Random TV History

I remember NBN doing something similar in the 90s, sometimes with messages too, like “Celebrating 30 Years” (as done in 1992).

They loved celebrating birthdays, in 1983, their station ID included a “Now We’re 21” jingle, and their “50 Years” watermark add on was used for over 12 months in 2012-13.

2 Likes

NRTV used to show their PRG logo between ad breaks on programming as well after aggregation.

2 Likes

Full episodes of the flop TV series ‘Arcade’

(some good stuff on this Vimeo channel, too!)

5 Likes

Awesome find! Technically episode 49 never went to air. The show was taken off air after about 33 episodes and AFAIK the remaining episodes made never went to air.

Also, “jayelkay” would that be Jeremy Kewley? Seeing as he was in Arcade and seems to be in most of the titles there.

almost certainly, it’s got his promotional reels there.

edit: ooh geez i didn’t realise his seedy past until I looked up his wiki

2 Likes

11 posts were split to a new topic: MTN On Air Presentation

American Pride - Network Music Ensemble. This was used in Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Election Ad in 1986 and in this News Promo for GLV 8 in Gippsland.

Sir Joh’s Electon Ad 1986

GLV 8 News Promo

3 Likes

The Channel 2 Newsforce cinema ad from the early 90s:

5 Likes

How did the ABC get money for cinema ads?

Also…heh heh…“Channel 2 Newsforce”. Sounds like an American news team.

6 Likes

I’m guessing that the bulletin is from around January/February 1990 as it mentions the upcoming Federal Election. This would have been just after MTN started relaying WIN Wollongong, which they did from Boxing Day 1989 onwards.

4 Likes

The ABC probably could afford to do more external advertising back in the Early 90s, although I’d imagine this promo (or some form of it) also ran on ABC-TV at the time.

… now they spend it buying Google Adwords …

2 Likes

Good to see 7News starting to upload full historical news bulletins on their YouTube channel.

18 Likes

Oh that aspect ratio :frowning:

4 Likes

advertising where the audience is a fairly sound decision

4 Likes

… don’t disagree with that … but it still costs money, so I was simply making the point that the ABC can apparently “afford” to spend just as much (and probably a good deal more) on “external advertising” today as it could “back in the Early 90s” …

1 Like

Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but aside from a few online ads here and there almost all ABC advertising I’ve seen/heard in recent years has been exclusively via ABC properties: Eg, ABC-TV ads on ABC Radio and ABC Radio ads on ABC-TV.

1 Like
3 Likes

People won’t find out the ABC is running programming just from seeing the TV Guide in a newspaper - it makes sense for them to promote their product - and like Cinemas in the 90s or online today - you have to go to where the eyeballs are.

If you make programming and then don’t let the potential audience for it know it exists - you’ve wasted money on that programming.

9 Likes

I think the amount of external advertising the ABC does nowadays, whether it be through google or whoever, is still a small amount compared to what it used to do. Back in the '80s and '90s there’d be regular ads in the major capital city newspapers, ads in TV Week program guides, advertising ABC TV programs on commercial radio, and advertising ABC radio stations on commercial TV. Plus any other external media like cinema ads, billboards, etc. The cost must have been immense. It would have amounted surely to more than the equivalent of $2m it’s spending on online advertising these days.

6 Likes