by Nick Place
In the three eastern seaboard capitals and Adelaide, Tommy Hanlon, Brian Henderson and Digby Wolfe will all be on different networks, and Bobby Limb will be on a new number when he returns from holiday in October. Hanlon’s It Could Be You moves from ATN-7 to TCN-9, the Mobil-Limb Show moves to GTV-9 and the Bert Newton Show will now be on TCN-9, not ATN-7.
The move to networks was important for the industry, according to sources within Australian television, as soaring production costs and purchasing budgets mean stations need to work together.
TV Week reports that the move to national networks started in 1959 when Sir Frank Packer, then in a partnership with the Herald & Weekly Times so that Packer’s TCN-9 and the Herald’s HSV-7 worked together, suddenly swooped on GTV-9.
According to TV Week, Packer offered Sir Arthur Warner, of Electronic Industries, nearly £3.7 million for his controlling interest in GTV-9. Other high bids followed but the deal had been done. Suddenly TCN-9 and GTV-9 were stablemates.
The HWT already had an interest in the Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide Sevens, but now found itself working with Packer in Sydney while competitors in Melbourne. The Fairfax company and Mr Rupert Henderson were also in the mix, owning ATN-7 while trying to become major shareholders in QTQ-9 in Brisbane.
In the end, it means that the Sevens and Nines are aligned. But industry watchers think the networks can only last for two years before internal politics begin to wear them down.
Meet Australia’s first cartoon star – Freddo the frog
June: He lives in a place called Croaker’s Creek and his best friends are Kanga and Wocka, a kangaroo and wombat respectively. He wears a natty bow tie and for the first four episodes he had teeth, but since that was fixed, he’s now all frog.
We’re talking about Freddo the frog – that’s right, the chocolate treat – who’s been brought to life to star in Australia’s first regular animated series, which debuted on 12 June. A team of expert animators from America was brought over to train the local Freddo animators in the finer points of the trade.
Sources inside Nine say the animation division had been in jeopardy because animated advertisements hadn’t really been working, and the Freddo project was needed to push the network’s animation to a new level.
Just cough to change channels
A Melbourne man is perplexed by his television set appearing to be tuned into his cough. Mr Fred Busuttil, a 23-year-old boilermaker from Williamstown, has found that his TV set changes channels every time he suffers a coughing fit, and sometimes when he sneezes.
A reporter for The Sun News-Pictorial witnessed the strange phenomenon, and described the scene as ‘very disconcerting’.
‘There was Fred watching The Untouchables intently – when he erupted into a coughing fit,’ Sue Collins reported. ‘Suddenly he was on Hawaiian Eye.’ Collins was then able to change the TV herself to Gracie Fields in Sally In Our Alley by coughing loudly.
‘I don’t think I’ll get it fixed,’ Mr Busuttil admitted. ‘I want to show it off to my friends.’
Laws back on air after beating illness
July: Tall radio man and singer John Laws is finally back on screen after being stricken by polio while working on the Johnny O’Keefe Show at ATN-7 last March.
And he’s had some additional good news with the announcement that he’ll be heading a new national variety program called Startime, which will replace Revue ’62, due to fold when host Digby Wolfe leaves later this year.
Laws’s right arm and right leg remain afflicted by the polio, but he refuses to feel sorry for himself. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s the bunch of fellows I left behind in the hospital that need the sympathy,’ he told TV Times.
ON DEBUT
> Kevin Dennis Auditions – talent show
> Trad Jazz – local jazz performances compered by Graeme Bell
> The Patriots – ABC historical series
> Jonah – historical series
> Magic of Music – light music and dance
> TV Ballroom – dancing
> Box of Tricks – interviews hosted by John D’Arcy
> Country Call – agricultural magazine
> Revue ’62 – variety
> The Bryan Davies Show – teenage show replacing Six O’Clock Rock on the ABC
> Daly at Night – late night talk/variety
> Say When – quiz show introducing Jimmy Hannan as compere
> Science for Sixth Forms – educational
> Personally Yours – local variety series hosted by Horrie Dargie
> Export Action – Department of Trade series
> Sing As We Go – music compered by Leonard Teale
> First Appearances – variety show
> Lionel Long Show – teenage variety
> The Ten Again – ABC children’s series
> Video Village – game show
> Take the Hint – game show
> Letter Box – game show
> Make a Wish – afternoon show And from overseas comes:
> The Shirley Temple Show – variety show
> 87th Precinct – crime drama
> Ben Casey – US hospital drama starring Vince Edwards
> The Cliff Richard Show – music and variety
> Biggles – adventure series
Tommy Hanlon welcomes his mother onto the set of It Could Be You.
Tommy wins battle for women viewers
August: Tommy Hanlon’s It Could Be You has won a mid-afternoon battle for women viewers following Channel Seven’s decision to axe rival show Lady For a Day.
Seven launched Lady For a Day in 1960 and it has been a major success. But it has now ended, two years to the day since its launch, with US host Larry Nixon having interviewed more than 2000 women and given away more than £350,000 worth of prizes.
