ABC North Tas still does, might be a state by state regional thing.
2GB in Sydney does. Also ABC Local Radio in metros do but Regionals don’t. I have noticed that when I’ve been in Sydney or Melbourne
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ABC North Tas still does, might be a state by state regional thing.
[/quote]ABC Hobart still does also.
ABC Brisbane doesn’t.
There are 2 standard time shortwave stations that the USA run. WWV & WWVH. WWV is from Denver with a Male time call & WWVH is at Hawaii with a Female VO. Both Stations run 10kW & it’s not uncommon to hear one under the other but they are designed to run along side each other.
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Could well be. ABC Newcastle doesn’t
1987 - 88 saw lots of changes in TV news in Australia.
Tomorrow it will be 30 years since the launch of the new one hour Seven National News (short-lived!). This is how it was promoted in Brisbane along with the new TWT (Terry Willesee Tonight) at 7pm. The opener for the news would still rank as one of the weirdest set of images ever for a news bulletin.
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30 years ago this week was also Des McWilliam’s final bulletin on TVO. From the line up you can see it a Friday night that included The 1987 Logie Awards broadcast on Network Ten. Des continued as news editor.
Also note Ray Wilkie, a qualified meteorologist and former head of the Weather Bureau in Brisbane with the TVO weather.
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The voice on the first 7 news promo sounds a lot like the current guy who does the intro for 7 news…
That’s putting it mildly.
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If I was a kid living in South East Queensland back in 1987 and saw that rather bizarre “Seven National News” Opener on TV, I think I’d have nightmares from it…
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Do we know if that 1987 Seven National News opener was inspired by a similar international version?
I’ve always been partial to the ABC6 Philadelphia opener. Not at all newsy but it evokes parochialism and a sense of community. I can’t imagine what that Seven opener is meant to evoke given it contains so few local images. It’s very arty-farty and I haven’t a clue why a News Director would think it is appropriate. I wonder what the viewer reaction was to it and how long it lasted.
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Not sure about opener but the one hour format was replaced with the 30 minute Seven Nightly News 9 months later.
And it is almost 30 years to the day (it was actually 13 April) since HSV7 re-launched Seven National News with Greg Pearce after the high-profile sacking of Mal Walden a month earlier. And also the Melbourne launch of Terry Willesee Tonight which had just bumped off the Melbourne-based Day By Day.
Seven of course put huge money into print media and outdoor advertising:
For some reason Seven promoted the bulletin as “Seven News” but the news intro was still Seven National News but the familiar theme that HSV had since the early 70s was now replaced with what I imagine was the ATN7 intro.
Likewise, GTV9 also responded on the same day with its own advertising. Nine now had a point of difference that its news was 30 minutes as opposed to Seven and Ten now both having one hour bulletins.
Some faces here include Brian Naylor, Peter Hitchener, Tracy Grimshaw, Rob Astbury, Rob Gaylard, Brian Smith, Ann Peacock and Lou Richards.
The change at Seven also saw all Victorian regional channels switch their national news relay to GTV9 from the same day, as it meant they didn’t have to change their schedules to accommodate a national news bulletin it just meant that instead of relaying Seven National News live at 6.30 they would air National Nine News on a half-hour delay at 6.30.
I remember Ten used to have Ray Wilkie do the weather on the late national news for a while.
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Very interesting stuff! By the way, do you know who were the fill-in presenters during this period?
no I don’t I’m afraid. I mean Peter Hitchener as weekend newsreader would have been Brian Naylor’s fill-in if required during the week. I don’t know if Jo Hall was Peter Hitchener’s stand-in that far back but she probably was, or possibly Tracy Grimshaw.
I don’t recall who was the weekend newsreader at HSV7 during that time. Mark Gillies had been the interim newsreader at HSV in between Mal Walden’s exit and Greg Pearce’s debut so maybe he was the weekend newsreader but I don’t remember at all in that regard.
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That ad was a partial page ad placed in The Sun.
And with HSV suddenly no longer connected to The Sun and The Herald newspapers but aligned to The Age, the launch day ad in The Age was of course a lot more prominent - especially given The Age’s broadsheet size:
Thanks to Google Archive
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It makes you wonder if the complete revamp of the Seven News brand that followed in 1988 was already in the works at that stage. Perhaps they had already decided to drop “National” from all bulletins as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Nine product.
It always bugged me that they tried to Americanise their news the way they did in January 1988. Seven had been using “National” for a lot longer than Nine, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, and they just conceded part of their heritage by adopting the “Nightly” moniker.
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Of course I can’t relate to other cities (although it seems Seven in Sydney and Brisbane also struggled in the news dept in 1987) but certainly in Melbourne I think there was such a strong need for Seven to divorce itself entirely from its disastrous year of 1987 that a complete revamp in 1988 was the only logical step and that included adopting the new “Nightly” name.
And at the time I didn’t even know that NBC had the same “Nightly News” title and I only recognised the new news theme from the NBC Today show. I hadn’t sort of twigged that the theme was across NBC news in general.
And incidentally, in Adelaide where SAS10 became SAS7 just after Christmas 1987, they didn’t adopt the Seven National News brand for the sake of 1 month for when the rest of the network was changing over. They changed to Seven Nightly News straight after switching from Ten.
But SAS was a bit different to the other Sevens in that they kept the one-hour news format that they’d had as Channel 10. And ADS went from a half hour news as ADS7, to a one hour news as ADS10.
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I know that Greg Pearce used to do Nine News Perth until the end of 2012. He must have retired by then.
After Des McWilliam moved out of the anchor chair and in competition with Seven’s new one hour nightly news TVO’s new anchor was newsreader Mike Higgins, well-known to Brisbane audiences. Video shows promos for his first night and the opener for that bulletin 30 years ago from 6 April. Modified graphics for the opener include the reporting team that contrast to Seven’s strange offering. Also includes another accurate nightly line-up.
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