ABC to say goodbye to Gordon Street?

ABC is set to expand its premises in inner-city Melbourne with construction of a new television studio.

The new development, which has now been approved by the ABC board, will be built adjacent to the broadcaster’s existing radio and administration complex in Southbank.

The new television studios will be used for both internal productions as well as being made available for external hire.

No timeline for the development has been announced and neither has there been any announcement as to the future of ABC’s existing Melbourne television studios in Gordon Street, Elsternwick, although The Age reports that it appears that the property will be sold off to assist in funding the new development.  In 2009 the Elsternwick site was estimated to be valued at around $25 million.

The Elsternwick studios, located next door to the historic Ripponlea homestead, were opened in May 1958 – eighteen months after ABC’s Melbourne television station ABV2 commenced transmission.  For the previous eighteen months the various functions of the new television station were carried out from makeshift premises scattered around Melbourne.

The studios have hosted various productions for ABC including Bellbird, Adventure Island (pictured), Countdown, Power Without Glory, The Saturday Show, Australia – You’re Standing In It, The Factory, Countdown Revolution, The Big Gig, The Late Show, Phoenix and Seachange. 

Spicks And Specks, The Marngrook Footy Show and Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight are also produced at Elsternwick.

The potential sale of the Elsternwick site comes after the sale of the historic GTV9 studios in Richmond last year – while Seven and Ten have long moved out from their original studio premises in South Melbourne and Nunawading respectively.

Source: The Age, The Australian, ABV, ABC, Real Estate Source

1990: July 14-20

‘By the time my son is a teenager I’ll be in a sewing circle’
A Current Affair host Jana Wendt (picture), mother of two-and-a-half-year-old Daniel, says that if he was to get a younger brother or sister then she would reconsider her role on television.  “I think two children is a very large number if you want to keep working,” she told TV Week.  And the ACA host admits it is quite a juggling act as TV’s first lady on camera, while being mum at home.  “I think my son is conducting a campaign to stop me reading newspapers, which could jeopardise my job!  That’s a struggle in the mornings – the struggle against listening to the radio, which you must do, and watching Here’s Humphrey.  Sometimes both happen at the same time, which leads to both of us being confused.  It works itself out.”  And while Daniel things it’s pretty cool recognising his mum on TV now, she is asked will he feel the same when he is a teenager.  “I don’t think that 13 years from now I’ll be in the business.  By the time he’s a teenager I will be in a sewing circle.  Yes, absolutely,” she says. 

Fast lane Jane!
When Jane Turner isn’t raising laughs on Fast Forward, she is juggling two other very different roles.  First, there is looking after her young son, Rupert – and then her other role is as the diplomat’s wife and the various official social engagements that come with that job.  Turner and her husband John Denton met at Melbourne University, courted in Russia, married in Melbourne, had an 18-month “honeymoon” in Canberra and then moved to Bangladesh, where Denton is deputy head of the Australian High Commission in Dacca.  The talented Turner came back to Melbourne to start on Fast Forward, and her husband will be following later in the year.  “He’s always very supportive and encouraging,” she told TV Week.  “We’re both so satisfied with our careers.  You have to take the opportunities when they come and play it by ear.  But it can be a drag.  We miss each other, but it’s always been this way.  One day we’ll compromise.”  When she isn’t working on Fast Forward, Turner joins her husband overseas to mix with the elite on the diplomatic cocktail circuit.  And after creating such Fast Forward characters such as the tongue-in-cheek Inga Harlot (pictured) and Doctor Van Noodle Rooter (“they’re loosely based on Scandinavians I met in Moscow.”), Turner is considering creating a Bangladeshi character.  “Let’s see how they react to that!,” she says.

‘We felt like we were selling out’
Countdown Revolution’s Tania Lacy has spoken out after she and co-host Mark Little were sacked from the show for being anarchic.  It’s a bizarre situation for the pair, considering it was for that particular quality they were hired to do the show in the first place.  Lacy, a familiar face from ABC’s The Factory, said there had been a lot of problems leading up to the taping of the episode where she and Little staged an on-air strike.  “It was a fight for our credibility,” she told TV Week.  “We regard ourselves as credible performers and that is the heart of the issue.  We were originally asked to present a revolutionary, comedic and anarchic pop program.  We really believed in that concept, but suddenly some very ugly factors came into it.  We felt like we were selling out, that we were puppets for the producers and record companies.  Mark and I were not employed to sell records.  We were also told to cool it with the clowning around and they also stopped us from saying what we believed in.  We felt so strongly about it we thought the audience should know how we’re feeling.”  The pair arrived for the Friday night taping carrying some quickly-made placards, reading ‘TV is a lie’ and ‘TV lip service’, which were handed out to audience members.  The pair were later notified of their dismissal by fax.  Actors Equity have taken up the case and Lacy and Little are hopeful they will be able to sit down with ABC management and deal with the issue face to face.  The show’s former producer, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, says that while he wasn’t involved in the show by this stage, he defended the broadcaster’s actions:  “Any performer knows you don’t air your grievances on camera.  And that no one performer is bigger than the show itself.  Any artist who abuses members of the production team in front of an audience, or tears up their script and refuses point blank to listen to the show’s director, or tries to encourage members of the audience or other performers to interfere with the production of the program – all over matters of either self-indulgence or ego – is definitely asking for trouble.”

