Speaking of Donahue, this is TV Week’s report of the show’s debut on WIN4.
WIN4 was the first station outside of the US and Canada to take the show.
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For a few years after the local bulletin was re-introduced, they still took the weekend NSW bulletins, until they introduced a local weekend bulletin, along with the NT.
Does anyone know which weekend bulletin the NT took prior to it getting a local weekend bulletin?
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Sydney I believe on delay. The NT did sometimes break in to the bulletin near the end to do a local news summary.
Whereas in the 70s they took the Brisbane bulletin live as all programming was not delayed from Brisbane.
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The Club Superstation building/studios is now the Sky Channel (Sky Racing) building in Frenchs Forest Sydney. When they merged along with Sportsplay, Sky Channel moved out of STW9 and moved operations to the east coast.
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I vaguely remember on occasions the weather report for the NSW bulletin would also feature the NT centres
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That they did, as did the NSW bulletin also carry a full page Canberra weather forecast when the ACT had no local news bulletin.
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Hello! I’m new here, and hoping someone can help me - I’m looking for any sources I can get my hands on that relate to Tales of the South Seas a show starring William Snow and Rachel Blakely which first aired in Australia in 2000. It was a network Ten production.
I’m looking for episode listings in guides (especially if they have the episode title or synopsis included), TV Week entries for programming times and any interviews/photographs, and any advertisements, ad bumpers, and promos related to the series. I’ve been combing through ad compilations on youtube but had no success.
So far I have some guide information from the Riverine Herald and Hills and Valley Messenger newspapers from Trove, but they don’t have synopses and there’s a discrepancy between their dates and the dates on IMDB.
Any help appreciated!
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I don’t have any info, but welcome to Media Spy.
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I don’t have any concrete sources to confirm or deny, but Wikipedia says the show first aired in 1998 on Network Ten. That might help in your search for footage. I wish you luck in your search!
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Sadly my research so far suggests this isn’t the case in Australia, though it may have aired in 1998 overseas! Something else for me to look into! Thanks so much! 
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Although it was made in 1997-8, it appears that Ten kept it on the shelf until 1 January 2000, screening on Saturday nights. Hardly prime viewing time.
Ten clearly didn’t think it was a worthwhile endeavour, also as it would appear not a lot of effort went into promoting it, with TV Week listing it as a “US adventure series”
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Thanks so much! This is exactly the kind of stuff I’m looking for!!! Could you tell me which issue of TV Week that is, and if there’s any other promo material in there by any chance?
And yeah that’s one of my big research questions - why they gave up on it so fast, and why it ended up on the shelf for so long. In the beginning it seemed to be a poster child for the kind of big project coproductions could bring to Aus, and then they dropped it so much later and so quietly!
The way the series ends is really interesting - very clearly indicative of a set up for a second season in my opinion, yet the miniseries label started getting reported as early as 1997, when they very well may still have been filming!
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It was the 1 January 2000 issue. No other mention in the magazine other than that program listing.
From my cursory glance through TV Week from that period, it appears that Tales Of The South Seas screened in 2-hour blocks on each of 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 January 2000. (No episode titles given)
Then there was a 1-hour episode on 5 February 2000. Then it would seem it vanished altogether. Possibly with the ratings season about to begin Ten decided it wasn’t worthy.
Potentially the remaining episodes aired later in the year during the next summer/non-ratings period? But I have no details of that.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to look! I only ask because I have a couple of images I snagged from a long dead fan site on the wayback machine that say they’re from “old magazines” but don’t give any more info!
I know the remaining episodes picked up again in late September 2000 according to some tv listings from the Riverine Herald which I’ve got, but I’ve got a couple more listings than there are episodes, so I think they ran one or more reruns in there somewhere which is confusing the heck out of making my airdates precise but over all that’s probably just being pedantic.
Thanks again for your help!
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I wonder with the Sydney Olympics dominating the nation’s attention during September 2000, whether Ten thought to just throw some episodes on the air knowing that nobody would notice/care? It clearly wasn’t a series of significant interest to Ten but if it counted as local content it might have scored them some points towards meeting Australian drama requirements.
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I didn’t know the Olympics were on then! Gosh that’s sad to think - and very possibly the case! The plot just keeps thickening - why did they want this show to fail so bad??
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Maybe they didn’t think it was any good?
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Sorry for the misdirection! The lead paragraph of that Wikipedia article categorizes it as Australian but a reference later on describes how a French production company pitched it to US networks.
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Very possible - what few reviews I’ve found from the time it first aired are all very negative, and certainly the first episode is for my money, a bit of a convoluted mess, but over all I think it’s pretty entertaining - and it fit the popular, adventure vibe of the time very well I thought, between Xena and Relic Hunter and, of course, The Lost World - I thought it fit right in!
They also spent A LOT of money on it, I would have thought they’d at least try to make the investment pay off!
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