Australian showbusiness has lost one of its true veterans with reports that Ian Turpie has died from cancer at the age of 68.
Born in Melbourne in 1943, his career started as a child actor back in the 1950s working in radio and theatre productions. He later moved to television as a performer on variety shows including Bandstand, Sing Sing Sing (formerly The Johnny O’Keefe Show) and the Melbourne-based daytime show Time For Terry.
In 1964, Turpie became the first “victim” in the iconic television drama series Homicide, playing the role of a university student who was shot dead while staging a mock bank hold-up in the opening scenes of the first episode.
He was later a host of the mid-1960s pop music program Go!!
Working as a variety and club performer during the 1970s Turpie made a television hosting comeback in 1981 on The New Price Is Right (pictured), a reprisal of the game show franchise that had last appeared on Australian TV in the mid-1970s. The show was a hit for the Seven Network and lasted for around four years. He was to revisit the format in 1989 when the Ten Network launched The Price Is Right as a Saturday night program.
In the early 1980s he hosted a variety program, Turpie Tonight, for Perth channel TVW7. The program won a TV Week Logie in 1983 for Most Popular Program in Western Australia.
He also hosted game shows Press Your Luck, The Newlyweds Game and Supermarket Sweep.
Later television appearances included drama series Always Greener and comedies Club Buggery, Pizza, Swift And Shift Couriers and Housos.
He was diagnosed with cancer early last year.
Last May he was inducted into the Mo Awards’ Hall of Fame and there is now an online campaign via Facebook to have Turpie inducted into the TV Week Logie Awards’ Hall of Fame.
Ian Turpie is survived by wife Jan, three children and three grandchildren.
Bill Hunter, one of Australia’s most recognisable and prolific actors, has passed away in Melbourne at the age of 71.
The actor had been admitted to a Melbourne hospice early last week with inoperable cancer.
Born in Ballarat, Hunter went on to a career spanning 50 years with more than 100 roles in various film, stage and television productions.
Early television roles included appearances in Hunter, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, The Long Arm, Riptide, Dynasty, Catwalk, The Spoiler, Spyforce and King’s Men as well as appearing on multiple occasions in Division 4, Homicide and Matlock Police.
He later appeared in series including Prisoner, Golden Soak, Young Ramsay, 1915, Scales Of Justice, The Dismissal, Eureka Stockade, The Flying Doctors, A Fortunate Life, Stark, Seachange, All Saints, Pizza, Stingers and Two Twisted.
Hunter had an extensive film resume, including iconic Australian titles Stone, Newsfront, Gallipoli, Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, The Adventures Of Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert, Australia and Finding Nemo. He also starred in films The Shiralee, Ned Kelly, Far East, Street Hero, Crackerjack and Bad Eggs. He had recently played the role of racing legend Bart Cummings in the to-be-released film The Cup, recreating the 2002 Melbourne Cup.
He also featured in a number of commercial roles, including recent campaigns for ‘Grain Wave’ chips and the AFL.
An initiative of the Fraser Government, the Special Broadcasting Service was established in the mid-1970s to operate the new multi-lingual radio service that had commenced in Sydney (2EA) and Melbourne (3EA). By the end of the 1970s, the organisation was given the responsibility of operating Australia’s first multi-cultural television station – although there had been plenty of discussion and debate as to whether Australia actually wanted, or needed, such a service. It’s a discussion that probably continues to this day but it should be noted that prior to SBS’ introduction, multicultural or even indigenous representation on Australian television was all but non-existent in a sea of American, British and white Australian culture. There were a few exceptions, though. The 0-10 Network presented weekly programs aimed at the Italian and Greek communities as well as presenting an educational program, You Say The Word, which was devised to improve the English language skills of a growing migrant population. The popular drama series Number 96 also provided a glimpse of a multicultural society in Australia, often featuring characters or actors of mixed racial or cultural origin. It might not have presented these characters in the most appropriate light, but it was a representation nonetheless.
