“Now at 6 o’clock every evening”
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3AW commercial promoting their move from 1278 to 693am
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With Burt Bacharach’s passing, I thought I’d dust off an oldie. This HSV7 ident brought Paul Hogan and Burt together in the early 70s:
(With credit to dontv3192 for posting)
RIP Burt.
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And here’s the original by Burt himself.
YouTube: Burt Bacharach
Vale Burt.
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TVQ 0 also used a Burt Bacharach song in its early days. What the World Needs Now. Their logo was a heart. Very 60’s flower power vibes.
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I still find it a bit hilarious that all the US sports that we were watching at the time on One HD were just off some rinky dink DirecTV STB. 
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Made me laugh and love 5 band Panasonic Radio Cassette
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I wonder what the ratings for Ian Ross’ first night on 7NEWS Sydney were like on December 8, 2003. The very first story they had that evening was an exclusive on some crime in southern Sydney.
Nine News that evening would’ve been presented by Mark Ferguson, who was filling in for Jim Waley who battled cancer towards the end of that year.
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Although they’d be around (it was the very early days of OzTAM then, so they’d be comparable at least), whether it would’ve been reported much in the media is another question given it would’ve been summer non-ratings, and whether it was really seen as important as now (eg. without the daily eyes of Media Spy on it 
).
One thing that might’ve put a dampener on it: National Nine News would’ve had the lead-in of the final day of a drawn Brisbane test, against India (albeit given they lost a lot of play along the way, roughly a whole day - maybe expected - but looking at the scores, maybe some would’ve stayed on until the end… looks like they shook hands at 6.10pm AEDT).
I’m curious as to what Seven would’ve run during summer as lead-in (guessing repeats of Wheel I guess), but the start of ratings period 2004 saw the first daily editions of Deal or No Deal, and would’ve eventually seen a bigger lead-in bump for Rosco…
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While 2004 was a terrible year for Seven, I think it was the year they had to had.
As you mentioned, Deal or No Deal was reformatted to a five-night-a-week show (as opposed to the original iteration where they had $2 MILLION as the top prize) and the intrigue/suspense towards the end of most episodes helped to keep viewers glued to the death, ultimately boosting its news numbers and giving Roscoe a huge boost in Sydney in his first year in the hot seat. There was no need for a boost in Perth where Rick and Sue were ruling the roost (and still do today).
Speaking of which, I wonder what were the ratings like for Seven News against Nine News in Perth during that tough period when Nine proved unbeatable on the East Coast.
The turning point came after the Athens Olympics, where Seven unleashed some new shows including Dancing With the Stars and Border Security among others. Then came a new plate of international shows in 2005, which ultimately set them up for more than a decade of ratings dominance between 2007-18 inclusive.
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well I think this counts as pretty random, a snapshot inside the SBS newsroom in 1983
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Amazing how different things were back then!
Not a single computer or even an ergonomic chair in sight!
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Even in 1993 working in the public service, i didn’t have a computer on my desk. We had a communal PC that our team of about 3-4 people shared! I seem to recall lots of dot matrix printouts and lots of paperwork.
I can’t fathom now how we got any work done.
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I used to be a public servant too, and back then, if we needed to get comms out to our regional offices, it would be a printed letter that was sent out in the internal mail and we would need to wait several days for any feedback/issues to be sent back to us… Now that all happens in just minutes.
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YouTube: TV Vault Australia
This ad aired in Sydney but I am guessing we had similar in Melbourne, thought I don’t remember Dial A TV Guide at all.
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I wonder how much calling that number would have cost? From memory, those sorts of numbers only worked if you lived in the respective metropolitan telephone area code. In the case of Sydney, if you lived in Gosford, Richmond, Penrith, Katoomba, Campbelltown or Wollongong, forget it.
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Yes IIRC the 11xxx recorded services were the cost of a local call in the metro area. They could be called from outside the metro area by adding the relevant area code but long distance rates applied.
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Does/can anyone remember why the Today Tonight theme in Queensland (2013) and Western Australia (since 2006) omitted the electric guitar riff as could be heard in the East Coast edition?
You’ll know what I mean when you hear this:
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Lol! Reminds me of Kramer being the movie phone guy in Seinfeld
One of my all time favourite scenes from that show!
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Pretty much this, yes - kinda sure these four- or five-digit “11” numbers pre-dated the introduction of 0055, although those details of when the latter was introduced are scant online… although the basic numbers (like for Telecom’s time and weather services) were the same everywhere, they would’ve had to be connected separately in each city I guess.
Similar things existed in the US, mostly using local numbers starting with “976”, before their 900 area code came online there.
Those time/weather numbers (most recently 1194 and 1196 respectively) were only turned off at the end of September 2019, at the same time as when Telstra stopped premium-rate services altogether.
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