The same set that SC 10’s ‘State Focus’ was produced out of
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I am surprised they did not last more than two years or so as a fad. Although we have had Call & Win and other overseas variations haphazardly since.
Well they are a bit of a con
they always seemed a bit dubious.
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From what I understand, they were better operated here than in other Countries (thanks in part to our lotteries and gaming rules) but they were still sketchy - the games were designed to be simple on the surface but quite complicated to drag them out and to limit correct answers. The presenters would encourage people to call up with phrases like “why isnt any one calling” when in reality many were, but producers had control (under the rules of the game) to use their discretion as to when to allow people through.
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Interesting to see a WIN promo for Big Brother (at 1:01:37):
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Can anyone remember the name of the late-night quiz show that was only axed in I think 2017 and in the end aired on Gem and was also live-streamed on a website the tv show had?
You’ll also notice at the 27m mark the AFL promo for the Ten Sat Night match. Dual Nine Ten affiliation, better than two lesser worlds.
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“Call and Win”, which was a big multi-national operation that was centred in Hungary of all places. Started off on 4ME in 2015 before moving to Gem (or I’ll at least take your word for that).
I guess the upshot of all that is, it’d be a struggle for these to exist anymore given 1900 numbers are pretty much dead - Telstra at least stopped hosting them in 2019 and blocked them towards the end of 2021.
(Also why something like Eurovision voting’s been done via a website in Australia now. Besides the new overseas vote, the only other country that does that is Israel, although that is for more muddled political and phone system reasons I suspect.)
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This is it. I never new It was based in Hungary though.
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I imagine it would have been reasonably simple (and cheap if paying in forints, let’s face it) to get a few expats that can “act” in front of a camera, plus I guess being in CET means it wasn’t even a horrible time to do it when overnight in AUS [keeping in mind that that was hardly the only localised version around].
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Found this after looking for an article cited in Michael Thurlow’s recent book about regional TV history. It’s a floor plan of the old CTC7 building. Taken from RCA broadcast News August 1975.
https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Broadcast-News/RCA-156.pdf
Also, going by this video, the inside of the building has been altered quite a bit over the years and studios B and C appear to have been decommissioned a while back and converted to office space.
Source: Canberra Production (Vimeo)
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And now gone.
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It’s a shame but it was inevitable.
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I draw maps as a hobby and I drew a rough one of CTC’s studios based on that video, so it’s good to see the actual layout.
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A 1990 Panasonic ad for Retravision, Port Adelaide.
YouTube: Brayden’s Weather, Quizzing, Commercials and Sports
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I think it was repeated a lot. SBS when it came along ran two British shows (Follow Me and People You Meet) which were much the same.
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In the latest Block promo Scott Cam is seen trying to get better reception on an old B and W TV. They are using an old spiral coil indoor TV antenna (but strangely no cable - it was connected by 300 Ohm ribbon). My grandparents used to have one of these and as thy lived near Mt Coot-tha the reception was very good despite their tin roof. I think you could still get these into the colour TV era.
Internet search
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Takes me back to my primary school days, I remember the school still had B&W TVs with those spiral antennas though this was well after colour changeover. Not enough funding to upgrade to colour TVs it seems!
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