they probably approved it
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Strange to see a live suburban baseball match as the first sport broadcast on Sydney commercial television in colour at 10.30am on October 19. I suppose it was a good opportunity to expose Saturday morning shoppers to the wonders of colour TV and increase the take up of the new technology.
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BTQ in Brisbane also had a local production for their first colour broadcast - 57th GPS (Great Public Schools) Annual Athletics Carnival
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7 October 1976: The Seven Network, TV Times and the Variety Club of Australia host the first Australian TV & Film Awards, otherwise known as the Sammys.
They were set up to rival the TV Week Logie Awards, but with a focus on both film and television. Most of the awards were judged by an industry panel, with three awards (Most Popular Personality, Most Popular Australian Series, Most Popular Overseas Series) voted by TV Times readers.
Although TV Times ceased publication in August 1980, the Sammys continued in October 1980 and 1981.
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Any reason for the name? Was it in honour of Sammy Davis Jr or something?
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Huh? No.
In 1976, the Variety Club of Australia, TV Times and the Seven Network launched The Australian TV And Film Awards, nicknamed “The Sammys”. The name was derived from the trophy’s design in the shape of a seal — Sammy the Seal!
The awards were a rival to the long-running TV Week Logie Awards , which were shown annually on the Nine Network.
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The trophy was in the shape of a seal. It was nicknamed Sammy the seal
Source: NFSA
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10 October 1970: HSV7 launches The Penthouse Club, hosted by sports commentator Michael Williamson and comedienne Mary Hardy. It was the format of a variety show with crosses to the Saturday night harness races (and later including the Tattslotto draw). Essentially, Seven had bought the rights to the races but didn’t know what to do in the 20 minutes or so between each race, so they put on a variety show. It was a rough format and done on the cheap, but Mary Hardy was a hit with viewers. The show ran until 1979, with a name change to Saturday Night Live in its last year.
YouTube: kylegalley
10 October 1971: The children’s magazine program This Week Has Seven Days begins on Seven. It has presenters in each city – David Johnston (Melbourne), Andrew Harwood (Sydney), Dina Heslop (Brisbane), Tony Curtis (Adelaide).
Somewhere along the line it became just a Melbourne production but shown across Australia.
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11 October 1964: Filmed highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games are rushed over for broadcast in Australia. The actual ceremony took place the night before, Australian time.
Radio stations provided a live commentary of the ceremony but TV still had to rely on film being sent over. It was anticipated that by the next Olympics (Mexico), Australia would be in a position to get coverage via satellite. In reality it wasn’t. The cost was still prohibitive so it was 1972 before Australia got to see live coverage of an overseas Olympics opening ceremony
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Did they get the satélite for Mexico?
it was the expectation but no it didn’t happen. Still too expensive. I just edited the above post 
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They would also expand to Mt. Taylor, Cooma, and Goulburn.
Still remains the most popular station in Perth.
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17/10/2005 Rob “The Coach” Fulton becomes the first person to win $1M on the Aussie version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
One I missed from yesterday…
16/10/2013 Hillal Kara-Ali wins the sixth and final season of The Mole after unmasking Erin Dooley as the traitor. The $180K he won was the second-highest for a winner in the show’s history (behind only the $203K Liz Cantor won in 2005.
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17 October 1959: Adelaide channel NWS9 launches its new variety show, Adelaide Tonight. Hosted by Lionel Williams and Kevin Crease. The studio audience for the first show included station owner Rupert Murdoch along with invited government dignitaries and station sponsors.
One of the performers on the first show was a 24-year-old Malaysian-born student, known then as Kamal, making his TV debut. He later changed the spelling of his name to Kamahl.
Adelaide Tonight continued in various forms until 1973.
Source: The Advertiser
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19 October 1974: Test colour programming commences, with sport being the first to be allowed under testing provisions. Initially a maximum of a couple of hours per day from each channel. Colour programming later extended to allow some movies and selected episodes of regular programming, news, etc. to be in colour.
19 October 1984: Network 0-28 (SBS) debuts its new current affairs show, Dateline World. It has had numerous format and timeslot changes over the years (at one stage it was a nightly program) and is now known as Dateline.
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20/10/2008 Nine News drops the ‘National’ from its title, and new graphics are launched, replacing the previous set that had only been in place for nine months.
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20 October 1964: The Crawfords police drama Homicide debuts on HSV7. Crawfords had produced the pilot over a year earlier but had trouble convincing anyone to pick it up. Seven eventually did but still paid far less than what it cost Crawfords to make.
The debut episode rated 33 in Melbourne, a big rating for a market now with four channels.
Its success triggered a production empire for Crawford, and an overall boom in Australian television drama production which prior to then was fairly token.
It debuted in Sydney the following January.
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