Newcastle got the VFL live on SBS too (from 15 Aug 87 ‘Newcastle Herald’ Guide below)
Looks like Channel 10 in Adelaide carried the VFL in 1987 (‘Adelaide Advertiser’ TV Guide 12 Sep 87). Not sure about Perth.
Edit: Found a WA one for 1987.. yes, TVW-7 had VFL highlights.
TVW7 Perth carried the VFL that year
1987 was the year that Channel 7 Melbourne was taken over by Channel 7 Sydney. Apart from everything else (e.g. replacing a lot of Melbourne oriented content with more Sydney oriented content), they didn’t take up the rights for VFL football like in previous year. As a result, different channels in different cities showed VFL matches. In Victoria it was the ABC. In some places it was channel 10, etc.
Good detective work there, good to know. Can understand TVW7 taking VFL that year as they were not part of the 7 network as such being ATN only had control over BTQ and HSV at that time. Plus, NEW10 wasn’t on the air yet.
I know it’s not sport, but no Rage on ABS-2 in the listing. I thought only Victorians didn’t get Rage in its first few months (they ended up taking it regularly in October 1987)
There was a brief period when rage was off the air owing to record labels seeking pay for play from all broadcasters. rage did come back on the air before this dispute was resolved, but only playing independent artists not signed to a label. The record labels finally gave in when it was realised the independent artists rage was airing were starting to chart on the mainstream chart. The ABC did end up having to pay, but only a token $150K per year for blanket rights which was not afforded to commercial broadcasters. The ABC Victoria issue for rage was separate as Ripponlea transmission staff black banned it being the ABC did not require them to staff it overnight, whereas all the other states did not care and let the incoming feed from Sydney go through and stay on air when they went home at the end of their shift. In the end Ripponlea let rage air overnight unattended.
Good history there. Do you remember around 1991-1992 when rage refused to show Australian bands during the Top 50 countdown? What was that for?
It was annoying waiting to watch/listen to Screaming Jets or Ratcat, only for rage to show their promo ID and and the song title - essentially skipping the video
On a more funny note, does anyone else remember when MARVELOUS hit Number 1 and Video Hits had to show some cricket highlights with part of the song over it to acknowledge the fact (otherwise they would just normally skip songs and not tell the audience why)
The first bit you were referring to was a dispute around April-May 1991 when rage had a tiff with Polygram (now part of Universal Music) over payments and rage were unable to play any videos by Polygram artists (e.g. U2, Bon Jovi etc) during that period. There was an even bigger dispute during the final quarter of 1995 when rage and five of the six major labels at the time (BMG, EMI, Polygram, Sony and Warners) failed to reach a rights agreement and rage could only play videos from Festival-Mushroom and independent artists/labels - The Top 50 and the guest programmer slots were dropped during this period due to unavailable content. Around mid-November EMI and Warners gave permission for rage to play their videos again and everyone was back on board by Christmas.
Fairfax was often blamed for Seven not having VFL rights in 1987, but it was actually the VFL that pulled the coverage from Seven and sold the rights to Broadcom, which happened in December 1986. While this may have been a convenient outcome for Fairfax, it was before Fairfax took over HSV7 in February 1987.
EDIT: It appears I spoke too soon. While the VFL pulled the pin on VFL from Seven in 1986, apparently Broadcom did make an offer to HSV7 for the 1987 season. While HSV7 was hostile to the idea of negotiating with Broadcom, it was reported that HWT (as owner of HSV7) had come to a tentative deal for $1.4 million. But with the uncertainty that an imminent change of ownership for HSV7 could upset the deal, the VFL then instructed Broadcom to negotiate with ABC for Victorian rights.
ABC and VFL came to a $1.5m deal, just edging ahead of HSV7’s bid. On the day that Fairfax took control of HSV7, the ABC deal was announced and HSV7, under its new owner, withdrew.
Source: The Age https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=NJAyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=auMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4016%2C4188516
Thanks for that post, really clears things up from that time period.
Richmonds 1988 anti-drink driving commercial. They were sponsored by .05 at the time
With the news that Seven is doing a weekly rugby league program again from next year (The Agenda Setters), it had me looking up one of their last attempts at such a program (“Footy Grandstand”)… Airing 11am Sunday in Syd/Bris in 1998-99, a little synopsis is below (from the Sydney Morning Herald ‘The Guide’), so wasn’t just solely league, but covered union as well.. (nb. ‘Sportsworld Footy Panel’ aired in AFL states at the same time).
So McAvaney anchored the year before? That seems so odd for a rugby league/ union show.
I thought that too, but to be fair, he did host most of Seven’s rugby union coverage during the time that Seven lost the AFL rights (2002-06).
I imagine, similar to that, he would have just done the intro, anchored it with a few basic questions/statements and left most of the talking to the league/union experts.
A little titbit from that excerpt too, didn’t realise Pat Welsh had covered three Olympics for Seven already prior to Sydney 2000.
Must go back to Moscow 1980 with fellow colleague Sandy Roberts (the two were also friends and often spoke highly of each other and of course worked on their famous golf coverage from the late 80s to late 2000s together as well).
Beijing 2008 would’ve been their last together, but were reunited around 2012 when Seven got the golf back from Ten/ONE HD, for a short time.
Reckon the 3 Olympics were Barcelona, Atlanta and Nagano (winter 98)
After watching cheap and nasty Kangaroo Ashes coverage served up by both Nine and Fox last night, i had to go back and find some gold standard international sports broadcasting.
Fantastic upload of coverage of a Kangaroo’s tour game from 1994 including ads and everything from NBN then switched to Nine
Good find! Though to be fair, there was a lot more money in free to air TV back then, so they could afford to send commentators etc over.
Came across this when I was looking for something else. As has been discussed previously, the now unbelievable timeslot for not just NRL but even RL World Cup on FTA in Melbourne just 17 years ago, 12am (and a strange take from a newspaper writer too):
What Ch 9 had on instead (note the daytime epic as well):
And Ch 7 and Ch 10 for good measure:
November 2008. And a sad reminder of how times have changed 
Why is it a ‘sad reminder’? Now with multichannels/streaming, viewers have the choice to watch something else if they don’t want sport, want to watch it live etc?
