Have never been able to work out: what on earth was Weekend Magazine?
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I think just stories of human interest stories or lightweight current affairs that used to fill out the end of the Sunday bulletin, at a time when nothing newsworthy really happened on Sundays.
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So odd to put it in as a separate program.
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AFAIK, Weekend Magazine was often just listed as guides as part of ABC News. e.g. “ABC News. Includes Weekend Magazine”.
ABC News used to run from 7.00 to 7.40 on Sundays, but Weekend Magazine would take up the last 25 minutes. It used to be repeated as a separate program on Monday afternoons.
It was a bit of a custom to have Sunday night news bulletins include “magazine” segments on what is usually a slow news day. Seven National News in Melbourne used to have Camera 7 in its Sunday bulletin, Nine had Sunday Magazine, and ATV0 had something else again but I can’t remember what theirs was called.
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Thanks, some of the ABC’s old programs and TV decisions seem particularly antiquated.
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The end of this video has the theme music to Weekend Magazine - it was the opening of the last ever episode from 3 March 1985.
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4 March 1985: Kennedy Miller mini series The Cowra Breakout premieres on Ten. The World War II story of the breakout from the NSW prisoner of war camp requires a major commitment from viewers as the ten hour series screens over four consecutive nights starting with a three hour episode.
4 March 1991: A Sydney Morning Herald report speculates on possible hosts for Sale of the Century following the shock announcement of Tony Barber’s departure from the show the previous week. Bert Newton, Richard Wilkins, Larry Emdur, Mark “Con the Fruiterer” Mitchell, University Challenge’s Magnus Clarke and Dennis Walter are all said to be under consideration for the role.
4 March 1993: The Extraordinary starts on the Seven Network. Warwick Moss presents “true life” stories of the paranormal. The show is sold to the US market and would be picked up by Nine after a three year run on Seven.
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Started 28 January 1985 in Sydney. Replays of the previous evening’s Newsworld and current affairs shows (Day By Day in Melbourne) also aired as part of News Overnight from 4am. I was trying to find out if Larry Emdur was still introducing and providing news updates during the six hour package of news by the time HSV7 had started airing it.
The ABC switchboard melted down in Sydney following the first edition with more than 200 calls received, the vast majority complaints, regarding the changes. They abandoned the format eight months later in response to viewer feedback although The National name still existed until 1986. Viewers didn’t like the lack of distinction between news and current affairs. Apparently the news theme was also an issue. A more conventional 30 minute state based news bulletin was reinstated on 14 August. Morecroft reading the Sydney bulletin solo and Ralphe Neill reading in Melbourne from 6.30pm before crossing to Geraldine Doogue in Sydney at 7pm for the current affairs portion.
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I think The National was well ahead of its time. It can work on ABC News channel.
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4th March 1962 - NBN3 Newcastle (the first regional NSW tv station) launches.
4th March 2020 - Nine Newcastle (NBN) turns 58.
that’s actually the first time I’ve heard of that. Very interesting, yet bizarre move. The ABC must have been very embarrassed by the slight backtrack it as it doesn’t even rate a mention in its Annual Report of 1985-86. The Annual Report, I suppose more optimistically, goes into more detail about reinstating the traditional 7.00 news and 7.30 current affairs model that replaced it.
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Larry Emdur might’ve been an OK presenter of Sale, not so sure about the others. In the end, picking Glenn Ridge (the program went on for another decade or so with him, so it can’t have been too bad) was probably the right decision.
Will the news still be NBN News in 2020 for the 60th Birthday though? 
I’m hoping in 2022 they’ll change some part of the package (if it’s not nine-a-freyed)
Still remember there 50th
Quotes from ABC execs in articles around that time have them emphatically rejecting the experiment had failed and this change in August amounted to “fine tuning” with the ABC wanting to “build on the program’s response”. They were desperately trying to save face considering they’d essentially reverted to what they had before The National started and they’d pissed $25 million away- half an hour of news with the old Nationwide tacked onto the end. The only things that remained of the initiative were the name and timeslot changes. They even stuck with The National branding into 1986 with Summer National airing at 7pm before quietly going back to the plain old ABC News moniker in late January '86.
I had never heard of Glenn Ridge before he was tapped to host Sale. I’d suggest he was a complete unknown to most outside of Victoria. I was shocked the show continued to have success as I found it lacked the same energy without Tony. It probably helped they had celebrity specials and champion editions regularly throughout 1991.
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I knew him by name only as a regional TV presenter. I can’t imagine any considerable number of Melburnians knew him, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him on screen although I think he might have appeared at the Logies one year when BTV6 won the Logie for regional television in the mid 1980s. It was quite a jump to see him take over one of the biggest gigs in TV at the time in favour of some of those other big names vying for the job. He must have pulled out some pure magic to wow them at the auditions!
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5 March 2001:Channel 31 in Melbourne launches its new daytime programming block, Renaissance TV, with programming aimed at over-55s. It was a venture of Prime Life, a chain of retirement villages, which basically ran it as a sponsored program of some exclusive programming and lots of vintage shows and movies that were probably public domain.
It was sort of a commercial channel by stealth (Prime Life apparently foot the bill for Channel 31 to upgrade its transmitter), so the ABA stepped in and put a limit on the number of sponsored hours could be run.
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5 March 1985: Andrew Olle returns to the ABC to present a revamped Four Corners. Olle had been a reporter and substitute presenter on Nine’s Sunday for the previous three years and is still under contract to the network. Nine is good enough to release him from the last few months of his contract.
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Renaissance TV was also available on Channel 31 in Sydney from June 2002. The transmitter move from North Sydney to Gore Hill coincided with it.
Even Media Watch had a story about it back in November 2002: https://web.archive.org/web/20021113233252/http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/041102_s4.htm
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6 March 1975: Little House on the Prairie debuts on TCN9 at 7.30pm. The story of a struggling pioneering family in 1870s America is based on the best selling series of autobiographical books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and features Michael Landon in his first regular television role since Bonanza.
6 March 1977: Having spent some weeks with the band the previous year, Molly Meldrum scores a solo interview with ABBA for the ABC’s Countdown during their Australian concert tour.
6 March 1983: The events of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis are dramatised in three part mini series The Dismissal on TEN10 and ATV10.
6 March 1990: The Big Gig returns to the ABC for a second season with new host Glynn Nicholas.
6 March 1994: Irish stand up comedian Jimeoin starts his new comedy series on Seven when Jimeoin premieres against 60 Minutes. Seven hopes the show will repeat the success of The Comedy Company in the timeslot.
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This was a topic on Hard Quiz this week 
Timed to coincide with the federal election on the 5th?