On This Day

TV History
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14 February 1973: ABC’s Certain Women begins as a six-part mini-series before being renewed as an ongoing series to run for four years.

14 February 1994: Andrew L Urban hosts new SBS series Front Up, featuring spontaneous interviews with ordinary Australians.

14 February 1995: The Seven Network debuts new drama series Fire, starring Georgie Parker, Andy Anderson, Peter Phelps, Shane Connor, Deborra-lee Furness, Danny Adcock, Wayne Pygram, Tottie Goldsmith, Liddy Clark, Aaron Jeffery, Tayler Kane and Max Phipps.

14 February 2006: Comedian Magda Szubanski debuts her new sketch comedy series Magda’s Funny Bits on Nine.

14 February 2010: Fenella Kernebone hosts the new ABC series Art Nation, a weekly magazine reporting on arts and culture.

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2010 was only on IQ boxes from my memory. My experience of Foxtel in the London 2012 Olympics was world-class back then. Signed up and joined in September 2011 ahead of the launch of Fox Footy

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15 February 1972: The Federal Government announces that all Australian TV stations are to convert to colour transmission on 1 March 1975. The transition is expected to cost the ABC around $46 million and the commercial sector $70 million — although some stations had already installed colour-compatible equipment.

15 February 1981: Bert Newton hosts Channel Nine Celebrates 25 Years Of Television, with guests including Graham Kennedy, Don Lane, Mike Walsh, Tommy Hanlon Jnr, Paul Hogan, Brian Henderson and Brian Naylor. The program includes rare footage from the early days of Australian television.

15 February 1982: Network Ten launches two daytime game shows. $100,000 Moneymakers with Jimmy Hannan, and It Could Be You with Barry Crocker. The latter is a remake of the 1960s program of the same name.

15 February 2000: Gabrielle Richens hosts Ten‘s new dating show, the weekly series Love Rules.

15 February 2004: 60 Minutes presents a special episode to commemorate its 25th anniversary.

15 February 2007: Kim Watkins hosts Ten‘s new factual series Saving Babies.

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Wasn’t ATV0 one if these stations?

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ATV0 had conducted test colour programming in the 1960s, but this was before PAL standards were formally adopted here, so it is unclear/unknown if what equipment they had was able to be used for the formal transition to colour. (and also some of their colour equipment for their colour testing was borrowed/hired from overseas)

But Seven and Nine in Sydney and Melbourne had already said that they had invested in colour-compatible equipment in the early 1970s before the C-Day announcement date, so I can easily imagine that the 0-10 stations would have also done same.

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16 February 1959: The debut episode of hospital drama Emergency airs on GTV9, Melbourne, starring Brian James, Syd Conabere and Judith Godden. The series, one of the first made by Australian television, debuted in Sydney on ATN7 a week later.

16 February 1987: Musician James Valentine hosts ABC‘s new late afternoon children’s programming block, The Afternoon Show. Former A Country Practice stars Shane Withington and Grant Dodwell lead Nine‘s new drama series Willing And Abel, debuting in Melbourne before airing in Sydney two days later.

16 February 1988: Network Ten debuts sketch comedy series The Comedy Company, starring Mark Mitchell, Ian McFadyen, Maryanne Fahey, Kym Gyngell, Siobhan Tuke, Tim Smith and Glenn Robbins.

16 February 1991: Network Ten launches new talent quest series Star Search, hosted by Jeff Phillips.

16 February 1993: Joh’s Jury, the dramatisation of the 1991 trial of former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (played by Gerry Connolly), screens on ABC.

16 February 1996: Bridget Adams and Rob Elliott host the debut of new interactive variety-game show Talking Telephone Numbers on Seven.

16 February 1997: The premiere of four-part series Simone de Beauvoir’s Babies on ABC. Starring Sally Cooper, Leverne McDonnell, Sonia Todd and Anne Looby, the series focuses on four women, all childless, reunited at a 20-year school reunion and collectively make a pact to change their lives.

16 February 1999: The Seven Network launches two new weekly comedy shows — The Big News, a sketch comedy series featuring former Fast Forward stars Marg Downey, Michael Veitch and Peter Moon with Matt Tilley; and The Late Report, a current affairs spoof with Richard Stubbs, John Safran, Emma Tom and Sandy George.

16 February 2000: After six years, Blue Heelers star Lisa McCune makes her exit from the series, with her character Senior Constable Maggie Doyle gunned down by an unknown assailant.

16 February 2001: Ten debuts sitcom Sit Down, Shut Up, based around the staff and students at a fictional high school, Carpen Heights Secondary College. The series starred Marg Downey, Stephen Curry, Jacqueline Brennan and Christopher Brown.

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Imagine having to play it straight after playing that character for laughs.

A show that would not fly today for fears of doxxing someone.

It wasn’t too bad. Shame it only lasted 13 eps, but it did get remade in the States as an animated sitcom.

We need more sketch comedy and spoofs. Someone steal the series concept of 22 Minutes please.

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Now known as Dr Emma A. Jane, she is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts & Media at the University of NSW. She has also written six books including a novel Deadset.

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I never watched the show (as very few people did!) but I don’t think the show actually displayed or generated full telephone numbers or matched full numbers to people’s names. According to wikipedia (FWIW), a sequence of 5 digits was generated and viewers with telephone numbers matching those 5 digits, in any order, were invited to call and enter the chance for further contest, prizes, etc.

