This week in 1980 saw the last TV Times as a stand alone magazine. From the following week, the TV Times and TV Guide titles were incorporated into TV Week.
The merge must have been a fairly sudden decision as there is zero mention in this magazine of any upcoming changes, and TV Times had just announced in this issue the launch of a new column by Ian Rolph. Great timing!
It is unclear if any editorial staff from the two magazines were picked up by TV Week. I believe Mr Rolph later resurfaced as a columnist in The Australian Women’s Weekly’s TV supplement (which eventually became known as TV World).
Some of the news articles from that last issue of TV Times…
Ten’s new prison drama, Punishment.
Government’s commitment to launching “ethnic TV” despite delays in passing legislation to form the Independent Multicultural Broadcasting Commission
Sydney’s TEN10 and new FM station 2MMM to produce a weekly simulcast program
ABT hearings into Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of Melbourne channel ATV10
… and just because of the date. Today, 21 August, was the cover date of the first Melbourne edition of TV News-Times. The magazine had been published in Sydney for about a year beforehand.
The title was abbreviated to TV Times the following November.
I’m not sure if the Sydney and Melbourne editions of TV (News) Times had any shared content in those early days. Judging by the content within this first magazine I would say they were completely local in editorial, and that probably includes the cover. (I can’t see Sydney readers having any interest in reading about Graham Kennedy who at that stage I don’t think had made any significant appearance on Sydney television)
Good. Lists are not for Wikipedia IMO. And a lot of the entries on these lists indicate a fairly loose interpretation of the word ‘slogan’ and not really backed up by any citation.
In fact a lot of the Australian television pages on Wikipedia could do with a delete or at best some major re-writing. A number of them have been hijacked by network fanbois for the purpose of talking up their pet network and downplaying the opposition. Wikipedia is meant to be objective. I tried to do some corrections to some of these pages but lost the will to do so when one major edit that I did to a page, all backed up with citations, was undone by an editor/moderator not even in Australia.
IF YOU were a curious, puberty-stricken teen during the mid-90s, chances are Sex / Life was appointment television for you.
A late-night adult lifestyle program, Sex / Life was aimed at a sophisticated, sexually active audience — but with its mix of informative sex education stories and occasionally salacious soft-porn visuals, arguably its most eager viewers were younger than intended.
A promo and clip from the show I uploaded to You Tube (that was used in the article) has 100k views despite the title clearly pointing out it is about a TV show.
A new planet discovered orbiting the closest star to Earth’s solar system could have the conditions to harbour life, according to a team of international scientists.
The exoplanet (a planet that circles a star other than our sun) was found orbiting Proxima Centauri and has been given the identifier Proxima b.
What’s this got to do with TV History? This is the star system that the Robinson’s set out to colonise in Lost in Space.
An “artist’s impression” of the newly discovered planet:
I always thought that the dotless logo on Nine back then was only a thing on Idents while other elements of the network/stations still used the dots? Something like that anyway…
Sons And Daughters was still running weeknights (or at least Monday to Thursday) 7.00 in Melbourne until the end of 1984 even though Sydney and Brisbane had much earlier changed to one hour episodes at 7.30. I think because HSV didn’t have a 7.00 current affairs show until 1985.
Today’s random history snapshot… and it is literally a snapshot… is the weekly ratings share among the Melbourne channels from week ending 24 October 1987 as published in the Gold TV Guide, the weekly TV lift-out in The Herald each Monday.
There is no analysis or reporting of any ratings results at all in the paper… just this simple graph… although it pretty much sums up Melbourne TV in 1987. Most notably the fall of HSV7 to a distant third place following the takeover by Fairfax. The most significant of Seven’s decline was its news service after the sacking of Mal Walden. With such a low rating in its crucial 6-7pm hour (and possibly also from Terry Willesee Tonight at 7.00) it was obviously having an effect across the whole of Seven’s prime time although I expect that long-running shows such as A Country Practice and Beyond 2000 were still providing some ratings relief.
But Seven’s hardship was Ten’s windfall as Eyewitness News was riding high during the year particularly after signing up Mal Walden even though he was essentially only in a minor role at first. Neighbours was also at its peak at this time, still in the middle of the Kylie and Jason era.
Less successful for Ten that year was You’ve Got To Be Joking which was a Candid Camera-style show that was Ten’s star vehicle for Don Lane’s return to television.
Pictured is STW9’s news presenting team of 1983: Terry Willesee, Bruce Walker, Greg Pearce, Tony Murphy, Russell Goodrick, Wally Foreman and Barrie Barkla (Barrie was previously an actor, most notably in the 70s soap The Box, but went to Perth after the show ended to become a presenter and to somewhat distance himself from the long-running TV character… although in reality the show still had something of a profile in Perth as it was still showing there, on Channel 9, well after it had wound up production)
