Random TV History

A post was merged into an existing topic: Regional TV History (pre-aggregation)

This week’s top 10 …

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Probably the most famous anchor swap I can recall, though happened off-camera, was when the late Jill Singer collapsed during a commercial break on Today Tonight in Melbourne after having to announce that the show had to drop a major story about the Kennett state government. Story goes that she was visibly stressed when making the announcement and that she fainted in the ad break so newsreader David Johnston was hurriedly called back to set and, as he described it at the time, literally had to step over her lying on the floor to get to the seat at the desk. He then went on to present the rest of the program.

Ms Singer recovered from that episode but left the show soon after.

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Then bringing the unforgettable Naomi Robinson to the program.

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and sadly passed away a couple of years ago.

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1996 Perth Telethon into break bumper. The last year before 1300/13 numbers were introduced.

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With Getaway celebrating its 30th anniversary, each episode of the season has included some historical clips.


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David Johnston looking very relaxed in retirement! :slight_smile:

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The 4KQ Eater countdown (and similar ones) always brings up a large number of songs that were used as TV idents and themes like MaCarthur’s Park, Theme from Shaft, etc.

There are also a couple Convoy and Harper Valley PTA where the song inspired a movie. Not sure if that happened for any TV shows.

There is one song that was originally a TV commercial theme song - Jeans On by David Dundas.

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Hard to believe it’s been 16 years since he retired now!

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MTN Television PRG from the early 90s:

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And from memory Dances With Wolves was a Channel 7 movie, so despite being somewhat aligned to Nine/WIN, being the commercial monopoly in town it looks like they still carried other networks’ content

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That was virtually the same as WiN’s PRG at the same time.

There was less variation in PRGs back then, nearly every station had the logo on the left, text in the middle and classification on the right all in white. Only the font and size was different. Coloured and/or animated PRGs didn’t start until the mid/late 90s I think.

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Is that off a YouTube video?

I love some of the stuff that people can remember around here! So pointless to most of the world but amazing for those around here who love the really small detail and history. Very much appreciated.

The TasTV one would have been quite rare I think, TasTV disappeared from October 1994 but they had their fly-in blue logo for several years I think, I was north where I do remember we just had a white version of the early Southern Cross Network logo before moving to the colour one and then Southern Cross Television (even though the words weren’t on the PRG).
WIN’s was basic after the TasTV one but I think was white for a while before changing to the gold version later in the 90’s.

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No I found it from a bulk lot of VHS’ i’ve aquired a few weeks ago.

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Yes, that’s correct. Dances With Wolves premiered on Seven across two nights (March 14-15) in 1993.

No idea when it would’ve been shown on MTN though!

As I’m sure @Zampakid will tell you, he’s been acquiring heaps of old recorded VHS tapes in recent years from people who’ve been getting rid of their collections as the world increasingly becomes digital-only.

There’s probably been considerably more tapes picked up from metro markets than regionals (especially smaller ones like MTN), although this is probably more a reflection of where people live than anything else!

Of course, there are also a few online archives of newspapers/TV guides where a quick search of the database has helped us to find airdates for old recordings and other interesting things! :slight_smile:

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VIC TV/WIN Mildura still carried a few programmes from the Seven (until Prime came in 1997) and Ten networks in the 1990s, not only AFL football and Bathurst but also Beyond 2000 and movies.

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TVT6 had an animated PRG in the 80s which was the state emblem of a lion animating into the station logo. There was the blue TasTV fly in PRG and then when it changed to WIN it was gold with the nine dots flying into the screen then the WIN letters revealing themselves from behind the dots. I think the Southern Cross TV8 PRG animated too in the late 80s.

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