SBS made its first television appearance with a series of test transmissions broadcast on ABC in Sydney and Melbourne on Sunday mornings in 1979. This video (taken from SBS’s 20th anniversary special, 20/20 Vision, in 2000) recounts those early test transmissions and the formation of the new channel:
Then on United Nations Day – 24 October 1980 – the chief executive of the Special Broadcasting Service, Bruce Gyngell (pictured), presented the launch of the new Channel 0/28, which was officially opened by prime minister Malcolm Fraser.
Channel 0/28 started broadcasting from very modest facilities, occupying a few floors of an office building in the Sydney suburb of Milson’s Point. In 1991, both radio and television branches of SBS moved to more modern facilities in the suburb of Artarmon.
Friday 24 October 1980: 6.30pm Opening Special: Bruce Gyngell presents the official opening and a preview of upcoming shows on the new Channel 0/28. 7pmWho Are We?Peter Luck presents a documentary on the people who make up Australia. 8pmGiochiamo Al Variete. Italian variety program. 9pm Movie: Three Sea Wolves (pictured). Australian production starring Chantal Contouri, presented in Greek and English. 10.30 Movie: Don’t Lean Out. Yugoslav movie about a young man returning from Germany to his homeland.
Saturday 25 October: 5pm Cartoons: from Italy, Hungary and Russia 5.30La Sonrisa de un Nino. Children’s musical program in Spanish. 6.30 Special: The Chinese Acrobatic Troupe 7.30Montreaux Comedy Festival. Includes To Norway, Home Of The Giants – featuring John Cleese taking a lighthearted look at his ancestry, Slim Sala Bim from the Netherlands, and Nonstop Nonsens from Germany. 9pm Movie: Hotel Pacific. Polish film depicting life in a large Warsaw Hotel of the 1930s. 10.30 Movie: Varinka. True story of a Russian girl who unwittingly smothers her boyfriend in bed. French movie set in the 19th century.
Sunday 26 October: 1pm Soccer: Live coverage of Australia’s National Youth Team versus Johnny Warren’s All-Stars 2pm Soccer: Philips Soccer League Grand Final. Live coverage from Canberra 5pmBuona Sera con Rita al Circo. Italian children’s program 5.30Hunt For Janne. Swedish children’s series. 6pmDas Vorstadtkrokodile. German story of a paraplegic boy who joins a children’s club. 7.30Studio 80. Italian variety program 8.30 Movie: Elvira Madigan. Swedish film depicting the intense and happy love affair of two people ready to die rather than live apart. 10.30 Soccer: Highlights of the Philips Soccer League Grand Final
George Donikian (pictured) presented Channel 0/28’s first news bulletin on Monday 27 October 1980. World News initially screened at 9.30pm weeknights but by March it had moved to the earlier 7.30pm timeslot. The main bulletin would later move to 7.00pm before taking up its current 6.30pm timeslot by the late 1980s. Weekend bulletins started a few years after SBS’ introduction, as did a mid-evening 9.00pm bulletin which has since moved to 9.30pm.
But not everything associated with the fledgling channel went smoothly. Gyngell had commissioned a talent quest series, Cabaret, from the Grundy Organisation and Willard King Productions. The first episode, hosted by Graham Kennedy and including a panel of judges, was taped in advance and featured entrants representing various ethnic groups. However, just days before the show was to go to air, Gyngell made a last-minute decision to change the show’s format from a talent quest to a general variety show, feeling that it unwise to involve a competitive element between multicultural communities. The first episode was hurriedly re-taped in the new format, and Lebanese-born actor Joe Hasham, best known from the popular Number 96, took over hosting the series from that point.
On a more positive note, 0/28 did earn early applause for its adoption of soccer coverage, giving the sport a higher priority and profile than any of the other networks had done. And soccer would continue to feature prominently on the channel, with regular programs and coverage of various leagues and the premier event, the FIFA World Cup, being broadcast on the network every four years since 1990. Les Murray (pictured), who fronts the network’s soccer coverage, has been with the network since it launched.
