Retro: Melbourne and Gippsland region, Victoria, Australia Fri, June 10, 1966

[Bluenoser]

from TV Week

ABV2 Melbourne/ABLV4 Gippsland
10:05 Play School
10:30 sign-off
12:55 Watch This Space
1:25 sign-off
5:00 Friday Fare
5:30 Look
6:00 Meet the Wife
6:30 Donna Reed
6:55 (2)To Market, to Market
6:55 (4)Regional News
7:00 News/Newsreel/Weather
7:30 Focus on Football
8:00 Dr. Kildare
8:43 News in Brief
8:45 Z Cars
9:35 The Second Sex
10:05 News/Weather
10:15 Late Night Movie "Bomb in the High Street"
11:15 ANFC Championships (Aussie Rules Football)
11:40 sign-off

HSV7 Melbourne
12:23 First Edition News
12:30 Lunch Time Movie "The Spaniard's Curse"
1:55 Talking Programs
2:00 Morning Star
2:30 People in Conflict
3:00 Time for Terry
4:00 Texas Rangers
4:30 Early Show "Gentle Annie"
5:55 SSB Club
6:00 Dad, You're a Square
6:30 News/Sport/Weather
7:00 Kevin Dennis Football
7:30 Sunnyside Up (this show would air its last show the following week)
8:30 Academy Theatre "The Three Musketeers"
10:50 Lawbreaker
11:20 Love Story
12:17 Tomorrow's Programs
12:20 sign-off

GTV9 Melbourne
12:23 Prologue
12:25 Toddy Today/News (The Toddy is show host Hal Todd)
12:30 Theatre Matinee "Time to Kill"
1:45 Fun with Food
2:00 It Could Be You
2:30 Take the Hint
3:00 Adventures in Paradise
4:00 Superman
4:30 Jane Withers Theatre "Ginger"
6:00 National Velvet
6:30 Television City News
7:00 McHale's Navy
7:30 Sound of Music
8:30 Channel 9 Theatre "In Old Chicago"
10:30 The Untouchables
11:30 Television City News
11:35 World Championship Wrestling
12:35 Epilogue
12:40 sign-off

ATV0 Melbourne
3:30 Romper Room
4:25 Storytime
4:30 Fury
5:00 Magic Circle Club Theatre
5:30 Astro Boy
6:00 Kommotion
6:30 Three Stooges
6:45 News
7:00 My Mother, The Car
7:30 Daniel Boone
8:28 News Headlines
8:30 '66 & All That
9:30 Adult Movietime "The Girl Rosemary"
10:58 News Headlines
11:00 Garry Moore
Mid. sign-off

GLV10 Gippsland
5:00 Teletown
5:30 Broken Arrow
6:00 Leave It to Beaver
6:25 Gippsland News
6:30 Television City News
7:00 Sport & the Outdoor Life
7:30 Hogan's Heroes
8:00 Dick Van Dyke
8:30 Theatre Ten "Bank Raiders"
10:00 Danger Man
11:00 Epilogue
11:05 sign-off

 

[dxtrfn]

> from TV Week
>
> ABV2 Melbourne/ABLV4 Gippsland
> 10:05 Play School
> 10:30 sign-off
> 12:55 Watch This Space
> 1:25 sign-off
Reminds me of BBC2's early days. Broadcasting 1 program then closing down until the evening.

 

[hintomedia]

Re: Retro: Melbourne and Gippsland region, Fri, June 10, 1966

> ATV0 Melbourne
> GLV10 Gippsland

GLV switched to channel 8 in 1980; ATV then moved to channel 10, and remains there to this day. Apparently, GLV moved to UHF 37 in 2000 to make way for GTV9's DT signal on channel 8.

