I like and dislike this video at the same time.
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hashtag #bringbackgeorgedonikian
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Some very interesting stuff currently being uploaded by this YouTube channel (Andrew Hyslop)!
Seven Nightly News Adelaide from 1991.
ABC News from 1991.
Various promos from Seven Nightly News Melbourne in 1994. Not sure if these have been seen before!
A weekend bulletin from Seven Nightly News Sydney in 1991.
Ten Eyewitness News Brisbane from 1991.
And a closer from that era.
Ten Second Edition News from 1991.
2004? National Nine News Melbourne promo.
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Given that most of those videos are blocked from being embedded to other sites, perhaps instead of posting them here people can just go straight to his channel:
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And I can remember Ten in 1994 airing reruns of British sitcoms such as The Good Life, Some Mothers Do Ave Em and Are You Being Served on Saturday nights, as well as poaching the Wonderful World of Disney, Beyond 2000, A Country Practice and Unsolved Mysteries from Seven. All while holding off new episodes of the Simpsons which they did not show at all in 1994 electing to show reruns at 6pm weeknights instead!
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Sadly ACP wasn’t as successful on Ten as it was on Seven and only ran from April to November 1994.
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In most cases Ten didn’t poach them, Seven had chosen to let them go anyway. ACP and Beyond 2000 were going to be axed anyway. I can’t imagine Unsolved Mysteries being poach worthy, I would guess 7 had let it go anyway and 10 just happened to pick it up.
The most annoying thing was they would edit the Britcoms down to a 22 min runtime to accommodate ads! In those days it was unheard of to have shows start off the hour/half hour (except after a movie) so editing was rife.
Now Ten was a depressing network in those days. Everything in prime time on a Friday was a repeat except the news! (Notice the news in Canberra on Ten was moved back to 6pm after a local uproar when they tried to move it to 5pm with the network in 1992)
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Thanks for posting!
Some points of note…
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Prime’s 6pm news was still labelled “6 O’clock News” even though it was just a 30 min local bulletin. I thought they only used that branding for the combined 1 hour bulletin that they only ran in 1991 (?)
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Prime had its 24 hour feed back up and running again, that initially only lasted for a few months after aggregation began in 1989, and recommenced again in 1994. And that there is only a small amount of home shopping in that overnight schedule. I think 1995 was when they replaced Sevens late night schedule with straight TV shopping.
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I loved watching Narelle Hill and John Riddell in Adelaide whenever I was there. Seven was so strong across the week, and their advertising (“Nobody Knows Adelaide Like Seven”) and logo on the front of every (metallic) bus just dominated the city.
Also, have to say… I’ve been looking for Seven News Adelaide clips like this from for sooo long!
I was also watching in 1992 or so when Kaylee Harris was doing the weekend weather and had a big meltdown - just frozen and looking down at her papers all shuffled. John Riddell praised her for soldiering on but I think she left Seven shortly after. Now, she does the 50 Up club ads.
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But NWS 9 was always snapping at their heels. And they were two bloody good stations in Adelaide. (Three if you count Ten - which was also high-rating in the 80s as SAS and 90s with George Donikian at the helm.)
When the News Came Thru
Nine Action News
I also liked Kelvin and Crease - and the fact they just went with 2 anchor men. It was different.
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It was actually 1993 when Prime had their combined 1 hour bulletin in Canberra, which involved poaching a lot of Capital’s news team, including News Director, Ken Begg. It was switched back to a 30 minute local news bulletin (followed by Seven Nightly News from Sydney at 6:30pm) at the end of the year.
In May 1991, Prime in Canberra axed its 30 minute local news bulletin, replaced with a 5 minute local news update at 6:25pm. It was the same year when the ABC axed its first incarnation of the Canberra bulletin, which was introduced in February 1989 & its last bulletin went to air in August 1991. So between 1989 & 1991, there were 4 local TV news services in Canberra & all of them were locally-produced! 
Of course, the ABC reintroduced its Canberra bulletin in September 2001 & is still on-air to this day, the only Canberra news bulletin to be produced locally since WIN moved production of its Canberra bulletin to Wollongong & that Nine’s local bulletin is produced in Sydney. It is by far the #1 news service in the capital, doubling that of its commerical rivals.
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Fun fact: in 1988, Seven aired two episodes of the Britcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum which were taped to VHS by a fan of the show. Since the BBC wiped their master tapes of the episodes, the fan recordings are now the only surviving recordings of the episodes.
However, Seven too edited the episodes to 22 minutes to fit ads in, so while the Seven edits survive, the full, original episodes are lost.
Just curious, when exactly did Nine introduce their dotty logo, 1964 or 1970?
If I remember correctly, National Nine News in Adelaide started losing in the mid to late 1990’s however were still winning Sunday night’s up until Graeme Goodings moved from weekdays to weekends
Depending on which city, but Sydney and Melbourne were 1970. Brisbane and Adelaide were later, and Perth wasn’t until late in the 70s.
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other points of note:
- ABC had its first attempt of breakfast TV news “First Edition” at 7am, sandwiched between Open Learning (the forerunner of Open universities) programming. They also had “The Bottom Line” a business news programme Saturday mornings at 8am.
- ABC had Stampede, a country music video programme Friday nights at 6pm. I remember it rated asterisks in most metro markets, but would have more viewers in country areas. It was axed by years end.
- Live and Sweaty with Elle McFeast and Debbie Spillane on the ABC, now that was a great show! Always a Friday night favourite in our house.
- No AFL Friday night football on Prime.
- US Open Golf on Nine/WIN. Nowadays Fox Sports has this exclusively.
- Ten had Ren and Stimpy on Saturday mornings at 8.30am. SCN/Ten Victoria did not air it, instead opting for Chris Conroy’s World of Boats. Used to infuriate me when I came to visit my parents in the country for the weekend, I always set the VCR taped it before I left Melbourne. Shows that Regional Victoria is a very conservative place, they won’t stand for cutting edge cartoons like Ren and Stimpy!
- Prime also had a country music video show on Saturday afternoons at 5.30pm (it never aired on Seven in metro markets), while WIN had “It’s Country Today” on Sunday aftenroons.
Do we know the circumstances as to why Seven started winning in Adelaide from 2000 when NNN had two of the best readers in Adelaide in Kevin Crease and Rob Kelvin.