnight started in early 1985.
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It’s true GTV and TCN were connected, and they used to (mostly) simulcast the same schedule with their overnight movies.
Seven’s hours were probably not too different between Sydney and Melbourne at the time, even though ATN7 and HSV7 were owned by separate companies.
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I remember when I was about 11 or 12 years old, I convinced my parents to let me stay up past midnight one Friday night to watch the overnight movies. You know, just because. I also had the somewhat flawed logic in my head that because they were after midnight that they were movies of a more adult nature. I was soon to find out that they were mostly just D-grade films or telemovies that clearly were not worthy of prime time. And in those days Channel 9 was the only one on-air overnight so I got a rare chance to see the other channels’ closedowns as well.
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Interesting, not many people can say they remember that. So when did ATV10 and ABV2 start transmitting a 24 hour schedule?
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I remember TEN having a 24 hour schedule over the weekend in the mid 1980s (1984-1987?) with an overnight show called Music Video presented first by John Torv and then Good Morning Australia music reporter Basia Bonkowski but the station still closed down at 1-2am on “school nights”. Music Video featured more than just music clips. It had reviews, viewer requests and interviews that had featured on GMA. It was the original weekend overnight music show as it preceded Rage on the ABC.
I think TEN-10 and ATV-10 started a full 24 hours, seven days a week schedule in 1987 with an overnight music show called Night Shift hosted by David White that lasted a couple of years. It says something about how big the music scene was at this time considering Night Shift, Rage, Video Hits, The Factory and MTV all started on Australian television in 1987. A great time to be a teenager.
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Except if like me you lived in Sticksville back then and missed out on all of these shows except for Rage 
I’d like to think it says something about the state of today’s music as to why we don’t see many of these shows anymore, but it’s probably more due to the fact that you can watch almost any clip on demand on VEVO / YouTube now.
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Not just Sticksville. I don’t think 0-10 network stations outside of Melbourne and Sydney carried those overnight music shows.
Haven’t watched Rage in years but used to tape it regularly all those years ago. One of my favourite things to do if I feel like I can’t concentrate on a drama or I’m feeling down is fire up YouTube on the big screen and watch live performances or acoustic covers of some of the music I was enjoying in the '80s. That has led to an enjoyment of other styles of music I wouldn’t normally listen- bluegrass, country.
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Melbourne TV listings: Tuesday, August 11, 1992
from The Age
ABV2
7.00 Lateline
7.30 Open Learning: Anthropology
8.00 Astroboy
8.24 Paddington Bear
8.30 Sesame Street
9.30 Play School
10.00 Return to the Magic Library
10.30 You Can Write Anything
10.45 Watch! Your Language
11.05 The Middle East
11.30 Behind the News
12.00 World at Noon
12.30 Let’s Learn Japanese
1.00 Four Corners
1.45 Media People
2.00 The Second Russian Revolution
3.00 Sesame Street
3.35 Bananas in Pyjamas
4.00 Play School
4.30 Lift-Off
5.00 Afternoon Show with Michael Tunn
5.02 Widget
5.30 Vidiot
6.00 Harry & the Hendersons
6.25 Roger Ramjet
6.30 Here’s Lucy
7.00 ABC News
7.30 The 7.30 Report
8.00 The Investigators (ABC News at 8.28)
8.30 GP
9.20 Backchat (ABC News at 9.28)
9.30 Sylvania Waters (4 of 12)
10.00 Red Dwarf
10.30 Lateline
11.05 American College Football: highlights of Penn State at Pittsburgh
12.40 close
HSV7
6.00 Guys Next Door
6.30 Agro’s Cartoon Connection
9.00 Littlest Hobo
9.30 The Book Place
10.00 The Torkelsons
10.30 NBC Nightly News
11.00 Eleven AM
12.00 Movie “Romance on the Orient Express”
2.00 Hunter
3.00 Kingswood Country
3.30 Get Smart
4.00 ALF
4.30 Now You See It
5.00 Family Feud
5.30 Wheel of Fortune
6.00 Seven Nightly News
6.30 Real Life
7.00 Home and Away
7.30 A Country Practice
8.30 Beyond 2000
9.30 In the Heat of the Night
10.30 Tonight Live with Steve Vizard
11.30 Paradise
12.35 NBC Today
2.35 Rafferty’s Rules
3.30 Midnight Caller
4.20 Brothers
4.45 Celebrity Tattletales
5.10 Home to Roost
5.35 Play Your Cards Right
GTV9
6.00 Motor Racing: 1992 IndyCar Series (cont’d)
6.30 ITN World News
7.00 Today
9.00 Here’s Humphrey
9.30 In Melbourne Today
10.30 National Nine Morning News
11.00 What’s Cooking?
11.30 Dear John
12.00 Midday with Ray Martin
1.30 Days of Our Lives
2.30 Young and the Restless
3.30 Supermarket Sweep
4.00 I Dream of Jeannie
4.30 Guess What?
5.00 Rescue 911
5.30 Melbourne Extra
6.00 National Nine News
6.30 A Current Affair
7.00 Sale of the Century (Keno at 7.28)
7.30 Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show
8.00 All Together Now
8.30/9.00 Married… with Children
9.30/10.30 Chances
11.30 Nightline
12.00 World Entertainment Report
1.10 Bridges
1.40 Movie “The Kirlian Witness”
3.20 Movie “The Virgin Soldiers”
5.00 Marshall Bravestarr
5.30 The Sullivans
ATV10
6.00 Ten Eyewitness News
6.30 Good Morning Australia
8.30 Morning Show with Bert Newton
10.00 Mulligrubs
10.30 Aerobics Oz Style
11.00 Sally Jessy Raphael (feuding neighbors)
12.00 Santa Barbara
1.00 Bold and the Beautiful
1.30 Donahue
2.30 Oprah Winfrey
3.30 General Hospital
4.00 Col’n Carpenter
4.30 The Wonder Years
5.00 Ten Eyewitness News
6.00 MAS*H
6.30 Neighbours
7.00 Hinch
7.30 Beadle’s About
8.00 The Good Life
8.30 Murder, She Wrote
9.30 Inside Edition
10.30 Ten Eyewitness News
11.30 Rugby: Australia v. Western Transvaal
1.00 Movie “Radioactive Dreams”
2.45 Movie “The Challenge”
4.00 Prisoner
5.00 Simon & Simon
SBS
4pm Novosti
4.30 TV Ed
5.00 English at Work
5.30 Den of Wolves (Mexico)
6.00 World Sport
6.30 SBS World News
7.00 Dateline
7.30 The Grass is Greener
8.30 Red Green Show (Canada)
8.30 The Cutting Edge
9.25 Hotline
9.30 Movie “Aviya’s Summer” (Israel)
11.10 Revolutionary Nights (France)
12.10 close
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IIRC wasn’t long after this that General Hospital and Santa Barbara got the boot from daytime.
11am for Sally Jessy seems like it would have pushed the boundaries classification wise (even if it was pre-modern TV classification standards).
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Great listing.
That was the first year of aggregation here in Northern NSW, so brings back a lot of memories from being the first time that I consistently had access to 3 commercial TV channels.
A lot of shows that I had forgotten about are listed there.
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I’m assuming every city had a local block at this time? Any information on this show?
It was an advertorial show similar to Bert’s GMA on Ten and was hosted by Ernie Sigley and Denise Drysdale. It replaced In Sydney Today the following year and was renamed Ernie and Denise. Other states kept their local morning advertorial show. Anyone remember who hosted In Sydney Today?
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