Channel 9 responded with The Best Of Burke’s Backyard, Farscape and the Paul Hogan movie Almost An Angel. Probably at least aware that literally nobody would be watching them that night.
Channel 10 responded with the movies Matilda and The Naked Gun. I think Matilda might have been a TV premiere, at least an alternative for the kids who might not be interested in the Olympics. But I can’t imagine many eyeballs watching anything other than Seven that night.
I can’t recall the ratings but IIRC (and I strongly suggest citation required as my memory isn’t great), the Olympics had something like a 70-75% rating, and a share (of sets in use at the time) of something like 90%?
A decade old movie at that time and according to a Google search, a critical & commercial failure.
According to the info I could find online, Matilda was a repeat on 15/9/2000. Could’ve only been the 2nd time it aired on Ten though, as far as I can tell the premiere screening was on Friday June 4, 1999.
1: The Opening Ceremony
2: Ian Thorpe’s first Gold Medal
3: Home & Away
4: Hey Arnold
5: Harry’s Practice
…all with the exception of Hey Arnold (which the ABC ran at 5pm weekdays at the time) being Seven Network titles.
On the other end of the scale, a Pokemon special which Ten aired at 6.30pm on the first night of Olympic competition received less viewers than morning airings of Play School!
Once again, it’s archived pages of The Sydney Morning Herald via Newspapers.com to the rescue!
16 September 1956: TV begins! Australia’s first TV station TCN9 begins transmission at 7.00pm, with a voice over introduction by announcer John Godson, then Bruce Gyngell appeared on screen and announced “Good evening, and welcome to television”
Although the footage we often see of that moment was actually a recreation made a year or so later.
I think in the excitement of what they were doing they must have either forgot to record the moment, or any footage just got lost somewhere.
Technically it wasn’t the official opening of TCN but a test transmission that was only for about 3 hours a night, that led up to what was the official opening on 27 October. To roughly coincide with HSV7 opening in Melbourne on 4 November, so any major program purchases made between them (e.g. overseas titles) could start at roughly the same time.
But 16 September has become immortalised as the birth date as the start of television in Australia
16/9/2013Million Dollar Minute premieres on Channel Seven. It lasted for only twenty-four months. That same evening, Ten News rebrands to Ten Eyewitness News and Seven News undergoes some (yet again) semi-major graphic changes.
17 September 1988: Network Ten’s coverage of the 1988 Seoul Olympics begins. Ten’s daily coverage went from 9am to 2am, and on weeknights taking a two-hour break in the evening for Perfect Match, the news and Neighbours.
In Melbourne, Eyewitness News changed its branding to Ten News on the same day as the Opening Ceremony. Not sure about other cities, I think TVQ10 in Brisbane stayed with Eyewitness News for the remainder of its stay at World Expo 88 before returning to the Mt Coottha studios.
The SMH reported the change happening two days later on the Monday in Sydney “minus any fanfare”. They state the reason for the change was due to all network stations now having the same numerical callsign thus the generic identification for news no longer being necessary. Interesting that the brand was revived several times in the decades that followed. 1988 Olympic games guides still have “Eyewitness News” listed after the on air change.
20 September 1971: ATV0 debuts two new shows. A daytime show, His & Hers, is a rival to the popular Beauty & The Beast. Hosted by John Laws with Sue Becker, Dita Cobb and Bobo Faulkner. I’m guessing this was taped at TEN10 in Sydney.
Then at 6.30pm, Philip Brady hosts Money Makers, Produced at TVQ0 in Brisbane and billed as Australia’s first five-night-a-week quiz show. (Seven’s Great Temptation at 7.00pm was only airing one night a week)
On the same night, Clyde Packer, son of Sir Frank and brother of Kerry and at the time an executive of the Nine Network stations in Sydney and Melbourne and a member of the NSW Legislative Council, appeared as a guest on Monday Conference on ABC.
Monday Conference was probably the Q&A of the 1970s, in much the same timeslot, too.
Possibly, if Bruce Gyngell didn’t pass away in September 2000 (the 7th in London, although Australians would’ve heard about the news on the 8th local time).
We’ll most likely never know for sure, but everything I’ve read/heard so far suggests there wasn’t much fanfare for the launch of fulltime Digital TV on 1/1/2001.
At a guess, the New Years Eve fireworks from Sydney Harbour on Nine might’ve been the first major event to be telecast on Australian television in digital widescreen. Wouldn’t be overly surprised if the Centenary of Federation celebration telecasts on ABC-TV and Seven later that day were produced entirely in 4.3, given that both networks didn’t have anywhere near everything in widescreen (compared to both Nine & Ten who seemed to upgrade fairly quickly) until 2004/05.
21 September 1969: The British documentary, The Royal Family, a joint production between BBC and ITV, is broadcast in Sydney on Nine (4pm), Seven (6pm) and ABC (7.30pm).
In Melbourne, it was shown on Nine and Seven (both at 6pm) and ABC (7.30pm)
TV Week previewed the film in July after it aired in the UK
24 September 1993: The Seven, Nine and Ten networks cross live to Monte Carlo for the announcement of which city will host the 2000 Olympic Games. Ten’s coverage runs from 2.30am to 5.00am, while Nine goes from 3.00am to 9.00am, and Seven from 3.15am to 9.00am. Seven repeated part of its coverage from midday.
That evening, Nine launches prime-time editions of The Footy Show in Sydney and Melbourne.
26 September 1987: ABC broadcasts the 1987 VFL Grand Final, ending a season where ABC had exclusive rights to VFL coverage in Victoria. (Coverage was shown on other networks interstate)
It marked the end of ABC’s association with the VFL after 31 years, as ABC had been a non-exclusive broadcast partner since 1957.
The Seven Network, which lost its rights at the end of the 1986 season, had secured a return to VFL rights from 1988 with exclusive coverage.
