1 March 1971: ATN7’s breakfast show Today “goes national” when it is fed down the line to Canberra, Melbourne and a number of regional stations. Bruce Webster, Andrew Harwood and Pat Lovell host from the Sydney studio with Roland Strong reading local news bulletins to viewers in Melbourne.
1 March 1975: Full time colour television transmission finally begins in Australia.
Sydney stations celebrate the milestone by staying on air throughout the night.
1 March 1978: Sex obsessed TEN10 presents The Australian Sex, Love and Marriage Test with hosts Ken Burslem, Eric Walters and Bernadette Hughson. The show airs on March 6 on ATV0.
Twenty questions regarding communication, love making and family finances prepared with the help of marriage guidance counsellors are put to viewers. A helpline manned by counsellors is in operation on the night should unhappy couples require urgent assistance. Nine had announced plans for a similar programme at their season preview but Ten got in first.
1 March 1988: Bicentennial programming is the flavour of the year. Nine begins Mike Willesee’s Australians profiling 13 famous Australians across thirteen weeks.
1 March 1999: The weirdly titled Entertainment Tonight Presented by Woman’s Day begins airing on Nine at 11.30am weekdays. Hosts are Richard Wilkins and Marie Patane. The show is a joint production between PBL’s Nine Network and ACP publishing divisions. Nine decides to give the show a daily repeat airing at 5pm by late June.
GTV and TCN both had shows called Today on air in 1969 but they were local productions. Diana Ward hosting the Sydney show and Mike Walsh and Bobo Faulkner hosting the GTV9 show. Nine networked children’s breakfast show The Super Flying Fun Show between Sydney and Melbourne from 1970.
Televisionau’s site details the evolution of Nine’s 1960s Today. It appears the Sydney and Melbourne shows were linked during 1969 after Mike Walsh was dropped as presenter in Melbourne.
EDIT:
Nine’s new “national” Today premiered on May 5, 1969 and was seen in Sydney, Melbourne and more than twelve regional stations in Victoria and NSW.
First in “Color”. Other 0-10 channels also used the MacArthur’s Park theme music. But not all were first in color. In Brisbane Seven used that tag line.
2 March 1957: Bob and Dolly Dyer’s radio quiz show Pick-A-Box comes to television when the first show is broadcast on the ATN-GTV Network at 8pm.
2 March 1977: ATN7 screens part one of six hour British/Italian biblical mini-series Moses starring Burt Lancaster and achieves huge ratings. The multi million dollar epic had been so popular overseas that it was later released in cinemas.
On this day in 1975, Graham Kennedy’s infamous Crow call went to air. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, Kennedy was trying to distract Rosemary Margan during a live commercial by making bird noises. The Crow call sounded very similar to the “f-word”.
…and he was still getting mileage out of that incident 14 years later on Coast to Coast when he presented a “late item” about Noah asking the lord if he should build an aaaaaark. The punchline was Noah didn’t do live television again for a very long time after that.
3 March 1972: ATN7 telecasts Melbourne’s Moomba Showboat Review “live” from 8pm. At 9.30pm the station broadcasts the opening concert for the Adelaide Festival of Arts featuring Barry Crocker, Frankie Vaughan, Diana Trask and Ronnie Burns.
3 March 1974: ATN7 presents a one hour special Elton John, The Man and His Music. The doco follows Elton on tour and at home and details his method of writing songs with Bernie Taupin.
3 March 1978: TCN9 goes behind the scenes of the biggest movie of 1977 when special The Making of Star Wars airs at 7.30pm.
The 1978 Logie Awards presentation “live” from Melbourne’s Southern Cross Hotel follows at 8.30pm. Bert Newton was MC and special guest Sammy Davis, Jr. presented the Gold Logie to Graham Kennedy.
3 March 1980: ATN7’s late night news service undergoes a revamp. Newsnight replaces The Latest. John Bok presents a slightly more relaxed round up of the day’s news. Concerns are raised when Seven doesn’t give the newscast a consistent starting time. Eyebrows are raised when respected news and weather presenter Mike Bailey starts presenting film reviews during the show.
3 March 1995: Australia’s first subscription television provider Galaxy launches a premium movie channel, Showtime, and a movie favourites channel, Encore, five weeks after the service starts. Showtime kicks off with a slate of 31 movies that includes Cliffhanger, A Few Good Men, Scent of a Woman, Indecent Proposal and Far and Away.
3 March 1996: Sunday Football premieres on ATN7 with David Fordham as host. Fordham, already the host of Sportsworld, is also confirmed as Johanna Sweet’s replacement as sport presenter on ATN7’s weekend news following Sweet’s boning during maternity leave.
4 March 2019: On this day last year, Mediaspy went into a frenzy over a new set for Sydney’s 10 News First.
It certainly did not disappoint, and was regarded as one of the best sets ever seen in Australia, with an impressive 9 meter video wall, soft set for use on Studio 10, and a versatile desk which has been used for 10 News First, RPM and Studio 10.
The set only took a week to build.
Studio 10 unveiled the set the following day.
Articles including caps of the set:
4 March 1985: ABC launches The National as a one-hour news and current affairs hour, breaking the long tradition of news at 7 by starting at 6.30. NSW, VIC, ACT, Tasmania and NT had a single edition hosted by Richard Morecroft and Geraldine Doogue, with 10-minute windows for local news. Each other state had their own edition and presenters but relied largely on “national” content derived from Sydney
The National came after the axe fell on state-based ABC News, Nationwide, Weekend Magazine and the 6.55 regional news.
It wasn’t all that successful and ABC went back to state-based news and current affairs with ABC News reinstated at 7 and The 7.30 Report in 1986.
Also on the same day (night), News Overnight begins on HSV7 with Today from NBC and various news programs from NBC and CNN filling in the hours between midnight and 7am. I believe News Overnight started in Sydney a few months earlier? Maybe HSV needed some convincing to go ahead with it.
