Another lost recording of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ has been uncovered!
The laserdisc transfer from the collection of late Hallet Cove video archivist Ben Felixstove features part of a 1990 outdoor broadcast at Port Adelaide to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the iconic Birkenhead Bridge.
‘Good Afternoon Adelaide: Live at the Birkenhead Bridge’ will air on Channel 44 Adelaide, Monday 17 June at 9PM.
Followed by 8PM Monday 1 July and 2PM Friday 5 July on Channel 31 Melbourne & Geelong. And 11PM Thursday 11 July on WestTV Perth.
‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ was a South Australian television institution. The one-hour chat show aired live across SA and into the silver city of Broken Hill weekdays at 2PM from 1989 to 1992.
Hosted by journalist Jeremy Dome and business identity Norman Vine, the show featured news, celebrity interviews, live music, talkback callers, lifestyle segments, paid advertorials and a who’s who of Adelaide royalty.
Like a lot of local Adelaide telly, the show became a victim of increased networkisation from the eastern states and GAA was cancelled in 1992. As a final insult, the station’s master tapes were later sold and used for episodes of “Wheel of Fortune”. Sadly, very few recordings of the show still exist today.
Ahoy hoy, I thought I’d do a bit of real journalism for a change and copy and paste straight from an unsolicited press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ is coming to Channel 44 Adelaide and Channel 31 Melbourne & Geelong, Monday 5 March at 9PM.
[Tuesday, 27 February 2018 – ] ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ was a South Australian television institution. The one-hour chat show aired live across SA and into the silver city of Broken Hill weekdays at 2PM from 1989 to 1992 during an era when Adelaide truly was the place to be (before Victoria stole the slogan for their number plates, along with the Formula One Grand Prix).
Hosted by journalist Jeremy Dome and business identity Norman Vine, the show featured news, celebrity interviews, live music, talkback callers, lifestyle segments, paid advertorials and a who’s who of Adelaide royalty.
Like a lot of local Adelaide telly, the show became a victim of increased networkisation from the eastern states and GAA was cancelled in 1992. As a final insult, the station’s master tapes were later sold and used for episodes of “Wheel of Fortune”. Hence very few recordings of the show still exist today.
However, when Hallett Cove amateur video archivist Ben Felixstove passed away last year, several Betamax tapes were uncovered by his family, featuring home video footage of Ben introducing some of his favourite ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ clips recorded off TV.
Ben’s tapes have been eagerly snapped up by C44 Adelaide and C31 Melbourne and six half-hour ‘best-of ‘episodes of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ will be broadcast for the first time in more than a quarter of a century beginning Monday 5 March at 9PM.
This week June 1 to 5, community television in Australia is having a week of action to call attention to the fact they’re still facing the axe at the end of the year when the Federal Government turns off their TV transmission.
I wrote an article about all this for The Age last year. Aside from my middle initial mysteriously disappearing from The Age website, nothing much has changed since then – not least my firm belief that community television is an important part of the Australian media landscape and deserves to exist.
Sign the petition. Like the Facebook page. Send a Tweet. Write to your local MP and/or Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Tell someone you think community TV and the thousands of hours of content created every year by thousands of volunteers is important and they should have more time to make the transition to an online distribution business model.
Very sad this week to hear veteran ABC director Joe Murray passed away Wednesday morning.
Joe directed some of Australia’s most memorable TV comedies, including The Late Show and DAAS Kapital. He was vision mixer on Countdown and The Gillies Report. Backberner, Recovery, The D Generation – the list goes on.
I had the pleasure of working with Joe last year when he came out of retirement to direct the third season of 31 Questions. He was very generous with his time and taught us all so much about how to make television. He was always cool, calm and collected. When there was chaos in the studio, I’d hear Joe speak with that softly-spoken voice of his and I knew it was all under control. And I loved hearing his stories about the old days at the ABC.
He shared his wealth of knowledge and experience with a new generation of television-makers. It was a rare opportunity and an honour to work with a legend. We will always cherish the brief time we had with Joe, and he will be sorely missed among the cast and crew.
My thoughts are with Joe’s family and close friends at this difficult time. RIP.
By the way, hope you’re enjoying these sequel title gags. Got a bit tricky to find titles after 7…
Anyway… 31 Questions! We’re done!
And the ratings are IN. We broke all previous records this season with the Channel 31 Ratings Machine indicating 46,000 people in Melbourne & Geelong tuned in to our 4th episode on June 28. Beats the hell out of our previous best of 37,800 for our Season 2 finale last year. These days with all the competition from the plethora of digital channels, YouTube, PacMan and hula hoops, that some damn good figures.
I assume.
Personally, I reckon the best episodes of Season 3 are 1, 6 and the finale. And what a way to go out. Highlights of Ep 8 include the contractually required “Sophie’s Choice” segment, in which contestants Aaron and Naomi sing for points; Sophie and Anthony’s all-French exchange and one very special cameo.
If you missed the season finale when it aired on C31 Melbourne & Geelong on July 26, or you haven’t watched it on YouTube yet, look away now as I ruin the surprise.
A wonderful moment and by far the biggest round of applause we ever received of all the episodes.
31 Questions: the little game show that could, has come a long way since that first pilot 4 years ago. So many people have helped make the show possible. A nice way to illustrate is to take a look at the crew photos, starting with our 2nd pilot shoot in 2011.
Also note, I’m holding a pot plant above Simon Eastwood’s head:
Season 1, 2012:
Season 2, 2013:
Season 3, 2014:
Just by these 4 photos, you can also see how the whole thing has evolved: The set, logo, lighting, the number of people involved and just the general level of organisation too.
Funnily enough, I didn’t begin with the crew photo from our 1st pilot because our level of organisation in those early days was not sufficient to organise a group photo.
This is the closest I’ve got from our disastrous first shoot in 2010:
Side note, get a load of the Question Mk #1 jacket:
I believe that was a rush job the night before… Where was I?
So my point is literally hundreds of hands and thousands of fingers have worked on 31 Questions. 99 per cent of them for no money. And it’s the little touches you don’t even think about that bring out the best in a big project like this. People solved problems and did things on this show I don’t even know about. You could even say we got this far thanks to “the wisdom of friends”.
I probably wouldn’t, but I mean you COULD say that, if you wanted.
Any way you look at it, it was teamwork made this show. It wasn’t perfect, but we had far more hits than misses. It’s just about the best community television can be.