Briefly…
The Flying Doctors star Alex Papps is set to kill his boy-next-door image with a role in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of This Old Man Comes Rolling Home.  “It’s a play about a family living in Redfern in the Fifties.  My character is one of the sons of the family who doesn’t work… he’s a real layabout.  He seduces a young English girl, so I get to play ‘Mr Bastard’ this time around.  He’s a lecherous type,” he told TV Week.

As a judge on Nine’s New Faces program, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum was so impressed with the performance of 17-year-old Queenslander Peter Andre (pictured, centre, with Meldrum and host Daryl Somers) that he immediately signed him up to his record label, Melodian Records.  “Peter impressed us all and he has a unique voice that can be developed,” Meldrum told TV Week.

Darryl Cotton and Marty Monster found themselves unemployed when the Ten Network axed the long-running children’s program The Early Bird Show (which was known as Club 10 at the time of its axing).  But now the pair have a new profile as presenters of a Sunday morning radio show on Melbourne radio station TTFM.  “We’ve picked up the ratings by 200 per cent since we began three months ago.  It’s a radio version of The Early Bird Show and it’s great fun,” Cotton told TV Week.

John Laws says…
”The recent repeat screening of ABC’s Bush Tucker Man series, first shown in 1988, scored excellent ratings.  And no wonder.  It was just as engrossing the second time around as it was the first.  Which leads me to ask why is it taking so long for ABC to bring us a new series of the Bush Tucker Man?”

Program Highlights (July 14-20):
Sunday:  SBS presents a new series of Anne’s International Kitchen, featuring Anne Luciano.  Rowena Wallace (pictured), Richard Moir and Justin Rozniak star in The Big Wish, the third in the More Winners children’s series on ABC.  GTV9 presents the debut of Unknown Australia, the five-part documentary series from Brisbane-based newsreader Dean Felton.  After a six-month hiatus, The Comedy Company returns to ATV10 with a new format and some new faces.  Sunday night movies are Without A Clue (HSV7) and Frantic (GTV9).  ATV10 debuts the two-part mini-series Murderers Among Us – The Simon Wiesenthal Story.   ABC’s Sunday Stereo Special is the Australian Ballet’s production of Spartacus, recorded in Melbourne with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra conducted by Ormsby Wilkins.

Monday:  Sale Of The Century (GTV9) presents the first in the week-long Celebrity Challenge, commemorating the show’s tenth anniversary.  Taking part in the challenge are high-profile contestants including Bert Newton (pictured), Andrew Gaze, Simon O’Donnell, Peta Toppano, Gough Whitlam, Lisa Curry, Cameron Daddo, George Negus and Jennifer Byrne.

Tuesday:  In Beyond 2000 (HSV7), Iain Finlay reveals a new technique for viewing 3D television without the need for special glasses, while Simon Reeve travels to Gothenburg, Sweden, to report on an electronic newspaper for the blind.  SBS launches a new weekly sports program, The Sports Machine, hosted by Les Murray and a team of reporters looking at the playing fields, dressing rooms and board rooms of sporting clubs around Australia.

Wednesday:  ABC’s Documentary Unit presents a controversial new film, The Devil You Know, examining the popular myth surrounding two drugs – heroin and alcohol.

Thursday:  ABC’s The First Australians series presents a documentary on Arnhem Land rock group Yothu Yindi on their tour of North America with Midnight Oil.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide.         
14 July 1990. Southdown Press.

1990: June 16-22

Cover: Josephine Mitchell, Craig McLachlan (Home And Away)

Wog out of work!
The Seven Network’s hit comedy Acropolis Now is now entering production of its third series but it will be without one of its key cast members.  Simon Palomares, who plays Ricky, has decided not to appear in the third series and will focus on a behind the scenes role.  “I think it got to the point where there were a few reasons for leaving,” he told TV Week.  “The main reason is that I’ve been doing ethnic humour longer than any of the three of us.  I think I’ve said as much as I can say on the subject.  There are a lot of other issues I want to get into.”  Palomares is preparing a pilot for a new comedy-adventure series and is planning a one-man show to go on stage later in the year.