The show has simply been blown out of the water by ICBY, which first aired on Channel 9 in March last year and screens five days a week. It has become the first Australian daytime program with a truly national following.
The shows revolve around interviews with women about their lives. Each show concludes with one being chosen as the most deserving and showered with often expensive gifts from sponsors.
But ICBY has added important extra ‘lighter’ elements to the Lady For a Day formula, including games and comedy segments. Still, most episodes provide plenty of tears. Host Hanlon has been a revelation, and has become the darling of mums around the country. He was joint winner of the Gold Logie this year.
Chips Rafferty and Bert Newton will go to any lengths to support an advertiser – even to the extent of taking a fridge into the outback. Rafferty joined the Mobil Limb Show this year as a regular guest.
Giddyup Whiplash
Australia’s very own western, Whiplash, is now screening in the United States – but to mixed reviews. The ATN-7 show, made in 1960 and shown in Australia last year, has been sold to 94 stations in the US, as well as to Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines.
The New York Herald-Tribune critic favourably compared it with Gunsmoke and Cheyenne, while the New York Times reviewer, Jack Gould, found it to be distinctive. ‘The show has its novel attractions: Anzac hats, a difference in accents, simplified covered wagons, background scenes not seen before, and a tempting shot of a kangaroo,’ he wrote.
However, the New York Post was less kind, calling Whiplash ‘Australia’s revenge for US westerns exported in past years to Australia’.
Balloons the future of distance TV, says expert
July: Melbourne scientist Professor V Hopper remains convinced that balloons are the cheapest and most efficient way to beam TV signals between Australian capital cities.
As the rest of the world marvelled at images sent across the Atlantic via America’s Telstar satellite, Professor Hopper is continuing to investigate the possibility of using a specially modified balloon to replay microwave television and telephone transmissions.
However, the Federal Supply Depart
ment secretary, Mr J. L. Knott, believes it won’t be balloons but a system of satellites that will eventually enable international TV to occur. And he thinks it could happen within five years. Speaking at a Royal Commonwealth Society luncheon, Mr Knott said he was speaking as ‘an old hand’ who had had his voice bounced off the moon to America by radio 18 months ago.
Mr Knott said Australian scientists were in the thick of the space program, which would eventually provide global television signals.
‘Just imagine a radar dish the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, mounted on a structure the size of the ICI building, and all on wheels for mobility. That will come,’ he said.
TV blamed for crime
Queensland’s State Police Commissioner, Mr Frank Bischof, has slammed Australian television, claiming on-screen crime and violence are to blame for an increase in juvenile offences.
‘There is far too much emphasis on crime, violence and sex in TV detective series and films and far too many of them are shows that influence weak-willed and imaginative teenagers who think they can commit the same crimes and get away with them,’ he thundered to TV Times magazine.
Mr Bischof claims that a recent attempted bank robbery in Queensland was based on a film. Worse, teenagers gathering in milk bars and hamburger shops were giving themselves television nom-de-plumes.
‘Many TV detective series are trash, unrealistic and contain too much gun play.’ He would like to see more documentaries for children to watch.
As yet, networks have failed to offer the Commissioner his own show.
Seven’s Happy Show is still the big winner with Melbourne kids, and that’s got a lot to do with the magical trickery of Parer the Magician, who has been with the station since its launch.
MEMORIES
> Australian Broadcasting Control Board’s announcement that a third Victorian commercial TV station will operate on Channel 0 is met with a storm of protests, mainly over the £15–£20 it will cost set-owners to convert their receivers to pick up the new station.
> Australia’s newest TV station, TNT-9 in Launceston, is officially in business as Tassie’s third station.
> Bernard the Magician resigns from GTV-9. He made more than 1000 appearances in various programs.
> Buster Fiddess is dumped by Channel 7 but picked up soon afterwards by Channel 9.
> Claims surface that TV has driven actors into a vast wasteland as it fails to offer sufficient acting roles.
> Digby Wolfe announces that Revue ’62 will be his last as compere of the series.
> Heinz takes a new approach to ads by entering supermarkets and filming interviews about their products.
> GTV-9 stages its most extravagant spectacular ever when Graham Kennedy, Bobby Limb, Dawn Lake, Bert Newton and Tommy Hanlon combine to launch Melbourne’s new Southern Cross Hotel.
> First full-length ballet written especially for TV in Australia, The Forbidden Rite, premieres on the ABC.
> Actor/TV critic Frank Thring joins the cast of Daly At Night, despite having been one of the program’s most vocal critics.
> ABV-2 uses the interstate co axial cable and microwave link to give Melbourne viewers a direct telecast of the final two hours play of each day of the Third Test in Sydney.
> All networks combine to cover the Commonwealth Games in Perth in November.
> Gold Logie: Tommy Hanlon/Lorrae Desmond
> Best Comedian: Bobby Limb
1963
Australians marvelled at TV’s ability to bring images of such global events as the Kennedy (John, not Graham) shooting within hours of the event, but there is concern over the lack of new local talent or live shows. An imported star, Noel Ferrier, enjoys immediate success while American John Daly has an up-and-down year.
