Do you know more about this shift of Seven Today to evenings? I don’t think i’ve heard of it. It may not have made it to Melbourne?
I remember watching this. I think it went 2 hours a night, over four nights, which was quite a viewing commitment.
Ten has not been able to repeat its early evening ratings success after Greg Evans’ departure. The ratings slump (apart from a brief surge in 2009 when The 7pm Project debuted) has been well documented.
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I can’t see any evidence of the breakfast show airing on HSV beyond April 1974 yet it is still listed in Sydney guides as Network 7 Today in the first week of September 1974. HSV dropping it was probably one of the reasons Seven abandoned breakfast television and opted to air the test pattern. Interesting to see Paul Bongiorno listed as the Melbourne host of the show in The Age listings. I didn’t know he was involved in it.
The one hour evening version of Bruce Webster’s Today aired Monday and Wednesday nights on ATN at 10pm from September 23, 1974. It doesn’t appear to have made it to Melbourne. It was thought the show would expand to three nights, possibly five, if it was successful but it didn’t survive beyond December 1974 and Webster went into state politics the following year.
We were encouraged to watch it by a History teacher in year ten but I don’t think I lasted the distance. I’m ashamed to admit I saw more of Nine’s melodramatic Crawford’s Vietnam era mini-series All The Way starring Danni Minogue and Rowena Wallace the following year.
Perfect Match was still comfortably winning the ratings with Cameron Daddo as host but by that stage Nine had moved the news from 6.30pm to 6pm with Willesee taking the 6.30 slot. Ratings showed a massive switch off after Perfect Match with viewers flocking to Nine’s news and current affairs hour even with poor lead ins like Say G’Day and the umpteenth repeat of Happy Days.
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It ended up being a mini-series but it was intended to be an ongoing serial like The Sullivans and Carson’s Law.
I thought it was originally intended to be a six part mini-series and it became an on going series after Nine thought it showed promise. 32 episodes produced before it was axed due to low ratings.
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Now that you mention it, that sounds familiar. They probably should have waited until the miniseries screened before committing to a full series.
It had a pretty strong cast, e.g. Rowena Wallace, Dennis Miller, Vince Colosimo, Lisa Hensley, etc. and at the time Sixties retro was the rage, plus Crawford Productions had a pretty good hit rate (though not perfect), but the series just didn’t catch on. I seem to recall it was buried mostly in summer non-ratings, as a lot of Nine’s dramas ended up in those days.
24 February 1969: ATN7’s Sydney Today broadcasts a rare interview with reclusive Australian artist Norman Lindsay a day after his 90th birthday. Bruce Webster and Maggie Tabberer conduct the interview at the artist’s Springwood home.
24 February 1975: Australian television viewers, those fortunate enough to have colour televisions anyway, are forced to endure five nights of glorious monochrome from 6pm on this day because the Broadcasting Control Board has ordered a black out on night time colour TV until “C Day” on 1 March. Select shows had been broadcast in colour since October 1974.
24 February 1979: TEN10 presents one hour special Rod Stewart In Concert at the Sydney Showgrounds.
24 February 1998: New hospital drama All Saints debuts on the Seven Network.
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Is that the same Rod Stewart concert that aired on BTW3/GSW9 in South West WA a year later, to the day …
I’ve been watching some of the early All Saints episodes on 7Plus. It’s been great to revisit it.
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Looks like it. Both one hour duration. Quite a coincidence.
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25 February 1971: Matlock Police debuts on ATV0 and eventually across the 0-10 Network. Crawford Productions’ first drama series for the network and now it had a cop drama on each of the three networks.
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Sydney viewers had to wait until 13 May for TEN-10 to screen the first episode.
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I never saw it during its original run but Channel Ten would re-run the series in a daytime timeslot over one or two summers. From memory they always used to strategically cut away the end credits just before “for the 0-10 Network” would appear. It seems they didn’t seem too keen to remember its past identity.
And each of these Crawford dramas (Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police) would go on to become Australian TV classics.
I’d buy them all on DVD but WIN charges an arm and a leg for them. At this stage I only have the first box set of Homicide on DVD.
Interesting it was rerun in daytime over Summer considering the Australian Broadcasting Control Board knocked back TEN’s request to screen it in a 7.30pm timeslot. I don’t know if the first episode set the tone for the entire series with a rape, carnal knowledge and “nude hippies frolicking in a river” and it was provocative throughout its run. At least they allowed TEN to air The Benny Hill Show preceding the Matlock Police premiere in Sydney. The board obviously didn’t have a problem with the crude double entendres and objectification of females in that series.
I think I caught an episode or two when WIN was airing the Crawford classics overnight a few years ago. I do remember loving spin off Solo One when it aired on Seven after school when I was a kid.
I don’t think that opening episode was indicative of the show’s overall tone. Perhaps it was just some shock storylines intended to get people to tune in for the first episode. ATV0 later moved the show to 7.30pm, once Number 96 took over at 8.30 five nights a week.
From what I recall the daytime episodes shown over the summers were usually on around 2 or 3.00 in the afternoon, technically “PG” or “PGR” zones and were the later colour episodes. And this was in the mid-1980s so the sort of stuff that might have got the control board bothered in the '70s was probably by now a little bit passe.
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26 February 1957: Radio stars are beginning to cross over to television. Bob Dyer begins a long association with the ATN-GTV Network when his game show It Pays to Be Funny makes its television debut. The show is also heard on the Macquarie Radio Network.
26 February 1981: Helen Wellings replaces Lorraine Bayly on the judging panel of Nine’s amateur inventor show What’ll They Think Of Next?
26 February 1985: Hot new American family sitcom The Cosby Show debuts on TCN9. The Melbourne premiere takes place the following day.
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26 February 1979: Prisoner debuts on TEN10, Sydney, and follows the next night in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. It becomes the network’s first big drama hit since the peak days of Number 96 and The Box about five years earlier, and was some desperately needed relief for the ailing network, particularly for ATV0 in Melbourne. Also a relief given previous drama efforts like Chopper Squad and Hotel Story were duds, and The Restless Years was going OK but not a huge hit.
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27 February 1972: ATN7 presents an Australian made special celebrating the life of Elizabeth Taylor on the occasion of her 40th birthday. Elizabeth B airs at 7.30pm and is followed by movie The VIPs starring Taylor and latest husband Richard Burton.
27 February 1983: Mike Willesee’s latest special for Seven is Willesee: A Contract With Cupid. The doco examines introduction agencies, the computer dating fad and follows couples on blind dates. If only Mike knew how far ahead of his time he was with this subject. 37 years later and the Australian television industry is built around the concept of blind dates.
27 February 1984: Nine boldly schedules 90 minutes of mid evening, live Australian made television Monday to Thursday when Willesee and Tonight with Bert Newton kicks off at 9.30pm.
27 February 1994: Ten’s new programming strategy is enhanced when Heartbreak High is added to its schedule of youth targeted programming. The gritty new high school drama airs Sunday nights at 6.30pm and is a spin off from the successful Australian film The Heartbreak Kid. Ten drops the show in 1996 after series four and the ABC airs series five to seven.
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