Rebecca careers on
Actress Rebecca Gibney hasn’t looked back since she left the Nine Network’s The Flying Doctors last year.  As soon as she left the show, Gibney took on the role of Guinea (pictured) in ABC’s Come In Spinner and has just completed a new mini-series, Ring Of Scorpio, for Nine.  She is now about to start in a new sitcom for Nine.  Rhythm And Blues will feature Gibney alongside Jon English, whose character is a ‘60s rock star who hasn’t come to terms with the ‘90s.  “I’ve never done comedy before,” she told TV Week.  “When I shot the pilot I was terrified because I’d never worked in front of a live audience before.  That was very daunting.”  The new series is set to debut later in the year.

New York, here I come!
Andrew Daddo (pictured), former co-host of ABC’s The Factory, has landed a job with the US cable network, MTV.  Daddo caught the eye of MTV producers when the network screened an episode of The Factory, as part of the channel’s regular screenings of music shows from around the world.  “They do it to borrow ideas, which is the norm, and apparently someone walked past and my fat head caught in their eye.  They rang MTV in Sydney to find my agent’s number and asked me to send over a showreel.  A week later I was on a plane to New York,” he told TV Week.  The plum job is a far cry from Daddo being overlooked as a host for ABC’s new Countdown Revolution when it was formed last year, instead he was offered only a minor role on the new show which he left after only six weeks on-air.  “I have no bad feelings for ABC.  It was just one of those things.  In fact, seeing what Countdown is now, maybe they did me a favour,” he says.

Briefly… 
Actress Katy Brinson (pictured) played a barrister in the Seven Network’s Rafferty’s Rules.  Now she is taking on a far different role in Seven’s new series Skirts, playing the role of an alcoholic writer who beats her daughter. 

Former Neighbours star Rachel Friend is to star in a comedy pilot being made for Network Ten.  The new series, Lipstick Dreams, is based on a theatre production that recently had a successful run in Sydney and features four women who work on a beauty parlour in a country town.

Neighbours star Linda Hartley, who is about to tape her final scenes for the Network Ten series, is shortly heading off to the UK to star in the touring stage production of Prisoner and has also scored a pantomime role in the UK.  She will appear in the production of Mother Goose, joining former Neighbours castmate Kristian Schmid.

John Laws says…
”If the legendary Monty Python team were still around today they could find plenty of material to ridicule in the ABC’s new series Let’s Do Lunch.  My own impression was that the whole idea for the program had been dreamed up at a long, boozy lunch.  Usually, in the sober light of the following morning, such alcohol-inspired ideas are seen for exactly what they are.  Not, apparently, in the case of Let’s Do Lunch.  Whatever its origins, its entire theme is predicated around two people gorging themselves with food and booze, at lunch.  Along the way, we are treated to the self-indulgence of ths host, Maurice Murphy (pictured), who roams around clutching a video camera taking pictures of himself.  At which, I suppose, we are all supposed to laugh uproariously.”

Program Highlights (June 16-22):
World Cup:  SBS continues its daily coverage of the FIFA World Cup from Italy, with live coverage of matches screened overnight and replays the following afternoon, followed by a 90-minute highlights package at 7.00pm.  ABC takes on SBS’ overnight match coverage for regional viewers who don’t have access to SBS and also presents a nightly one-hour highlights package on all ABC stations.

Saturday:  Legal drama Rafferty’s Rules returns with new episodes screening on HSV7.

Sunday:  In the lead up to the return of dance competition That’s Dancin’, ABC screens a replay of the 1989 series grand final, presented by Paul Newman and Maureen Delacy.  Sunday night movies are In The Line Of Duty: The FBI Murders (HSV7) and For Love Alone (ATV10).  GTV9 screens the first part of mini-series Passion And Paradise, with the second and final part screening the following night.

Tuesday:  In ABC’s medical drama GP, Cathy (Sarah Chadwick) finds out she is pregnant but her relationship with Jack (John O’Hare) hits rocky ground when his initial reaction to the news is less than enthusiastic.

Thursday: In The Flying Doctors (GTV9), a troubled young man finally his past to rest when a seven-year-old car wreck is found, and the mystery of his parents’ disappearance is solved. 

Friday:  In Neighbours (ATV10), Paul (Stefan Dennis) is shocked to discover the identity of Caroline’s (Gillian Blakeney) mystery date.

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide. 
16 June 1990. Southdown Press.