Channel 0/28 broadcast initially in Sydney and Melbourne only. In 1983 it expanded to Canberra and nearby regional centres Goulburn and Cooma – coinciding with the channel’s name change to Network 0/28. Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle, Wollongong and the Gold Coast joined the network after it had changed its name on-air to SBS in 1985. Perth and Hobart followed in 1986, and Darwin in 1994. SBS became Australia’s first sole UHF network with the VHF Channel 0 broadcasts in Sydney and Melbourne terminated in January 1986.
As well as World News, current affairs programming, often taking a different perspective to its commercial rivals, has also featured over thirty years – with programs including SCOOP, Vox Populi, ICAM, Issues, First In Line, Insight, Living Black and the long-running Dateline, which has been running in various formats since 1984.
One of SBS’ first drama productions, the mini-series Women Of The Sun, won acclaim for its portrayal of Australian history through the eyes of Aboriginal women. Other Australian-made dramas have included City West, The Girl From Steel City, Five Times Dizzy, In Between, House Gang, Going Home, RAN (Remote Area Nurse), The Circuit, Kick and East West 101.
Since 1983, SBS has broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest – with the event gaining a following in Australia that leaves Europeans mystified. Another European TV tradition – the comedy sketch Dinner For One – has featured on SBS every New Year’s Eve since 1989. The Japanese game show Iron Chef created an appetite for food-inspired competition years before anyone had thought of MasterChef. The boundaries of comedy have been tested with shows like Pizza, Life Support and Wilfred – and a US series, South Park, became a hit. RockWiz (pictured), ADbc, The Squiz, Hot Spell! and Letters And Numbers are among those have represented the quiz and game show genre.
In 1986, movie presenter David Stratton was joined by Margaret Pomeranz to host a weekly review program, The Movie Show. The pair fronted the show for almost twenty years before they moved across to ABC to host a similar program, At The Movies.
Mary Kostakidis (pictured) was part of the subtitling and management teams when Channel 0/28 launched in 1980. She later took over from George Donikian as presenter of World News, a role she maintained for almost twenty years. Her sudden departure from the broadcaster in 2007 was the culmination of a certain period of unrest, brought about by changes to a more populist style of news coverage and the appointment of an additional newsreader, Stan Grant. Other news presenters over the years have included Karina Kelly, Christina Koutsoukos, Patrice Newell, Silvio Rivier (who was part of the original Channel 0/28 and now hosts the Global Village documentary series), Indira Naidoo, Ben Fajzullin, Amrita Cheema and current day newsreaders Anton Enus, Janice Peterson, Lee Lin Chin, Rena Sarumpaet and Ricardo Goncalves.
The sensitive topic of commercials on SBS was first touched on by the network for its coverage of the FIFA World Cup in 1990, and from 1991 SBS was permitted to play five minutes of commercials each hour to supplement its taxpayer-funded income, but commercials would only appear in between programs. In 2006, the network took a controversial step to introduce commercial breaks within programs. It’s a change that continues to attract mixed reaction.
SBS commenced digital transmission in 2001 and, in 2002, launched a new channel, World News Channel, presenting continuous broadcasts of news bulletins from other countries in languages other than English. Last year, World News Channel was replaced by SBS2, still presenting international news bulletins but now including more general programming such as documentaries, dramas and movies as well as some time-shifted programming from the main SBS channel (now SBS1) and extensions of the network’s coverage of sporting events such as the Tour de France.
SBS is now at a stage where its role in the media landscape is again under question. Its move away from traditional multicultural programming, particularly on the primary SBS1 channel, has attracted criticism that it is abandoning the very reason it was created in the first place. Its increasing reliance on commercial sponsorship and adopting populist programs such as Top Gear (a program that has since been picked up by Nine) have also attracted criticism as being in conflict with what should be the core values of SBS. Now with the commercial networks hungry for content to fill their multiple digital channels, this is putting up the cost of certain English-language programming that SBS in the past might have been the only buyer. SBS might be wise to rediscover the niche market of multicultural programming and tap into the vast sources of television programming produced in languages other than English instead of trying to be another ABC or another commercial network.
To commemorate its 30th anniversary, SBS’ weekly program Dateline will present a special report of highlights from its many years in covering international current affairs.
