General TV History

I think from memory, Annie Fulwood was also a sports reporter at one of Ten’s games?

1 Like

Gordon Elliot handing over the GMA reigns to Tim Webster, complete with a pie fight at the end!

1 Like

I know for a fact. That John Howard rang all the TV station boss(Inc Kerry Packer)at the time to advise them to go back to normal programming because there were complaint regarding kids and adults being traumatised with the constant playing of the planes going into the building.

I know Nine used to do it in 2006 and it was the Saturday night games. Chris Bombalas(I think that hes name) used to do Sunday and Friday night Broncos game as was contracted to Channel Nine at the time

1 Like

Heard Gordon was not well liked by the cast and crew.

Ten managed to have a studio and send hosts to Seoul in 1988 but lazy fuckers at seven couldn’t manage that in the most recent games with that woeful virtual studio for Rio.

Ah Bomber!
I remember that name, and yes that’s right.
I’d forgotten all about him.

It’s because they were cost cutting and didn’t have the money to splash out on a set.

I turned a British Airways 747 when I was 13.

:wink: It was over Singapore. Yes, I was allowed in the cockpit. My dad used to always ask for me. (I used to always ask for another meal, but that’s another story…!)

Yes, I was on a Qantas 747 at 4am in the morning over Manilla Philippines from Melbourne to Hong Kong

Here are a selection of ABC tv promos from 1991

1 Like

Ten’s coverage was much better than Seven’s and Nine’s imo - for several reasons. When the city was announced, Ten went to local live footage straight away and stuck with it. They did a split screen of Monte Carlo and Sydney. Seven and Nine just aired the pool footage - a lot of which was in Monte Carlo. They also had more natural sound audio, which added to it. And most importantly, Anne and Tim simply stayed silent after the announcement, which was a really nice touch. It let the event speak for itself - there was massive emotion on the ground in Sydney that lasted for a long time, and Ten let the momentous occasion just breathe. That seemed to me a sign of a few things - firstly, Anne and Tim’s confidence and familiarity in each other to just sit back and soak the moment in; also, their actual delight in the announcement where they were literally jumping for joy themselves, and probably a bit of the director’s instruction as well. On the contrary, Bruce McAvaney and Ray Martin - if you watch their coverage - started talking almost immediately after Samaranch’s announcement, as if they just needed to talk, and their commentary was actually fairly ho-hum… as a result, Nine and Seven’s coverage of the moment itself felt more “removed” and less raw and emotional than Ten’s. For what it’s worth, the American coverage of 9/11 had the same disparity with Peter Jennings’ stunning and widely-acclaimed heartfelt commentary versus NBC’s Katie, Matt and Tom all talking over each other.

Edit: The other thing about it is that you can see Ten’s early and developed habit in LIVE news. Ten were pros with the “live eye” stuff back then - they did heaps of live crosses every night in their news. Seven and Nine almost never did - (they were different beasts back then, with lead anchors in Hendo and Climpson, loved as they were, uncomfortable with live crosses). And it showed. As soon as the announcement happened, they were crossing here, there and everywhere to reporters on the ground - and the reporters (such as Amanda de Pledge) were capable enough to act as hosts as well.

4 Likes

Ended up in State Parliament for a term before retiring. Think he was a Labor party MP and left basically when Bligh took over.

1 Like

then commentator for Nine for a bit then chairman of Brisbane Roar and then Media Advisor for a big coal company

Here is a blast from the past for y’all

2 Likes

Talking of major news stories, I wonder if any footage exists of Australian networks covering the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie tragedy? The news would have broken about 7.30am Sydney time, but with no on-scene footage available until after 9am (first shown on ITN News at Ten and received from Border TV in the nick of time). This incident is particularly poignant for me as I was born and raised relatively close to Lockerbie.

1 Like

On AFL, a lot of times, after a great goal or mark, it seemed to me that Bruce McAvaney(and to a lesser extent Sandy Roberts or Peter Landy) would sometimes just keep talking almost immediately after a goal or mark, as they just needed to talk. Why not shut up for a minute or so?

Yes, and I was in London at the time as a small kid. I have seen the race to get the Border footage on.

Caps of ‘Sunday’.


6 Likes

Probably not really fair to compare 1988 to 2016. In the 80s TV had an awful lot of money being splashed around as millionaire owners all tried to out do each other as there was Skase at Seven, Packer and then Alan Bond at Nine, and Murdoch and then Frank Lowy at Ten. All big spenders with very little around in competition. Much different landscape than 2016.

I don’t think GET was anything to do with signal strength or programming but was purely a sales pitch to attract more capital city ad dollars to a group of regional stations that were still individual operations. (The 3 channel groups were still separately owned, GET was just a joint marketing ploy)

It was a strategy employed by various regional channel groups over the decades.

In the 1970s there was “TVA”, a group of stations e.g. BTV6, GMV6, SES8, CTC7 and others that I can’t recall (possibly AMV4/RVN2?)

TVT6 and TNT9 in Tasmania had an advertising venture called Tasbuy. Possibly made redundant when the two stations became one under Tas TV.

Queensland regional stations were marketed to advertisers as QRTV although each channel still had their own branding on-air.

In more recent years there has been Seven Affiliate Sales (which I think still exists), Nine Affiliate Sales (which IIRC was previously called NBN WIN Sales), Central Television Network (GTS/BKN/SES/RTS/Imparja) and so on.

It was all to try and give capital city advertisers an easy way to reach capital city-sized audiences through a combination of smaller regional markets.

4 Likes