On This Day

15 November 2009 - AFter 10 years, Rove McManus announced that he will quit his variety talk show. He confirmed his announcement for tonight. The show ended with a montage of clips from the 2009 season. Rove thanked viewers for his wonderful contribution over the past 10 years. (Rove show used to air on CHannel 9 in 1999, before moving the show in 2000-09).
15 November 2017 - More than 1.15 million viewers watched the Socceroos 3-1 victory over Honduras in the World Cup Inter-continental Qualifier match on CHannel Nine.

2 Likes

very generous of him?

4 Likes

16 November 1980: SBS Channel 0/28 broadcasts the first episode of its new variety show, Cabaret, screening in the 7.30pm Sunday timeslot.

The first episode was hosted by Graham Kennedy but subsequent episodes were hosted by actor Joe Hasham.

The concept for Cabaret was initially to be as a talent quest, but SBS executive Bruce Gyngell apparently ordered a re-taping of some segments literally just days before going to air to change the show’s format to just being a variety show.

Cabaret was produced by the Grundy Organisation and Willard King Productions.

I don’t have any dates but IIRC Cabaret continued through to 1982. I am not aware of it being shown anywhere outside of Sydney and Melbourne.

2 Likes

Apparently, Gyngell thought that a show where performers from different ethnic backgrounds competed against each other had negative implications - mainly, stoking up old ethnic tensions (like the violence that the NSL would be known for).

Kennedy quit because he was opposed to the change.

3 Likes

had he not been aware of the Eurovision Song Contest which had been going since the 1950s? :wink:

It did seem strange that he only did the first episode given that he’d been signed up specifically by Gyngell but from what I gather Joe Hasham did a good job onwards

1 Like

18 November 1991: The Nine Network presents Michael Jackson: Dangerous, a half hour prime time special featuring Jackson’s $6 million, 11 minute video clip for his new single Black Or White.

The clip had attracted controversy when it premiered on the Fox network in the USA days earlier because it contained sexual and violent content interspersed with cameos from child star Macaulay Culkin and characters from The Simpsons. Molly Meldrum tops and tails the clip in the Nine special with a warning about the content and an explanation of the “social commentary” behind scenes depicting destructive behaviour and crotch caressing.

The special is a ratings hit and peaks at 29 in Sydney and Melbourne.

5 Likes

18 November 1981: A Country Practice debuts on Seven. The rural drama becomes a hit and runs for 13 seasons. Actors like Shane Porteous, Penny Cook, Lorrae Desmond and Georgie Parker become household names.

3 Likes

it was a big summer in drama for Seven. They launched ACP in November and then Sons & Daughters in January. I guess not a dissimilar scenario to a few years earlier when Nine launched The Young Doctors and The Sullivans over summer to build up an audience before ratings resumed.

It was a good strategy for Nine then, and was also good for Seven in this instance and helped them fill the gap left by the axing of Skyways and prepare for when Cop Shop would eventually outlast its welcome.

They were also clever in setting Sons & Daughters in both Sydney and Melbourne, as often series set or made in one city may struggle in the other. I must admit I fell for it at the time and thought the show was being taped in both cities. It was years later when I realised that it was entirely made in Sydney but they would make occasional trips to Melbourne for location filming.

3 Likes

Sadly, that same success could not be replicated when the show moved to Ten in 1994.

1 Like

Not surprised - Seven did a pretty good job of bringing the series to an end that made any reboot a bit strange

3 Likes

Not surprising when It move from a Valley to a Hill (and to a different state too) when it was suppose to be in a valley.

3 Likes

How well did Mother & Son rate when it started airing on Ten vs the first runs on ABC?

That’s true. Also, A Country Practice was an odd fit for Ten. It inevitably skewed older, which was against Ten’s younger target demographic. And it debuted on Ten in April rather than at the start of the year, so people had already moved on.

I guess they thought like Neighbours this could be a good pick up, but also forgetting that ACP was 12 years old at this stage. It was well past its peak.

No idea. Repeats on Ten probably rated better than first run episodes on ABC, just by default that commercial channels pretty much always out rated the ABC, but reporting of ratings figures in those days was very sparse so it’s hard to gain any meaningful comparison.

3 Likes

I do recall first run episodes of Mother and Son making it into Sydney’s top ten shows of the week on occasion at the height of its success on the ABC just because it was rare for ABC shows to make that list in those days. The show had been repeated multiple times on the ABC before Ten acquired it but it must’ve attracted an audience because they persisted with it, in different slots, for a few years.

3 Likes

19/11/2003 Guy Sebastian wins the first season of Australian Idol.

3 Likes

19 November 1956: ABC launches ABV2, Melbourne’s second TV station to officially open and providing a valuable link for ABC’s Olympics coverage, with the Olympic Games in Melbourne starting in just a few days.

ABV2_opening_0004

Source: Listener In-TV, The Age

6 Likes

20 November 1999: The final episode of Hey Hey It’s Saturday. The normally 2-hour show was scheduled to be 3 hours for its finale but ended up running close to four hours.

8 Likes

3 Likes

So strange for Daryl to be self indulgent.

2 Likes

Was the end of an era.

3 Likes