Ok so Variety was still a staple in Oz TV - 'Hey Hey It's Saturday' began as a kids morning TV show in the 70's - but grew into a talk/variety/game/comedy hour show - very much a jazzed up 80's version of IMT(see the 50/60's) - Hosts Darryl & Ozzie with darling co-hosts (through the years) Jacki/Ding dong/Lavina, as well as Plucker(the duck - yes again I'm not making it up)Molly, Red, Wilbur & the band, Mr Blackman and the rest of the gang, all became the one stop shop for a Saturday night - it was the show to watch for pure entertainment - for the kids or mum's & dads, or before the pub, or just a quiet night in...Touring bands, overseas acts and guests stars a plenty on what was a truly unique Oz Show...Not many can say that a show can last for almost 30 years...Well except possibly news and current affairs shows - and boy if we saw one, we saw a ga-zillion in the 80's - '60 minutes','A current affair','Eyewitness News' and not forgetting for the early birds 'Today' and 'GMA'('Good morning Australia')...You could now watch the news around the clock, not just at 6'oclock anymore...
...But the hilarious thing was the 10.30 timeslot where the rating competition was the most mental - Channel 9 had Gra Gra back with 'Coast to Coast' vs Channel 7's Clive Robertson on 'Newsworld' vs Channel Ten's Ol' Mate of Gra Gra Don Lane with 'Late Night Australia' - Gra Gra was again King...Don Lane finally went back to the states for gridiron commentating ( on the ABC!)and Clive Robinson was just dry, sanguine and bored...as per usual...
...From the high drama of the news desk back to the high drama Oz soaps - this time involving medical staff...after 'The Young Doctors' ended, Channel 9 created another...'The Flying Doctors' - the lives of the royal flying doctors services set in a fictional 'outback' town...Channel 7 puts up a tough soap battle with their darlings...
-'CopShop' - the new generation of police drama
-'A country practice' exactly that - lives of hospital staff in the country... and yes before Channel 9...
-'Sons & daughters' - the premise being twin brother & sister separated by birth are reunited...so are their families years later...(sounds a bit dull now)...
-'Home and Away' - a family moves from the city to Summer bay for a change of life...still as popular today...
But not all the luck was 7's court...'Neighbours' created by Channel 7, then axed due to poor performance was then picked up by 10 and made it into the rating success of today...Poor 7 - Koshie & Mel were almost 20 years away!
Channel 10 finally dropped the 0 (imagine the meeting - 'Guys do we want to be known as a zero or a 10?')...SBS started to broadcast nationally bringing soccer, sex and subtitles into Oz homes as long as you had UHF reception... now there was 5 networks, some starting to broadcast 24/7...
But the best was yet to come...in comedy, 'the bicentennial' and network deals that would even make selling nukes to Al-qaeda amateurish...
Continued in Part 2...
1 comment:
Oops. That's what I get for not scrolling. I loved A Country Practice. I remember a storyline about male rape. In early 1990s Ireland, at 5.30 in the evening, this was shocking. Yet nobody batted an eyelid as it was just an Australian soap.
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