Is the Price Right for Seven?

Is The Price Is Right headed for a comeback?

According to News Limited, it appears that Seven is keen to revive the age-old format to run back-to-back with Deal Or No Deal in the important lead-in hour to the 6.00pm news.

It is tipped that the revamped Price Is Right will be hosted by Larry Emdur (pictured), currently co-host of Seven’s popular The Morning Show and who hosted two previous versions of The Price Is Right for the Nine Network.  Emdur has also hosted game shows Family Double Dare, The Main Event, Cash Bonanza and Wheel Of Fortune.

News of the planned revival comes after a wave of nostalgia for the format following the recent passing of Ian Turpie who hosted the game show during the 1980s for both the Seven and Ten networks.

The Price Is Right is certainly one of the most enduring of game show formats on Australian television – usually enjoying a few years on air before taking a break and then resurfacing to an enthusiastic reception. 

It made its first appearance in the late 1950s with separate versions in each of Sydney and Melbourne.  A ‘national’ version, hosted by Horrie Dargie, launched as a daytime program on the Seven Network in 1963.

Ten years later the 0-10 Network revived the titled, based on the updated format launched in the US, with host Garry Meadows.  The program was so successful in its daytime format that the network expanded it to run in prime-time as well.

The Seven Network then launched The New Price Is Right, hosted by Turpie, in September 1981 on the back of failed early-evening game shows Celebrity Tattletales and Catch Us If You Can.  The show was a hit and ran for around four years.  Turpie reprised his role as host when Ten launched The Price Is Right as a Saturday night program as part of its ill-fated 10 TV Australia line-up of 1989.

Nine then revived The Price Is Right with Emdur as host for several years during the 1990s and then again in 2003.  The show last appeared in 2005.

Last year Emdur made a guest appearance on the US version of The Price Is Right as part of that show’s 40th anniversary celebration.

The recycling of classic TV show formats is hardly new but appears to be a trend among American producers and has seen the revival of some former Australian favourites, including Hey Hey It’s Saturday, It’s A Knockout, Young Talent Time and the recent announcement of a remake of drama series Prisoner, but success in this strategy is proving to be hard to come by.  However, The Price Is Right is one format that seems to always bounce back on a high.

Source: News.com.au

Obituary: Ian Turpie

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.

Source: Yahoo7, Ian Turpie, IMDB, TV Eye – Classic Australian Television, Daily Telegraph.

Turning the lights out at Television City

It started life at the turn of the 20th century as a piano factory, and then a soup factory.

Then, in 1956, the building at Bendigo Street, Richmond, became part of the dawn of the new industry of television and went from producing 57 varieties of soup to a variety of a completely different kind.

For over fifty years it has been ‘Hollywood-on-the-Yarra’ as it has produced television programs – variety, drama, comedy, children’s programs, sports, news and current affairs – that are among the most loved and most popular in the country.

It was where the Victorian governor Sir Dallas Brooks (pictured, above) made his grand entrance on GTV9’s opening night – 19 January 1957 – by entering the studio in a chauffeur-driven limousine. The two-hour variety program that followed, featuring names like Bob and Dolly Dyer, Toni Lamond, Frank Sheldon, Ron Blaskett, Terry Dear and Lou Toppano’s orchestra, certainly set the tone that this new channel was going to have a clear focus on light entertainment and variety – and it certainly delivered that in the decades that followed.

A few months after GTV9’s lavish opening night, a shy radio star named Graham Kennedy made his first TV appearance and shortly after made his TV hosting debut on a variety show, In Melbourne Tonight. The show would continue for over a decade and earned Kennedy the nickname of the King of Australian TV. It is a title that nobody has dared to challenge ever since.

In 1959, Kennedy was joined by Bert Newton (pictured, right, with Kennedy in 1964) – a personality from rival channel HSV7 who had resigned from his employer on-camera before making the move to GTV9. For his debut at GTV9 he was placed next to Kennedy to present a commercial during IMT. It was the beginning of a long-running professional partnership and a personal friendship that would last decades.

In 1964, with a new rival TV channel – ATV0 – about to debut, GTV9 expanded its premises to a new state-of-the-art studio, Studio 9. It was a studio built specifically for IMT but would go on to host a list of productions in the years that followed – including New Faces, The Graham Kennedy Show, The Don Lane Show (pictured), The Ernie Sigley Show, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, The Paul Hogan Show, Family Feud, Sale Of The Century, The Daryl Somers Show, Tonight With Bert Newton, Blankety Blanks, All Together Now, The Price Is Right, The Footy Show, Burgo’s Catch Phrase, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, Starstuck, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Temptation, Bert’s Family Feud and Millionaire Hot Seat.

