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Prime Time (1986)
Willing and Abel (1987)
All The Way (1988)
They even poached the head of Seven Network drama Alan Bateman to try and change their ways, even then it couldn’t be undone and the network wouldn’t have much success until Water Rats came along.
Starting Out
Taurus Rising
Kings
Possession
Family & Friends
Chances
Paradise Beach was a dud here but managed to get a longer run on the back of overseas sales
The Flying Doctors was really the only one that worked out but it was less a soap than the others, but it certainly had soapie-like elements.
I have a friend in Amsterdam who recalls that when she was growing up she wanted to become a nurse because she used to watch The Flying Doctors on Dutch TV. So we bought her The Flying Doctors on DVD for Christmas one year so she could see it again.
Pacific Drive was like that too, wasn’t it?
I was in Greece years ago when they were running Paradise Beach and Pacific Drive back to back in the afternoons Apparently they had quite a following there and were even repeated. Greeks really like the South American novellas, which are soap operas with a limited run, from a few months to a few years. So they treated these soaps like telenovellas.
I’d forgotten about Pacific Drive but yeah it might have been saved by overseas sales. It really only had a late night/daytime presence here but went for a couple of years.
1/2/2016 Sunrise relaunches, with a brand new set and graphics, as well as a new starting time of 5:30am (thus bringing forward the start of Seven Early News to 5:00am).
That same evening, Seven News introduces a new variant of its Mission theme, replacing the one that had been in place since August 2004. Sydney also gets a new set, too.
1/2/2010. My Kitchen Rules makes its debut and lasts an impressive 10 seasons with the last season being last year.
Feb 1 2016 - Sam Mac begins as Sunrise weather presenter, and Edwina Bartholomew is redeployed as entertainment and features presenter.
1 February 1983: Prisoner returns for a new year to reveal the aftermath of the fire that ripped through Wentworth Detention Centre in last year’s cliffhanger.
1 February 2000: Ten debuts drama series Above The Law, depicting the lives of the residents of a city apartment tower. It was a starring vehicle for former E Street star Alyssa-Jane Cook. Above The Law lasted about six months.
What other duds were floating about back in 2000?
3 February 2004: Network Ten launches the children’s news and current affairs program, TTN (The Total News). The weekly news and current affairs program aimed at school-aged (9- to 14-year-old) children, TTN will have a 5 year run.
TTN also had the backing of News Corp’s metropolitan and regional papers with a kids’ news page on Tuesdays (and on The Sunday Times in Perth on Sundays).
3 February 1984: The Ten Network launches a 26-hour telethon to raise funds to send the Australian team to the LA Olympics. As well as each of the Ten network stations, the telethon is shown on regional stations across Australia and on STW9 in Perth, each of which also conducted their own telethons for local opt-outs from the national program.
YouTube: Australian TV Fan
Got to love ITQ 8’s presentation.
I remember watching this to hear mention of the various TV station callsigns, to catch a glimpse of their logos and see the local TV personalities in other parts of the country.
I think this was the telethon they did a live cross to Jon English, possibly backstage at the Pirates of Penzance or something, who in getting people to donate said something about helping kids in hospital and then he had to be reminded that this was a telethon for Olympic athletes.
It was probably all scripted but I was 12 or so at the time, I thought it was legit 
… prior to the departure of Peter Dooley and Leighton Lawrence to NTD-8 Darwin and Terry Lees’ dummy-spit when he didn’t get the top job and move to 4LM, you couldn’t really use the words “ITQ 8” and “presentation” in the same sentence … it was in fact the local handling of the 10 Olympics network feed that showed the true coming-of-age of ITQ as far as on-air presentation was concerned …
I remember reading an article about STW’s input to this national olympic telethon.
At the time, STW9 was heavily committed to providing national coverage of cricket or tennis (can’t remember which) for the network and it’s own local live programming. As such their studio recourses were stretched, so STW9’s input to the national Telethon was done from TVW’s studios up the road.
The two were still independent stations at the time and would help each other out for telethons & other charitable events.
Interesting. The 2 Perth channels did have a rather cozy relationship, such as buying programs in a joint venture company and then just splitting the shows up via a coin toss. That sort of thing would probably not be allowed these days.
3 February 2008: So You Think You Can Dance Australia premieres on Network Ten, it ran for over 4 seasons.
