Obituary: Edith Bliss

Edith Bliss, a former Australian pop singer and television presenter, has died at the age of 53 after a long illness.

Brisbane-born Bliss hit the Australian charts in the late 1970s with the single If It’s Love You Want followed by two more singles and an album, Total Bliss, in 1980.

She then went on to television as a reporter for popular children’s program Simon Townsend’s Wonder World.

A decade later she was on television again as a presenter for Townsend’s other venture, ABC program TVTV.

Bliss married Mark Tanner, a sound mixer on Wonder World, and they had four children.

In 2006, under her married name Edith Tanner, she appeared as a contestant on the final episode of game show Wheel Of Fortune.

Daughter Eden had posted a message on Facebook, saying her mother "passed very peacefully early this morning and her infectious spirit will be missed by all. You're with the angels now, Mum."

Source: Daily Telegraph, Wikipedia

Simon Townsend on The Morning Show

Former children’s TV presenter and producer Simon Townsend was yesterday’s ‘Flashback Friday’ guest on the Seven Network’s The Morning Show.

Townsend was a producer for Mike Willesee in the 1970s and had edited a children’s newspaper, Zoot, before he ventured into producing his own program, which eventually became Simon Townsend’s Wonder World.  The program, a magazine format aimed at children, was first devised back in 1973.  A pilot was produced in association with Seven but it was not picked up.

By the late 1970s the broadcast rules were changing to enforce a minimum amount of first-run Australian-made content for children on commercial networks.  A second pilot, produced independently, was successful in gaining approval for broadcast under the new ‘C’ classification and the 0-10 Network ultimately picked up the program in 1979. 

Simon Townsend’s Wonder World continued until 1987, clocking up over 2000 episodes and winning five Logies.  Townsend later returned to television as the presenter of ABC’s early evening program TVTV, a nightly program based around television.

Townsend has since suffered a number of personal setbacks, including three strokes and the death of his wife Rosanna from cancer.  He is now retired.

Source: The Morning Show, TV Times, Talking Heads

YouTube: TVTV, Gretel and Logies

An interesting find on YouTube this week with two clips from an ABC series of the 1990s - TVTV.

TVTV, initially hosted by Simon Townsend but later replaced by Mark Mitchell and Tiffany Lamb when production moved to Melbourne, ran from April 1993 to June 1995 and was a nightly review of all things TV - sort of like a '90s version of today's websites like TV Tonight - and being on ABC allowed it to take an objective view at all the commercial networks' offerings as well as discussing programs seen on ABC and SBS.

In 1994, TVTV took to reviewing the upcoming TV Week Logie Awards, with a segment featuring guest presenter Gretel Killeen who, of course, became far more famous in later years as host of Big Brother, but in the early-'90s was known as a comedian and voice-over artist, and had been a regular on Midday With Ray Martin and was also one of three co-hosts of Nine's Coast To Coast which continued for a brief period after Graham Kennedy resigned at the end of 1989.

The second clip from the same program includes a report by Kay Stammers, featuring previous TV Week Gold Logie winners Daryl Somers, Rowena Wallace, Barry Crocker, Don Lane and Bobby Limb, former Logies host Bert Newton and an interesting insight into the early "rigging" of TV Week Gold Logie votes by former magazine editor Frank Crook.

YouTube: beanisacarrot

Whatever happened to .... ?

While watching the TV in the waiting room at the GP's today, i was confronted by what is known as Good Health Television.. basically a "channel" of segments discussing various health topics.

While this concept is nothing new, it has apparently been playing in doctors waiting rooms for 15 years, I was surprised to see a somewhat familiar face presenting some of the segments... former Network Ten newsreader of the 1980s, Jo Pearson.

Ms Pearson (and weatherman husband Rob Gell) made headlines when they packed up from ATV10 Melbourne to go to Nine with a rumoured $1m contract in 1987. Rob continued with Nine until only recently (and is now appearing on Seven News in Melbourne), but Jo had less success at Nine hosting ill-fated late-afternoon shows such as Live At Five and Body & Soul, before returning to ATV10 perhaps a bit wiser in 1991. After two years back at Eyewitness News, she vanished again and then re-surfaced on ABC's TVTV program.

(Picture: Nine Network, 1988 )