Thanks, that's the best 7m7s I've spent all day. We went to see Uncle Norman in 1963. I remember he wore a mortar board and it was way better than watching it on TV. Everything was big and in colour, and Uncle Norman was talking to the camera instead of us, which I thought was rude because I didn't know anything about television and I never understood adults anyway.
Saw Dick 'the bulldog' Brower wrestle at Festival Hall back in the 70s. Some years later a mate from high school class ended up wrestling on tv and also at Festival Hall.
At the 2.00 point this is film of a football team quiz game,held in the channel 9 Richmond studios,Tony Charlton was the umpire,the idea was just to ask players questions and the ball moved to a goal based on correct answers and went to the opposition if you were wrongEssendon players Barry Capuano first and Ted Fordham on the left of the screen.I was probably there on the left side.
Of all the 10 channels first provided for TV in Australia in 1956, 1 to 10, with channels O, 5a and 11 added later, Station GTV-Melbourne and Station TCN-Sydney may well have been assigned channels at each end of the VHF band. That would've been a good thing as it would've prevented station affiliation based on channel allocation only. Indeed it would've been far better had commercial stations been *banned* from forming networks and only the ABC to be the *national radio and TV network.* Commercial stations should be stand-alone operators, the ownership of which is resided *wholly* within the region the station services. Likewise regional stations would also be stand-alone operators with their licences held *strictly* by regional-based owners/proprietors with at least two commercial stations plus the ABC in the capital cities but no more than two plus the ABC in regional/rural centres because the advertising pound-cum-dollar would be stretched too thinly with three stations in the regional/rural centres. It goes without saying that licences for two commercial TV stations in a regional centre like *Tamworth,* for instance, should *NOT* be held by one proprietor, but by two separate and distinct proprietors. Same applies in the capital city markets. Programme sales would *NOT* be so restrictive in this situation. A show like *"Young Talent Time"* would be produced at Station ATV-Melbourne and sold to QTQ in Brisbane, ATN in Sydney, NWS in Adelaide, STW in Perth for instance. And finally, TV stations *DID NOT OWN* the channels on which they transmitted. There were only 13 VHF channels and a latter addition of 49 UHF channels(21 to 69 inclusive but 21 to 27 were never used, neither were channels 35 to 39). To illustrate this point, Station ATV-Melbourne and Station TVQ-Brisbane were shifted from the bottom-end Ch.0(45-to-52 Mhz) up to the penultimate ch.10(208-215 Mhz) in 1980 to make room for the pending start of SBS multicultural TV which only used VHF Ch.0 for about a year while also using UHF Ch.28 which became the permanent channel, however, ABC and SBS should've been spread around the band, not just restricted to Ch.2 in the capitals and SBS not just to Ch.28 in the capitals. The ideas expressed above relating to commercial TV would've resulted in a freer, more open market, which would've *prevented* greedy, unscrupulous media moguls(Packer family, Murdoch & others) from owning more than *just one* station.
This might be 6 years coming , but I believe it is the Channel 9 version of what was World of Sport on Channel 7 that Ron Casey compared. The Channel 9 show was called The Tony Charlton Football Show and was run in competition to World of Sport on Sundays, running at the same time as World of Sport on HSV 7.. Tony Charlton is seen here, (just), dressed up as an umpire, (he never was one) and he used to explain VFL rules, (it was the VFL back then), in a regular segment.
After all this time the cartoon man is close to the truth as these days most news rooms have no cameraman but use a computer controlled camera or two controlled from the directors desk, so much for "progress" ! TV was better prior to digital in my opinion as there used to be movies and all the programs had to get ratings, now we have a lot of silly programs direct from pay TV which would not have made the cut years ago. There is no Bert Newton, no Midday show, no "variety" programs now.......
