After creating a thread about current Religious TV Broadcasts, I wanted to look at historical programming when Australia was much more of a church-going society.
I will add more historical religious programming when I come across them online. Please share them in this thread if you find any more clips, snippets and full episodes). The first program I want to look at is the ABC’s Divine Service.
Each week on Sunday morning, a religious service would be broadcast live on ABC television. The service was generally from one of the established churches around Australia.
I found some old episodes thanks to a local Sydney man, John Gesouras, who found old film canisters in their local Greek Orthodox Church of St George, Rose Bay. He posted the episodes on the Rose Bay local Facebook page. Their church had 3 full episodes of the programme that were broadcast on the ABC – one from 1965, 1974 and 1986.
I also found a few episode snippets from the NFSA and a few full episodes on YouTube. The episodes seem to all have commentary from the ABC to give context to the services. I’m unsure if this was live or pre-recorded.
The National Film and Sound archives said the programme ended in 1987, but looking at a few Classic TV listings posts, (Nov 12, 1989 from the Melbourne Age) it seems that maybe the programme was just renamed Worship Sunday. No videos of that show found yet.
Thanks for this. Divine Service was often watched when I was young. My memories of it were of ‘High’ Church services which seemed rather strange given I grew up in a very ‘low’ non-conformist church.
Quite surprised they actually had a bit of diversity on the program.
Worth mentioning that ‘Turn ‘round Australia’ hosted by Gordon Moyes ran for several decades locally on Commercial TV.
I have memories in the early 2000s of some programming on Prime on Sunday mornings. It may well have been on Seven too but I was living in Canberra and regional Victoria at the time so don’t know for sure.
There was an Australian produced show aimed at Christian youth called JAM TV (not to be confused with Eddie McGuire’s production company). I believe JAM stood for “Jesus And Me”.
That program later finished around 2001-02 and was replaced by a program called “One” which simply aired Christian music videos.
I recall Hillsong’s program for a time aired on Ten in metropolitan areas but WIN in regional areas. Southern Cross 10 in regional areas carried alternate programming in the time slot that metro ran it. Probably another religious program or infomercials.
Eventually I think it moved to Ten in both regional and metro areas.
TVNZ used to run church services during much of the 80s and early 90s - particularly 10am or 11am on a Sunday morning (not weekly but sporadically). The Midnight Mass and, later, the YMCA Carols by Candlelight (from Christchurch) were also shown on TVNZ on Christmas Eve.
At the commencement of TV in 1956 (ABCB Annual report, p.47), the rule was:
a) Time should be allocated for the televising of matter of a religious nature to the extent of at least one per cent of the normal weekly hours of service, with a minimum of 30 minutes each week, to be scheduled either as a complete unit occupying the whole time allocated; or as a series of programmes on one or more days of the week, with a minimum of 5 minutes for each programme.
The comments of different programs on different channels weren’t strictly variations in regional markets but also across metros too. Some metros seemed to be more religiously inspired, especially at Channel Nine. Across the metros there was a mix of Turn Round Australia, It Is Written and Kenneth Copeland, with metros in the 1980s starting most of these around 6am.
I do remember when I lived on the NSW/QLD town of Goondiwindi, DDQ aired a mix of Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Baker, It Is Written, The World Tomorrow, Turn Round Australia and regionally produced Meditation Medication (yes those older ladies sing half an hour of religious songs) - a 4 hour marathon - made even more interesting first Sunday in October, when the then James Hardie 1000 motor racing event took place. I think DDQ started broadcasting at 4am in the morning because I remember one Sunday morning seeing Jimmy Baker lecturing pre 6am.
When we later moved to the New England region, NEN had Thought For The Day (5 mins) and The World Tomorrow .
Other regionals in QLD had shows like Worldwide Church Of God and Rex Humbard.
Around the same time CBN had a local religious program called A Time To Live.
I’m sure we had Meditation Medication on BCV-8 at some point.
Rex Humbard was a staple of 1960s and 70s televangelism. Famous for getting viewers to touch their television screens for an anointing or healing… (and/or a heavy dose of static electricity and X-rays from their CRT)
My current church, The Salvation Army Parramatta, was featured on the Divine Service in 1969.
The first part of the episode was hosted by John Cleary (ABC Religion department), and featured interviews with members of the church. It highlighted the different ministries that ran, including Open Air meetings that were a popular Salvation Army tradition back then. It also touched on some Salvation Army history.
The second part of the episode was the church service itself.
This was all pre-recorded. We got a copy from ABC Archives in 2018 when we were in the process of moving out of the building to a new location.
In Melbourne circa 1970-80s, It Is Written was on Seven on Sunday mornings, with the American religious anthology series Insight to close the night’s programming for many years. HSV7 also had a 15-minute program, Sunday Magazine, which was locally made.
These appeared to have been run until 1986 or 87ish. Maybe some discreet changes made with the Fairfax takeover of HSV. Or not.
In the mid 1970’s here in Melbourne there were also ads by the Christian Television Association. There were also some mini-cartoon episodes (also by the Christian Television Association?) twhich were shown during the day (e.g. after school and on weekend afternoons). I remember one with some balls that rolled around and turned into children I wonder if these counted towards the quota.