SBS have also published a website for the occasion of its 30th anniversary – including an interactive timeline and links to videos of certain milestones.
Dateline, Sunday 24 October, 8.30pm. SBS1 (Repeated Monday 1.30pm on SBS1 and Wednesday 7.30pm on SBS2)
Source: The Age, 27 October 1980; The Age, 13 November 1980; TelevisionAU: SBS
Australians love their comedy on TV, but in the last couple of years, apart from a few stand out successes like Spicks & Specks and Thank God You're Here, there wasn't a great deal to laugh about.
Then 2007 came along and the tide was turning. ABC's The Chaser's War On Everything was plucked from last year's late-night timeslot to take The Glass House's spot on Wednesday nights, and virtually doubled its audience as a result of the change. Various stunts of the Chaser team (pictured) inspired many headlines and a lot of outrage - whether it be the team infiltrating the iron-clad security of the APEC Summit in Sydney, making crude remarks about deceased personalities or gate-crashing the offices of Today Tonight, a program that was the subject of much derision by the team.
Also on ABC this year was another comedy hit - Summer Heights High. This long-awaited follow-up from Chris Lilley, who gave us the mockumentary styled series We Can Be Heroes in 2005, received plenty of mixed reaction and also its fair share of headlines. Parents and teachers were outraged when school children were now mocking the crude phrases of troubled student Jonah. Similar outrage was also felt when one of the show's central storylines, the death of a student from a drug overdose, was seen to mirror that of a similar real-life case where the victim happened to have the same first name as the fictional character depicted. In that case it was found to be an unfortunate coincidence as the series had been written and produced before the real-life incident occurred.
At the same time, Summer Heights High also received its share of accolades as Lilley, who wrote the series and performed the three very different key roles - private schoolgirl Ja'mie King (pictured), self-obsessed drama teacher Mr G, and student Jonah - very aptly covered various issues found in today's schools such as drugs, bullying, racism, violence, disability and homophobia.
Following on from Summer Heights High was The Librarians - a title that doesn't inspire much excitement but instead showed that inside a library is a pit of sexual tension, jealousy, bitchiness and bigotry in the lead up to the biggest event in the suburban library calendar, Book Week.
But possibly the biggest comedy event to hit Australian TV this year was the comeback of those foxy ladies, Kath & Kim. It was thought to be an April Fool's Day gag when on 1 April, the Seven Network announced it had shelled out $3 million to drag the popular pair across from ABC where they'd presented three top-rating series and a telemovie. It was also ironic in that Seven is where the characters were formed in the first place, as characters in the sketch comedies Big Girl's Blouse (1994) and Something Stupid (1998).
Success in the transition from ABC to commercial TV isn't always a given, it has been tried before by others with mixed results, but Seven's debut of series four of Kath & Kim on 19 August attracted over 2.5 million viewers in the capital cities and the series had a series average of 2.128 million - the highest of any TV series all year.
Network Ten presented a third series of Thank God You're Here, providing more unpredictable performances from actors thrown into scenarios without the safety of a script. A creation of Working Dog Productions, Thank God You're Here was the second most watched series of 2007 with 1.86 million viewers. The success of the format in Australia has seen it franchised around the world although it did stumble in the US after its initial six-week run when it was shown on NBC, currently the fourth-ranked commercial network.
Despite the format's continued success in Australia, there is still uncertainty as to whether it will be back in 2008 although it looks like the rival Nine Network could be stringing together a similar concept in a bid to regain its ratings dominance. Nine will hope that the new show gives it something to laugh about because 2007 was a year they'd probably like to forget.
Nine's ratings failings this year were not helped by Mick Molloy's The Nation which aimed to put a humorous spin on the week's events - a concept not entirely new to viewers familiar with similar programs such as The Panel. The gamble on Molloy (pictured) was puzzling, given that his last venture at the Nine Network was the ill-fated Mick Molloy Show which set new benchmarks for questionable taste, and it would appear that viewers hadn't quite forgiven him enough to give The Nation a go.
