damian50 Years of Telly
September 12th 2006 02:08
Just like to note the huge amount of material being pushed by the two leading TV networks to celebrate 50 years of telly this week. So far most of it has come from The Eddie Network, with plenty of 20 to 1-esque charting and random celebrities saying random things about their random viewing habits, but the Other Network will be having some more stuff later on.
And Channel Ten...? As far as I can tell Channel Ten doesn’t seem to give a rip about it’s history. No doubt this is a result of caring for no one but their 16-29 demographic, most of whom can’t remember that far back, but you never know, they may mention it at some stage.
Gotta say I’m enjoying some of the stuff they’ve dredged out of the vaults. Sure, a lot of it is tacky, with more than a few helpings of self-promotion and team ego-pumping, but if you love- or are remotely interested in- your Australian culture then the 50 Year celebrations are an awesome opportunity to see some of the great stuff Aussie culture has produced over the years.
As a massive Aussie culture fan I can say that you often read about stuff that happened in TV land without being able to see the end productitself. This is a result of the complete lack of records kept by TV stations in the early years or the fact that what is kept gets stored somewhere on big rolls of film, rather than converted to DVD and released to the public. If you’re really lucky a uni lecturer somewhere might have something but this is usually a VHS or two of reasonably dodgy quality.
Not only are the 50 Year celebrations a great opportunity to remember our collective TV viewing history, it’s a chance for the networks to profit from it by releasing plenty of archive footage on DVD. Sure, they’re doing it for their own gain, but Australians will benefit from being able to check out our TV history which can explain what we’re watching today.
Want an example? Most people freak out about our culture, pointing to the sky and screaming blue murder-‘the Americans are coming!’- but have you seen a lot of good American satire around lately? No? So where does all the good satire come from? I’ll tell you where it comes from- Australia. If there’s one thing that Americans are bad at it’s having a go at themselves and if there is one thing us Australians are good at it’s taking the piss out of ourselves. So where did this satirical streak come from? Where did the Glass House, Good News Week, Frontline, and The Chaser come from? I’ll tell you where- they’re the result of Australia’s first popular comedy program, The Mavis Bramston Show. From this show an entire tradition of political satire has developed and influenced our collective culture. Maybe we’d be a lot more like America if we’d just done family sitcoms but at some stage an Australian TV producer said “you know what, I reckon someone needs to start taking the piss out of this stuff” and here we are today with more satire than you can point an offended American at.
The 50 Year celebrations are a good opportunity to catch up with how we became who we are. Hopefully, with more stuff like this available to people, the very strong TV traditions we already have will become even stronger, and hopefully the areas which are suffering at the moment can be improved. Who knows, maybe someone just needs a bit of inspiration to become the next Paul Hogan, Graham Kennedy, Don Burke, Rex Hunt, Ray Martin, Barry Humphries.......
And Channel Ten...? As far as I can tell Channel Ten doesn’t seem to give a rip about it’s history. No doubt this is a result of caring for no one but their 16-29 demographic, most of whom can’t remember that far back, but you never know, they may mention it at some stage.
Channel 9 has been leading the way with the remeniscing.
Gotta say I’m enjoying some of the stuff they’ve dredged out of the vaults. Sure, a lot of it is tacky, with more than a few helpings of self-promotion and team ego-pumping, but if you love- or are remotely interested in- your Australian culture then the 50 Year celebrations are an awesome opportunity to see some of the great stuff Aussie culture has produced over the years.
As a massive Aussie culture fan I can say that you often read about stuff that happened in TV land without being able to see the end productitself. This is a result of the complete lack of records kept by TV stations in the early years or the fact that what is kept gets stored somewhere on big rolls of film, rather than converted to DVD and released to the public. If you’re really lucky a uni lecturer somewhere might have something but this is usually a VHS or two of reasonably dodgy quality.
Not only are the 50 Year celebrations a great opportunity to remember our collective TV viewing history, it’s a chance for the networks to profit from it by releasing plenty of archive footage on DVD. Sure, they’re doing it for their own gain, but Australians will benefit from being able to check out our TV history which can explain what we’re watching today.
Want an example? Most people freak out about our culture, pointing to the sky and screaming blue murder-‘the Americans are coming!’- but have you seen a lot of good American satire around lately? No? So where does all the good satire come from? I’ll tell you where it comes from- Australia. If there’s one thing that Americans are bad at it’s having a go at themselves and if there is one thing us Australians are good at it’s taking the piss out of ourselves. So where did this satirical streak come from? Where did the Glass House, Good News Week, Frontline, and The Chaser come from? I’ll tell you where- they’re the result of Australia’s first popular comedy program, The Mavis Bramston Show. From this show an entire tradition of political satire has developed and influenced our collective culture. Maybe we’d be a lot more like America if we’d just done family sitcoms but at some stage an Australian TV producer said “you know what, I reckon someone needs to start taking the piss out of this stuff” and here we are today with more satire than you can point an offended American at.
The 50 Year celebrations are a good opportunity to catch up with how we became who we are. Hopefully, with more stuff like this available to people, the very strong TV traditions we already have will become even stronger, and hopefully the areas which are suffering at the moment can be improved. Who knows, maybe someone just needs a bit of inspiration to become the next Paul Hogan, Graham Kennedy, Don Burke, Rex Hunt, Ray Martin, Barry Humphries.......
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