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Someone would have worked it out. Give someone a challenge and they’d do it.

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I don’t remember these shows.

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I’ve seen the UK version (a copy of a technical blooper exists on YouTube), and this is indeed how they did it on that version. A series of games are played with celebrities etc, and each game results in a number (which could be the final score from that game). The numbers are shown as a 5-digit sequence. People who had the 5 digits in the last 5 digits of their phone number in any order were encouraged to call in and answer 3 numeral-based general knowledge questions. At no point were any names looked up in the phone book.

(Also, the blooper video reveals that they purposely selected callers in order to fill time at the end of the show.)

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To me, it’s only known for a stunt by John Safran involving a remote-controlled seagull and Shane Warne.

https://instagram.com/p/CawdQM5P5jl

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He did another one where he dressed up as Ronald McDonald, but Seven refused to air it.

The Late Report - Wikipedia

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It was McKnight’s concept — he effectively confirmed this himself in an interview with Matt White. In that interview, he also described The NightCap format as the early prototype that informed the first iterations of Studio 10.

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17 February 1961: The premiere of Crawford Productions’ first television drama series, Consider Your Verdict. Produced at HSV7’s “Teletheatre” and regarded as the first Australian-made one-hour drama series, Consider Your Verdict continued for over 160 episodes before winding up in 1964.

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Source: TV Times

17 February 1978: The premiere of ABC four-part drama series Loss Of Innocence, based on a story starting in Sydney in the 1930s going through to the 1970s. Starring Ronald Falk, Monica Maughan, Carol Burns, Enid Lorimer, Carol Raye, David Franklin, Alwyn Kurts, John Fitzgerald and Edward Howell.

17 February 1990: ABC presents the ABC Sports Award Of The Year, live from the Australian Institute of Sport, Canberra.

17 February 1991: SBS begins a national screening of the twelve-part documentary series My Place, My Land, My People, a production of Queensland-based regional broadcaster QTV and a winner at the 1990 TV Week Logie Awards for most outstanding achievement by a regional television station

17 February 1993: ABC launches its new Asia-Pacific television service, Australia Television International (ATVI) with a one-hour special, A Network Begins, hosted by Karina Kelly. ATVI was officially opened by Prime Minister Paul Keating. Later, ABC begins nightly broadcast of Australia Television International News, presented from ABC’s Darwin studios. ATVI initially broadcast via satellite to fifteen countries in South-East Asia.

17 February 1995: The one-hour special The Mavis Bramston 30th Anniversary pays tribute to the popular comedy show of the 1960s, hosted by Amanda Keller and featuring Mavis originals Carol Raye and Barry Creyton with guest stars Garry McDonald, Andrew Denton, Noeline Brown and the cast of Big Girl’s Blouse.

17 February 1997: Drama series Big Sky, starring Gary Sweet, Alexandra Fowler and Martin Henderson, debuts on Ten with a two-hour episode.

17 February 2006: Friday Night Games, a spin-off from Big Brother: Friday Night Live, debuts with Mike Goldman, Bree Amer and Ryan Fitzgerald. The show features teams of celebrities participating in games and challenges.

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17 February 2006: The first-ever episode of satirical series The Chaser’s War on Everything premiered on ABC TV. It became an instant hit in the late 2000s and was known for controversies throughout its run including the infamous APEC motorcade stunt in September 2007 which drew worldwide attention

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18 February 1972: Bert Newton hosts the 14th annual TV Week Logie Awards at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Hotel. The Nine Network telecast was shown live to Sydney and Melbourne and for the first time to Brisbane and Adelaide.

18 February 1979: The Sydney premiere of the Seven Network documentary series This Fabulous Century hosted by Peter Luck. The new series, including footage from Cinesound, Movietone and the National Film and Sound Archive to illustrate the history of Australia from Federation to the present day, debuts with a one-hour episode. The series debuted in Melbourne the following Sunday.

18 February 1980: Melbourne’s ATV10 screens the telemovie The Franky Doyle Story, tracing the story of the notorious Prisoner character played by Carol Burns.

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18 February 1984: After over a decade on Saturday mornings, Hey Hey It’s Saturday moves to prime time and is re-named Hey Hey It’s Saturday Night.

YouTube: RetrogradeAdverts

18 February 1985: After 12 years at daytime, The Mike Walsh Show makes its prime time debut. Network 0-28 is re-branded as SBS in anticipation of the network’s expansion to Brisbane, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Newcastle and Wollongong later in the year and the eventual removal of the VHF Channel 0 transmissions in Sydney and Melbourne. The re-launch also coincides with the debut of regular daytime programming on the channel.

18 February 1987: Don Lane returns to television with the debut of You’ve Got To Be Joking, a weekly series of practical jokes and hidden camera stunts.

18 February 2007: The debut of the first series of Australia’s Got Talent, with contestants vying for a grand final prize of $250,000. Judging the contestants are Red Symons, Dannii Minogue and Tom Burlinson.

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And it was Hosted by Sunrise Weather Presenter and Future Deal or No Deal Host Grant Denyer.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: with a tweak or two, that ad for The Franky Doyle Story could easily be a One Nation ad

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