Nine's other new comic venture this year was nothing really new at all - Surprise Surprise Gotcha was a thinly-veiled attempt to repackage a series that it had made almost a decade ago, complete with segments simply cut-and-pasted from the original version. Nine also followed on from Surprise Surprise Gotcha with another cheap format, Commercial Breakdown, with former AFL footballer Dermot Brereton presenting packages of funny or quirky commercials. Again, a format that had been done plenty of times before.
Although ABC had good results this year from Spicks & Specks and The Chaser's War On Everything, they had less success with The Sideshow, a show loosely modelled on the broadcaster's former hit The Big Gig. Launching in ratings graveyard of Saturday nights, The Sideshow was always going to struggle to find an audience and the 7.30 timeslot was at odds with presenting the more risque humour better suited to a later timeslot. Then ABC did shift the program to 9.30 but perhaps by then the damage was done, and it was cancelled shortly after.
Finally, over to SBS who delivered their own humorous take on the news with Newstopia, a creation of comedian and radio host Shaun Micallef (pictured), though was said to be a local take on the US series The Daily Show. SBS also aired a sixth series of urban comedy Pizza.
Bill Hunter, one of Australia’s most recognisable and prolific actors, has passed away in Melbourne at the age of 71.
SBS Television is thirty years old this weekend.
Then on United Nations Day – 24 October 1980 – the chief executive of the Special Broadcasting Service, Bruce Gyngell (pictured), presented the launch of the new Channel 0/28, which was officially opened by prime minister Malcolm Fraser.
6.30pm Opening Special: Bruce Gyngell presents the official opening and a preview of upcoming shows on the new Channel 0/28. 
George Donikian (pictured) presented Channel 0/28’s first news bulletin on Monday 27 October 1980. World News initially screened at 9.30pm weeknights but by March it had moved to the earlier 7.30pm timeslot. The main bulletin would later move to 7.00pm before taking up its current 6.30pm timeslot by the late 1980s. Weekend bulletins started a few years after SBS’ introduction, as did a mid-evening 9.00pm bulletin which has since moved to 9.30pm. 
On a more positive note, 0/28 did earn early applause for its adoption of soccer coverage, giving the sport a higher priority and profile than any of the other networks had done. And soccer would continue to feature prominently on the channel, with regular programs and coverage of various leagues and the premier event, the FIFA World Cup, being broadcast on the network every four years since 1990. Les Murray (pictured), who fronts the network’s soccer coverage, has been with the network since it launched.
As well as World News, current affairs programming, often taking a different perspective to its commercial rivals, has also featured over thirty years – with programs including SCOOP, Vox Populi, ICAM, Issues, First In Line, Insight, Living Black and the long-running Dateline, which has been running in various formats since 1984.
Since 1983, SBS has broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest – with the event gaining a following in Australia that leaves Europeans mystified. Another European TV tradition – the comedy sketch Dinner For One – has featured on SBS every New Year’s Eve since 1989. The Japanese game show Iron Chef created an appetite for food-inspired competition years before anyone had thought of MasterChef. The boundaries of comedy have been tested with shows like Pizza, Life Support and Wilfred – and a US series, South Park, became a hit. RockWiz (pictured), ADbc, The Squiz, Hot Spell! and Letters And Numbers are among those have represented the quiz and game show genre.
Mary Kostakidis (pictured) was part of the subtitling and management teams when Channel 0/28 launched in 1980. She later took over from George Donikian as presenter of World News, a role she maintained for almost twenty years. Her 
SBS is now at a stage where its role in the media landscape is again under question. Its move away from traditional multicultural programming, particularly on the primary SBS1 channel, has attracted criticism that it is abandoning the very reason it was created in the first place. Its increasing reliance on commercial sponsorship and adopting populist programs such as Top Gear (a program that has since been picked up by Nine) have also attracted criticism as being in conflict with what should be the core values of SBS. Now with the commercial networks hungry for content to fill their multiple digital channels, this is putting up the cost of certain English-language programming that SBS in the past might have been the only buyer. SBS might be wise to rediscover the niche market of multicultural programming and tap into the vast sources of television programming produced in languages other than English instead of trying to be another ABC or another commercial network.
