She might be only 18 years old, but Kym Wilson (pictured) has emerged from an acting novice to a talented professional, with acclaim for her performances in the film Flirting, stage production The Crucible and mini-series Brides Of Christ. And she is optimistic that her decision to join A Country Practice is a positive career move. “You have to choose roles that are going to fulfil you,” she told TV Week. “That is why I chose A Country Practice as the soap I wanted to do. It has been going for 10 years, the people I work with are fantastic actors and it has that extra dimension by dealing with issues in society, which perhaps the other soaps do not do.” The young star has also taken on an additional on-air role as co-host of Seven’s Saturday morning Video Smash Hits, although is wary of becoming over-exposed or being pigeonholed as a “personality” rather than an actress. “That was my concern when I chose to do Video Smash Hits – that I wouldn’t, without degrading Sophie, become another Sophie Lee, who is seen more as a TV personality than an actress because she did The Bugs Bunny Show before she did The Flying Doctors.”
It may be a ratings winner for the Ten Network, but its weekly “tabloid” current affairs show Hard Copy (hosted by Gordon Elliott, pictured) could soon be axed due to a falling out between the network and Paramount, the owners of the concept. Paramount is believed to have notified Ten that it wants out of the deal when the current batch of 13 episodes is completed, due to Ten failing to comply with certain changes that had been requested of the Australian franchise. The termination of the agreement would mean that the show’s title can not be used in Australia, or that any reports from the US version can be broadcast here. But Network Ten boss Gary Rice has denied any rift with Paramount and insists that production of Hard Copy is business as usual.
E Street star Alyssa-Jane Cook (pictured) always insisted that she wanted her exit from the show to be dramatic, but admits that her final scenes with the series have been her most challenging. Her character, Lisa Bennett, finds herself at the mercy of E Street’s serial killer Mr Bad (Vince Martin) who has kidnapped her and locked her in a freezer in a bid to lure his targets Sheridan (Kate Raison) and Wheels (Marcus Graham) to their deaths. Cook is not about to give away the outcome of the storyline, but says the scenes were amongst her most difficult. “By the end of the 14-hour shoot, I was emotionally and physically exhausted,” she said.
TV Week has announced a new era as it embarks on changes to production techniques and its format. This week’s edition includes a special eight-day program guide – Saturday to Saturday – as from next week the magazine will feature program listings from Sunday to Saturday, while the magazine’s on-sale day will change from Monday to Thursday. This change, incorporated with tighter production deadlines, will see the magazine report more up-to-date stories and offer a more accurate program listing. Despite the changes, the cover price of TV Week will remain at $1.70.
All Together Now star Rebecca Gibney has broken her silence on her private life by denying reports that while on a three-week holiday to the United States that she and her fiance, singer Jack Jones, had been secretly married in a Las Vegas chapel. “Marriage crossed our minds at some point, but we decided against it,” she told TV Week. “But we haven’t run off to Las Vegas to have a quickie wedding.”
John Laws says…
”Perhaps, as a nation, we should all have been watching the documentary about the Snowy Mountain hydro-electric project, aptly screened over the Australia Day weekend on the ABC. By any standards the Snowy project was a heroic undertaking, in both engineering and human terms. It took 25 years to complete and it ranks as one of this nation’s greatest achievements. Here was a mammoth engineering feat brought to life by Australians and “new” Australians from Europe, most of them displaced persons from World War II. The ABC documentary team interviewed a handful of the thousands of people who worked on the Snowy project, but their stories seemed to embrace all its spirit and courage. Interestingly, the general feeling among them was that a scheme like the Snowy could never be built today. Way back in 1949, when Ben Chifley’s government got it off the ground, there was no conservation movement!”
Program Highlights (Melbourne, February 15-22):
Saturday: Saturday afternoon sport includes golf on both ABC (West Australian Ladies’ Classic) and Seven (Australian Masters), while Nine presents a highlights package of the Winter Olympic Games. Nine’s evening is dominated by the return of Hey Hey It’s Saturday, followed by more live coverage of the Winter Olympic Games from Albertville, France.
Sunday: More golf on ABC and Seven, while Nine presents highlights of the Reebok Blacktop Basketball, from Adelaide’s Clipsal Powerhouse Stadium. Evening programs include the return of multi-lingual current affairs program Vox Populi (SBS) and Brian Naylor’s documentary Australia From The Outside Looking In (Nine). Sunday night movies are Good Morning Vietnam (Seven) and K-9 (Ten), up against the Winter Olympics (Nine).
Monday: In Mother And Son (ABC), Arthur (Garry McDonald) brings a pet budgie home for Maggie (Ruth Cracknell) after she is upset by her son Robert (Henri Szeps) – but how this leads to 10 naked dentists dancing on a golf course has to be seen to be believed!
Tuesday: ABC’s consumer affairs program The Investigators is back for another year, followed by drama series GP where a new locum (played by Christopher Bailey) arrives at the practice, only to have his wife turn up and reveal that he is not who he says he is. In SBS’ current affairs program Dateline, reporter Maeve O’Meara profiles influential Irish writer Colm Tóibín.
Wednesday: Astrophysicist Graham Phillips and journalist Cathy Johnson join ABC’s science program Quantum as it returns for its eighth year. This year is the International Year of Space and, to mark the occasion, Quantum will begin a series of reports on everything from space junk to space technology. The 40th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne is documented in a two-hour BBC special, Elizabeth R (ABC), following the Queen on her many official duties over 12 months and giving a rare glimpse of her more informal moments.
Friday: Dateline (SBS) features a report on Simone Harvari, France’s top TV producer, who heads a company where the majority of employees are female. In Neighbours (Ten), a reunion with old mates has devastating implications for Doug (Terence Donovan).
Saturday: Nine debuts its new Saturday morning show, Saturday At Rick’s, hosted by Steven Jacobs with Tania Lacy, featuring cartoons, video clips and interviews. Nine then crosses to New Zealand for the Benson And Hedges World Cup cricket – Australia versus New Zealand. ABC also has cricket with live coverage from the North Sydney Oval of the Ladies’ International Super Test: Australia versus England.
Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide. 15 February 1992. Southdown Press
Kate’s hush-hush romance 
‘I’m shocked it’s come to this…’ 
Good news for fans of ABC’s Mother And Son, with news that the popular comedy (starring Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald, pictured) is returning in a new series in the latter half of 1991 – ending speculation that the end of the show might be near with reports that cast member Henri Szeps was considering leaving the close-knit cast. But Cracknell, who plays Maggie Beare, expects Szeps will be back for the new series. “I hope so,” she says. “I’m sure he will. You couldn’t get anyone else to take the role.”
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.
