TV History - Questions

A new thread for users to ask general questions about TV History.

Iā€™m sorry for quoting myself.

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Hello, when did GWN and GTS/BKN went 24/7, #myfriends ???

@TelevisionAU

Did TVW7 use the ā€˜Circle 7ā€™ logo from the early 70ā€™s?

I am trying to remember a Tasmanian ABC education show from the early 90ā€™s that played in the morning education block.

I think it was called Postie and was about a female postman that rode around on a push bike, it was live action but there were human looking puppets that she delivered post to and she would visit school children to do math problems with them.

Anyone know the show?

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I know the @ABCRegionalNews structure in VIC, TAS, partly know that structure in QLD, donā€™t know the structure in NSW/ACT, NT, SA, WA?

Pretty much the same.

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???

VIC only had 2: Glippsland and rest.

TAS had only 1. (ABNT+ABKT)

Please correct me if Iā€™m wrong here, because I too am curious:

ABC TV was available in all states/territories, and although originally played out from each state/territory capital, each station had pretty much a common schedule except for their own main news broadcast and local editions of current affairs shows. Each station was beamed across the state on local stations, which had their own call signs but were basically just a rebroadcast of the metro/capital station.

Some of these local stations opted out of state feed to show five-minute local news updates - which were either presented from the local station or from the state capital. Iā€™m unclear if the ā€œswitchingā€ took place at the regional station or at the state HQ - perhaps this varied?

And the question #ourfriend is asking is which local stations had a local news service - am l right? Iā€™m interested to know this too, and when and why such a service stopped.

My understanding (which could be wrong) was that the 6.55 bulletins were read from the capital city (and Townsville and Rockhampton in Queensland which had their own studios) and sent out via microwave links to each regional station for transmissionā€¦ while the capital city stations showed music videos or some other filler for 5 minutes

The bulletins ceased in 1985 when ABC replaced its state based 7.00 news with The National, a one hour combined news and current affairs program at 6.30.

The National had a single edition covering NSW, ACT, VIC and NT with 10 minute state based local windows. Other states had their own edition but content such as current affairs stories and political analysis was largely taken from the NSW based edition.

The whole experiment failed and a year later ABC went back to state based 7.00 news and launched a separate current affairs program The 7.30 Report, also in each state. But the regional bulletins were never to come back

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What regional stations had been broadcast 24/7 pre-Aggregation, #myfriend ???

I would imagine it would be zero, as 24 hour TV didnā€™t exist before the 1990s.

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SEQ8 was from 1988 as it was owned by Skase and took a dirty feed from BTQ overnight.

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I donā€™t think there were any. (EDIT: just saw the post about SEQ8. So there was at least one)

Capital 7 in Canberra had movies overnight on Friday nights before aggregation.

WIN4 wasnā€™t 24/7 but used to stay on air until about 2 or 3am with timeshifted programs and late movies to accommodate the large number of shift workers in the area

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I wonder if any programs ended up being made outside of Sydney/Melbourne as a result of this kind of dealing?

Only Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune come to mind as examples - do you know how those ended up getting produced in Brisbane and Adelaide respectively?

Guessing youā€™re referring to the late 1980s Family Feud (not the 70s version which also has a mixed network history)

But not sure exactly how that went to Brisbane. BTQ7 was now owned in common with HSV7 and ATN7 by that stage (ownership rules had changed by the late 1980s) so when the network commissioned Family Feud I guess it was deemed that BTQ had capacity for it. Sydney or Melbourne might not have had room for it.

Wheel Of Fortune. I donā€™t know how that came about being made in Adelaide. Might have also been a case of having studio capacity available. Or whether ADS7 had commissioned Grundys to make the show (individual channels had a lot more autonomy in those days) and then the other Seven stations just picked it up.

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Yeah, was thinking of the 1980s version, but Iā€™d be interested in more about the 70s version - Iā€™ve only ever seen one short clip of Daryl Sommers hosting it, and nothing about the network history.

Iā€™d assume it would be a fairly major undertaking to produce it back then, given how itā€™s seemingly fairly high tech with those answer display boards, and likely needing a much bigger studio than it does now.

The 1977 version Family Feud was produced by Grundy at TVW7 in Perth. It happened to be sold to ADS7 in Adelaide and BTQ7 in Brisbane but was missing in Sydney and Melbourne. Nine eventually bought the show for those 2 cities and in doing so production moved across to GTV9, but it continued to be shown on the Seven stations in Brisbane and Adelaide (and in Perth where TVW7 technically was still an independent) for the duration. Tony Barber was the original host until he moved to Sale Of The Century in 1980, with Daryl Somers taking over Family Feud. In 1984, Somers was replaced by '60s pop star Sandy Scott. The show ended that same year.

TVW7 also produced another game show, $25,000 Letterbox in the late 1970s and early 80s, hosted by Paul Makin. The show became $50,000 Letterbox when it was picked up by some of the Seven Network stations on the east coast but then when Wheel Of Fortune came along I think those stations dropped Letterbox. In Adelaide, Letterbox was picked up by SAS10 which was a sister station to TVW7 then.

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I have 2 questions on TV history -

Why did television shows like Funniest People, Just Kidding, Youā€™ve Got To Be Joking and Candid Camera get axed?

And is it likely any of the networks will try to revive these shows or do you think they have had their time?

Those sorts of programs peaked around the early to mid-1990s, so Iā€™d imagine they were axed due to a decline in viewers.

I personally canā€™t see those type of programs being revived anytime soon. In 2018, you can type stuff like ā€œFunny Home Videosā€ into YouTube and come up with thousands of results - no need to wait around for a half hour program at 7.30pm on a Tuesday night!