Today is one year since Australian actress Cornelia Frances passed away.
This is how Seven’s Morning News covered the news that she had just died, on May 29 last year.
7 Likes
National Nine News Brisbane from 2002.
You know what intrigues me about this set - not only was it nearly as identical as the Sydney set at the time, but I also wonder what the floor plan was like seeing that there were so many interesting angles.
In Brisbane, Wally Lewis would present the sport behind the background with the NNN screen to his right, while in Sydney Ken Sutcliffe would present the sport behind the background with the NNN screen to his left (think about it as he sitting where Jillian Whiting sits in the Brissy set).
Also watch out for Melissa Downes finishing a report just near the 2 minute mark. She must have been voice-overed that report given it’s unlikely she would’ve been in London at the time.
2 Likes
You are the weakest link. Goodbye. Best game show on TV
3 Likes
I did work experience at QTQ a couple of months before this bulletin (Sep 2002) and the set was pretty much identical to TCN’s I was told. The only difference may have been the desk which lasted through a couple more set updates after this one I believe. I remember thinking at the time the set/studio were a lot smaller than what I had imagined them to be from seeing them on TV.
2 Likes
Did you actually get to see the set for yourself?
Today, 20 years ago, Seven broadcast the last edition of Eleven AM, ending a 24-year run.
And, the same day was the debut of the “7” watermark, I remember the online outrage in the newsgroups at the time. How dare a TV channel burn in their logos on our screens. How innocent we were 
YouTube: me
11 Likes
Ahhh yes. The good old “The One to Watch” slogan which Seven introduced that year.
And Natalie Barr has hardly aged (the hair style aside)! Still sounds the same these days. For comparison, this is Barr eighteen years on…
I recall Steve Liebmann hosting in the 1970s. I think I had a thing for the theme music they were using at the time (surprise, surprise). I wish I could recall the Clive Robertson and Graham Kennedy eras more clearly because I went on to love the late night news shows they hosted. I do remember thinking it was odd to see Kennedy hosting a serious news show but nothing about what format the show took under his brief tenure.
Online outrage? In 1999, there weren’t many places to be outraged in then!
Ahhhh, yes. How could I forget the Newsgroups! What a mess they could be at times!
2 Likes
Channel Seven had an excellent On-Air Presentation package back in 1999 (which became even better when the news was updated around a month later - at least in Sydney/Melbourne), just a shame that many of the elements were watered down when the logo change happened!
Mind you, graphics aren’t everything to a network. The one Australian TV viewers had as their favourite at the time was running this (which to be fair, was a decently crafted look in its own right):
7 Likes
I’m sure the Green Guide Letters page was also inundated with complaints. At least it gave them something else to complain about rather than how ABC newsreaders pronounced their words
3 Likes
Also around this time, there was this famous stoush between Seven and Nine over the use of the word “leading” in Perth, where the former had been leading since 1991.
That’s also when brand new graphics and music bites were introduced in Sydney and Melbourne, which both had identical news sets. I wonder when the rest of the country followed suit.
This is the Seven [Nightly] News Brisbane opener from January 1, 2000 -
I also do recall an opener from November 1999 where the graphics used in Syd/Melb hadn’t been rolled out in Brissy yet.
5 Likes
So much easier to bitch and moan about what the networks do these days. I remember using snail mail to express my outrage and disapproval of the Prime watermark when it was introduced in the mid 1990s. I should dig out the reply I received and post it here one day.
4 Likes
A promo based on the show’s opening titles, used to run after Seven National News in Melbourne each night to remind us about Eleven AM tomorrow morning 
YouTube: Australian TV Fan
2 Likes
That’s it!
I remember the cut they used in the Liebmann era being a bit longer.
I think the main male presenter in that clip is Ian Hyslop. Most of us will recognise Paul Marshall as the newsreader. Both went on to be US correspondents for Seven.
3 Likes
The One to Watch slogan was introduced 20 years ago today tomorrow which was a successful 5 year run until it’s axing in July 2003.
Also the 5 colour bar was introduced with Red, Yellow, Orange, Green and Blue similar to 9’s 2012-2015 look.
3 Likes
I don’t remember either how it worked with Graham Kennedy as host but AFAIK it was not a long term gig for him. Maybe a few months? I can’t recall. Be interesting to see if it had shades of what was to come with Graham Kennedy’s News Show a few years later on Nine.
1 Like
I’ll have to find a few of my replies too. I wrote a couple to Southern Cross and one to WIN and the ABC from memory. I’d forgotten about those!
1 Like
I wrote to Prime about their watermark when it first appeared on air in Newcastle in 1992.
All I got each time was a reply along the lines of “thank you for your feedback. It has been placed on file” and that was it.
1 Like
The 11am format was quite good, a shame we don’t have it anymore, much better than the morning news or the morning shows.
1 Like