As well as variety and light entertainment shows, 22 Bendigo Street – or ‘Television City’ as it became known – was home to several drama series including Emergency, one of the earliest TV drama series ever made in Australia, Division 4, The Sullivans, Starting Out, The Flying Doctors, All The Way, Chances, Halifax fp and Stingers.

Eric Pearce (pictured) and American Jack Little formed Melbourne’s (if not Australia’s) first newsreading duo, later making way for others including Brian Naylor, who read the news from Bendigo Street for twenty years, Peter Hitchener and Jo Hall. Mike Walsh hosted a 1960s version of Today, and Tanya Halesworth (and later Mickie de Stoop) hosted a daytime current affairs program, No Man’s Land, in the 1970s.

This Saturday night, the Nine Network pays tribute to the stars and the shows that have come from the famous studios as it prepares to move out from the building.

After Daryl Somers and his team sign off from the final episode of Hey Hey It’s Saturday for 2010 from Studio 9, Nine will cross to Bert Newton and Eddie McGuire in Studio 1, back where it all began with Sir Dallas Brookes and the early days of IMT, to present Lights, Camera, Party! – Television City Celebrates.

The two-hour special will feature some of the people, programs and magic moments that have featured from the legendary television studios over the past 53 years. The studio audience for the program will be made up entirely of past and present Nine Network personalities.

The building at 22 Bendigo Street was purchased by Vivas Lend Lease earlier this year with a plan to redevelop the historic site as a residential and retail precinct. The building’s original red brick exterior is heritage protected but the remainder of the site, including extensions such as Studio 9, will be redeveloped and will include some design aspects that will acknowledge the site’s significant heritage.

GTV9 has entered into a long-term agreement with the inner city Docklands Studios for future large scale productions – while other functions of the channel will be relocated to new premises in the Docklands precinct nearby.

Somers, whose TV career began as host of Cartoon Corner and Hey Hey It’s Saturday in the early 1970s, had previously suggested that part of the redevelopment be reserved for a TV museum and he has now been reported to be considering producing a documentary on the history of the famous studios.

Lights, Camera, Party! – Television City Celebrates. Saturday 27 November, 9.40pm. Nine (Melbourne – other areas check local guides)

Source: Herald Sun

ACA interviews Reg Grundy

It is not often that this site actively promotes A Current Affair but will make an exception for this coming Monday’s edition as host Tracy Grimshaw interviews legendary television producer Reg Grundy (pictured) and wife, actress and author Joy Chambers at their home in Bermuda.

Grundy first appeared on TV in 1959 as the host and producer of an afternoon game show, Wheel Of Fortune, which had made the move from radio to Sydney’s TCN9.  He then went on to produce more game shows during the 1960s before branching out into TV dramas and movies in the 1970s.  The list of Grundy productions read like a timeline in the history of Australian television, including Ampol Stamp Quiz, I’ve Got A Secret (where he met his future wife), Temptation, Moneymakers, Class Of ‘74, Pot Of Gold, Family Feud, Blankety Blanks, The Celebrity Game, The Young Doctors, Chopper Squad, The Restless Years, Sale Of The Century, Prisoner, Sons And Daughters, Perfect Match, It’s A Knockout, Neighbours, Secret Valley, Wheel Of Fortune, Australia’s Most Wanted, Richmond Hill, Embassy and The Price Is Right. 

Wife Chambers, a winner of two TV Week Logie awards for most popular female personality in Queensland in the late 1960s before becoming Mrs Grundy, went on to appear in a number of Grundy productions including The Restless Years, The Celebrity Game and Neighbours (most recently appearing in the lead-up to the show’s celebrated 6000th episode).  She is also an accomplished author in her own right.

As well as many Grundy dramas selling internationally – most notably Prisoner (pictured), The Young Doctors, Neighbours and Sons And Daughters – he also successfully franchised various game show and drama formats overseas, producing international versions of Sale Of The Century, Prisoner and The Restless Years.  He also produced a game show, Scrabble, for US network NBC.

He sold Grundy Television Productions to UK-based Pearson International in the mid-1990s – it has since been incorporated into the global Fremantle Media group.

Grundy was inducted into the TV Week Logie Awards’ Hall of Fame in 1993 and received Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2008. 

Despite his many years in television, Grundy has remained a very private figure and has very rarely allowed to be interviewed and the appearance on A Current Affair came as the expense of Sunday Night and 60 Minutes which had both also tried to secure an interview.