Daly’s rollercoaster year ends on a high
September: Popular American entertainer Jonathan Daly is finishing a topsy-turvy year on a high after his new program, The Delo and Daly Show, made it to air and attracted much praise.
It’s the first thing that’s gone right for Daly for some time. Over the past 18 months he’s had to endure savage criticism of his solo show, a running battle with the country’s biggest TV magazine, the eventual axing of his show and then a hasty departure back to the US. He’s even been blamed for a female viewer receiving crank phone calls.
The problems started in March last year, soon after the launch of Daly At Night. TV Week panned the show, saying critics had described it as ‘amateurish, a complete mess, a poor reflection on 7, shocking, terrible’. Daly responded by taking a swipe at the magazine on air, and a fierce feud ensued.
In the midst of it all, a Mrs F. Anderson of East Brighton was deluged with phone calls after Daly made up a phone number on air and said it belonged to blonde comedienne Vicki Hammond. Unfortunately the number he came up with was a real phone number that belonged to Mrs Anderson. More complaints of irresponsible behaviour followed.
Critics described the show as ‘the most controversial and widely talked about late night program ever launched in Melbourne’ and gave it weeks to survive – at best. But somehow it kept going, and got better.
In February this year it was announced that the show would be taken to Adelaide and Brisbane. Daly also hosted a new daily afternoon program for Seven called The Price Is Right. But Seven unexpectedly axed his show at the end of March. In a fit of pique, Daly pulled out of his expected new role on The Price Is Right and returned to the US, only being coaxed back by Seven’s offering of a new show with old partner Ken Delo. There was one final hold-up when sponsors could not be found for the show, but once on air the lavish national variety show has attracted a steady following.
Meanwhile, it has been announced that Horrie Dargie will instead host 54 The Price Is Right.
The sky’s the limit for Test cricket
January: Television history was made on 25 January when the Fourth Test in Adelaide was relayed successfully to Melbourne.
It was the first time an Adelaide–Melbourne telecast had been achieved, using a circling ‘Telstar’ aeroplane. The ‘Telstar’ – a DC3 from TAA – circled the South Australian border while microwaves were bounced off the satellite to send the pictures to Melbourne.
Basically, the plane was acting as an airborne TV aerial between the two capital cities. The signal from Adelaide, 170 miles away, was received via an aerial on the plane’s tail fin, while the outgoing signal was sent from another aerial on the plane’s undercarriage. From there, it was relayed via towers near Ararat and Ballarat, en route to Melbourne.
The ‘Telstar’ plane flew in a two-and-a-half mile circle about 12,000 feet above the town of Serviceton near the border. While the picture was hailed as sparklingly clear, interference occasionally made it difficult to follow the path of the ball.
New station announced
April: Ansett Transport industries and Austarama Television boss Reg Ansett have won the licence to operate Melbourne’s new Channel 0 TV station.
The station will go to air in August next year, and is aiming to win a reputation as a family station that will present a new Australian image on TV. The announcement of the new station was warmly received in the media, with suggestions that it will spread high-rating overseas content and therefore lead to more local programming.
Advertisements have also begun appearing in the media, encouraging people to convert their sets to be ready to receive Channel 0 before the station officially opens.
Zig and Zag clown their way to records
Popular children’s clowns, Zig and Zag, have set several records this year with their show, Peters Fun Fair, becoming the longest-running show on Australian television. The ice-cream-fuelled show is also the longest-running live show on Australian screens and the longest-running show with the same sponsor. It’s hard to see the clowns giving up their records in the near future. They’re as popular as ever with the kiddies.
ON DEBUT
> Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music – music and variety
> > The Hungry Ones – ABC series set in Australia 1788–92
> Smugglers Beware – half-hour children’s series
>Vikki – variety compered by Vikki Hammond
> Dialogue – news discussion
> Farson’s Choice – interview series
> The Price Is Right – game show
> Your Hit Parade – return of the music show
> Australia Today – series featuring eminent Australians
> Guest’s Party Time – Larry Nixon’s new show
> Between Ourselves – local variety series featuring Johnny Ladd
> The Norman Banks Program – roundtable discussion
> Four for the Show – variety starring Michael Cole and Judy Banks
> Floorshow – variety hosted by Sydney comedian Joe Martin
> Spotlight on Australia – documentary series
> Studio A – variety
> Fighting Words – controversial discussion program
> Why Is It So? – science series And from overseas comes:
> McHale’s Navy – sea comedy
> Eric Sykes – BBC comedy series
> The Dakotas – western
> People of Paradise – BBC documentary series with David Attenborough > The Beverly Hillbillies – comedy
> Maigret – detective series
> Dr Finlay’s Case Book – BBC detective series
> The Saint – spy drama
> Z Cars – BBC police series
> Steptoe and Son – BBC comedy series
> The Lucy Show – comedy starring Lucille Ball
> The Jetsons – cartoon series
> Coronation Street – long-running British serial
Kennedy shooting might be TV turning point
November: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy appears set to have wide repercussions on the global stage, including an effect on how we perceive television.
Australia woke to news of Kennedy’s death on Saturday 23 November, and turned to their TVs for information, as much as to the radio or the newspapers.