My parents also have an interesting story to tell.
At the time we lived in PNG, in an area which thankfully had access to satellite TV. We however had family friends (expatriates from Scotland) who lived a number of hours away in a small plantation which had just been established the year prior. There were no phone lines nor regular newspaper deliveries to that area, and the only way for them to get news was via my parents recording The Today Show and CNN on VHS and paying the driver of a company truck to deliver the tapes every three days as a part of his regular run.
So these people were living in complete isolation, unaware of the attacks until two or so days after it had happened, and had to watch unbelievable footage which they would’ve at first thought was just a mistakenly-taped movie.
When we were first getting told as leaders at this camp on the Wednesday morning we thought it was some scenario for a weird game or something, like Survivor or something. Many of us had never even heard of the word terrorist before, it was just not known in our lifetimes. Oh to be able to go back to those days!
The first real attack I remember of was the 2008 Mumbai Attack with the shooting at the Railway Terminus. But the one’s what really got me were Orlando back in 2016 and the Massacre in Burke Street a year later.
Impulse really started to expand its nationwide reach / changed to a LCC strategy after Ansett collapsed before getting purchased by Qantas and getting turned into Jetstar a couple years afterwards (The 717s acquired as part of this deal are STILL used by Qantaslink today IIRC).
…or Sydney for that matter. I remember a few incidents around Sydney that were classed as terrorist attacks. The Sydney Hilton attack being the most notable in 1978 and there were also several consulate bombings throughout the years. For years I couldn’t walk up Pitt Street past the Hilton without having flashbacks to the news coverage I watched as a very young child. It helps that the facade has now radically changed.
2001 PNG was a very backward place. Probably could’ve, but that’s a specialist piece of equipment and AM and FM were patchy or went off air for months at a time because of a lack of technical staff. I could barely get FM stations and I lived within 10km of transmitters.
Wow, Daniel Gibson has been there a long time! Would I be right by guessing that Daniel Gibson was the last weather presenter on Prime’s Canberra news bulletin before it was axed in mid-2001?
Anyway, a couple more of interest from the same channel.
Late '90s(?) Prime Local News promo, highlighting a couple of upcoming “Special Reports” of the time:
A somewhat overdramatic Ten Capital Eyewitness News promo for their coverage of the 1995 ACT Budget. Interesting to hear a voiceover guy more synonymous with Prime Television do this one!
If you ask me, the “X TEN” era Idents still look pretty good! I wonder if a modernised version of the concept would work on TV today.
The “TV Australia” logo/branding used after the “X TEN” era on the other hand…that looks extremely outdated now and wasn’t as good as what Nine/Seven were using back in 1989-90.
Not even one hint of a change beforehand? Not unlike the change to TV Australia.
It’s kind of reminiscent of Seven’s effort on New Year’s Day 2000. In the days leading up, I can remember Seven still airing Christmas ID’s up until New Years Eve, if that can be classed as some kind of hint.
Nothing. Not a word. I’d just happened to be watching the news on Ten that evening with the old logo still appearing. Then the news ended, no promo or anything just the new ID played and that was it. Change done.
Media must have known it was coming with some embargo as the TV guide in The Sun newspaper featured the new logo the next morning and a brief article about it. Plus they were the days when Ten had daily newspaper ads so they would have been pre prepared with the new logo.