> GTV9 Melbourne
> 6:30 Television City News
> 11:30 Television City News

Never knew that's what GTV9 called its newscasts early on. When did they change to "National Nine News" and start using the Cool Hand Luke theme? For that matter, when did ATV-0/10 start going by "Eyewitness News"?<P ID="signature">______________
Derek
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.tvvancouver.cjb.net>TV.Vancouver</a>: Covering TV stations in Vancouver, BC</P>

 

[TVWorldwide]

National Nine News (Re: Retro: Melbourne and Gippsland region, Fri, June 10, 1966)

>
> Never knew that's what GTV9 called its newscasts early on.
> When did they change to "National Nine News" and start using
> the Cool Hand Luke theme? For that matter, when did ATV-0/10
> start going by "Eyewitness News"?
>

Well, for a time in the 1970s, Sydney and Melbourne had a joint networked newscast called "News Centre Nine" (three words). It was created by American-born producer Gerald Stone, who is best known for creating the Australian version of 60 Minutes. His News Centre Nine experiment was a failure, however, and was replaced by National Nine News (produced locally in each city, despite its name). I don't know if the name National Nine News was also used before News Centre Nine or just afterwards. I'm not Australian, so I should probably shut up and let Bluenoser respond.

But before I go... Cool Hand Luke wasn't used during the News Centre Nine era, and I've also seen National Nine News clips with another theme. CHL was definitely used by 1981 because the site TV Australia has a clip of a newsflash from that year with CHL. You can see on this page -- note the ABC News-based graphics, which are particularly apparent in the 1980s clips (not so much the Newsflash). However, if you want to see some really American-inspired news packaging from that decade, head to TV Australia's Ten pages. (I know that you're probably familiar with this already, Hinto).

 

[TVWorldwide]

Eyewitness News (Re: Retro: Melbourne and Gippsland region, Fri, June 10, 1966)

Whoops... I don't think Bluenoser is Australian. I got confused because I saw his post over at MediaSpy, but then I realized his name was familiar to me from here. Sorry!

Anyway, about "Eyewitness News" in Australia: The name first appeared on Melbourne's ATV0 in 1972, but the newscast was still only 30 minutes long and had a solo anchor. I expanded to an hour the following year, and a true Eyewitness News format with dual anchors and more soft news emerged by the end of the decade (at least in Melbourne and Sydney -- I'm not sure about the timeline in other markets). Frank Magid Associates served as a consultant. According to Mal Walden's book From the Word Go: Forty Years of Ten Melbourne, the format was struggling until John O'Loan took over as ATV0's news director in 1980 and launched a popular new anchor team. (BTW, John O'Loan was later the first head of Sky News in the UK.)

Here's how the book Australian TV: The First 25 Years (edited by Peter Beilby), describes the Eyewitness News format of the '70s and '80s:

"[The format] brought in American-style grooming of journalists, and produced on-air promotions that boasted the station's space-age technology and stressed the credibility of is news team. Within the format time was allowed for the type of features newspapers had always carried on inside pages: searches for the cleanest beaches, advice on slimming aids or avoiding snake-bite. The anchor team was shown to be affable but, more importantly, to understand what they were reading."

The upcoming book Welcome to Television: A Cultural History of Australian Television 1956-1992 will hopefully have more details.

 

[Bluenoser]

Re: National Nine News (Re: Retro: Melbourne and Gippsland region, Fri, June 10, 1966)

> >
> > Never knew that's what GTV9 called its newscasts early on.
>
> > When did they change to "National Nine News" and start
> using
> > the Cool Hand Luke theme? For that matter, when did
> ATV-0/10
> > start going by "Eyewitness News"?
> >
>
> Well, for a time in the 1970s, Sydney and Melbourne had a
> joint networked newscast called "News Centre Nine" (three
> words). It was created by American-born producer Gerald
> Stone, who is best known for creating the Australian version
> of 60 Minutes. His News Centre Nine experiment was a
> failure, however, and was replaced by National Nine News
> (produced locally in each city, despite its name). I don't
> know if the name National Nine News was also used before
> News Centre Nine or just afterwards. I'm not Australian, so
> I should probably shut up and let Bluenoser respond.
>

Nope, I'm not an Aussie, am Canadian! I think the News Centre Nine name came first, and they weren't the only stations to use that name Down Under...BTV6 Ballarat in western Victoria also used the News Centre name with the then-Seven news music in the 80s as well, their title was News Centre Six with the late newscast known as Second Edition News. Previously to that, they used the name Six News.