The interview is said to coincide with the release of his autobiography.

A Current Affair.  Monday 20 September, 6.30pm.  Nine*

Source: The Daily Telegraph (via The Spy Report), Sydney Morning Herald.

 

* Melbourne.  Other areas, check local guides.

GTV9 sells off Hollywood-on-the-Yarra

The address of 22 Bendigo Street, Richmond, has been one of Australian TV’s most famous and iconic addresses. 

The century-old building has for more than 50 years been home to GTV9 – a channel that began test broadcasts, covering the Melbourne Olympic Games, in 1956 before launching proper operation early in 1957.

The building was initially a piano factory when it was built in 1908 and was later converted to a Heinz factory in the 1930s before it became home to one of Melbourne’s first two commercial TV stations.

Governor Sir Dallas Brookes (pictured) was chauffeur-driven into the studios, live-to-air, before officially opening GTV9 on 19 January 1957.  Less than four months later the channel launched its new nightly variety show, In Melbourne Tonight, featuring a young radio announcer, Graham Kennedy.  Two years later Kennedy would be joined by a former HSV7 rival, Bert Newton, and the pair became an unbeatable double act.

With daytime productions, including quiz shows and children’s programs, and IMT’s nightly cavalcade of singers, dancers and performers, the building that was known as Television City became Melbourne’s own “Hollywood on the Yarra”.  In 1964 the channel expanded the premises to include a new state-of-the-art studio, Studio 9, specifically for IMT.  The new studio opened up the possibilities of large-scale variety performances and productions – hopefully to fend off competition from newcomer ATV0 which had launched from modern studios in suburban Nunawading in the same year.

Kennedy resigned from IMT at the end of 1969, but the legacy of IMT saw decades of variety and tonight shows from the same studio – including The Ernie Sigley Show, The Graham Kennedy Show, The Don Lane Show, New Faces, Tonight With Bert Newton, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, The Footy Show and, to bring the list to full circle, a ‘90s revival of In Melbourne Tonight. 

Radio DJ Mike Walsh hosted a 1960s version of the breakfast program, Today, while Eric Pearce read the evening Television City News from GTV9 before handing over to Brian Naylor at the end of 1978, who in turn handed over to Peter Hitchener twenty years later.

Game show Family Feud moved its production from TVW7 Perth to GTV9 in the late-‘70s.  Host Tony Barber then moved on to Sale Of The Century (pictured, with hostess Victoria Nicolls) from the same studios in 1980, continuing for over 20 years and more recently revived as Temptation.  Daryl Somers hosted a revival of Blankety Blanks in 1985, and, a decade later, Tim Ferguson hosted Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush.  Other game shows from the studios included Supermarket Sweep, Crossfire and two versions of The Price Is Right.  Eddie McGuire hosted Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and it’s current spin-off, Hot Seat.  In 2006, twenty years after he was suddenly axed from Nine, Bert Newton was back at Studio 9 hosting a game show, Bert’s Family Feud. 

Also to come out of 22 Bendigo Street were dramas including Emergency (one of the first TV dramas ever made in Melbourne), Hunter, Division 4, The Sullivans, Starting Out, The Flying Doctors, All The Way and Chances.

A young comedian called Rove McManus came to GTV9 to present a late-night comedy show for ten weeks in 1999.  Former D Generation cast member Mick Molloy also had a stab at a weekly show in the same year.  Neither show would see in the new millennium, though McManus took his act across to rival Network Ten.

Not content with just being “Television City”, 22 Bendigo Street was also home to radio station 3AK for nearly 30 years – after GTV9 bought the station in the early ‘60s – with its ‘Good Guys’ and ‘No Wrinklys’ pop music line-ups in the 1960s and the more relaxed ‘Beautiful Music’ in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Two years ago the building was expected to be sold for $10 million but the sale was aborted amidst the global financial crisis.  This week it was announced that the three-hectare site occupied by GTV9 has been bought by developers Lend Lease, with plans to redevelop the site into residential complex expected to be worth $400 million.

GTV9 is expected to move over the next 12 months to smaller, high-tech premises in the inner-city Docklands precinct, mirroring similar moves by rival HSV7, to the Docklands, almost a decade ago, and ATV10, to inner suburban South Yarra in the early ‘90s .  Larger studio productions are expected to be outsourced to the nearby Central City Studios.

Source: SMH, The Age, Lend Lease, City of Yarra, Australian TV Archive