David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: Channel 44

  • Good Afternoon Adelaide: Live at the Birkenhead Bridge

    Just leaving this here…

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    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.

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    – DMG

  • ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’ returns to TV

    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.

    RIP Good Afternoon Adelaide. Also Ben.

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    – DMG

  • Community TV Good. Abbott Government Bad.

    A few days ago I wrote an opinion piece about the Abbott government’s decision via Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull (artist’s impression above) to cease transmitting community television on television. It appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Age (incidentally, my first time in The Age). If you missed it, you can read it online here.

    It went a bit viral yesterday and as of this moment, there’s a “112” next to the Twitter logo and a “241” next to the Facebook logo on The Age website. Thank you very much to the people who shared it and thanks for showing your love and support for community TV in Australia.

    It must have struck a chord, because Malcolm Turnbull replied with his own opinion piece in The Age today. In it, he essentially repeats the arguments he made on his website when he made the initial announcement.

    So, I thought I’d reply to a few of his recent points Fatboy Slim-style. Right here, right now:

    “Commercial and national television broadcasters are already responding to the demands of audiences for more content online, and I envisage this trend will continue, particularly where the content is specialised and local. Nielsen’s Australian Connected Consumers 2014 report found that of the 80 per cent of Australians with the internet, 50 per cent of them watched television programs online. This represents a significant Australian audience watching TV from an internet source with the most growth coming from under 35s and over 60s.”

    So, 60 per cent of Australians do not watch television programs online. More than half the audience still prefers to watch TV on a TV.

    I agree with Malcolm this trend will continue, but that percentage just supports my call for a more gradual transition for community TV to move online. People will need to change their living room set up, purchase Internet TVs and in many cases, wait until faster, more reliable internet is available in their area. The end of 2015 is an inadequate deadline.

    Leaving to one side the fact that Malcolm Turnbull isn’t requiring the other commercial stations to transition to the internet in this same time frame (or at all).

    “Currently there are five community television services in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Apart from Geelong, because of its proximity to Melbourne, Australians outside  these metropolitan capital cities have never been able to access CTV.”

    At last year’s C31 Melbourne & Geelong Christmas party, general manager Richard McLelland told the crowd his vision to expand their free-to-air TV signal to the regional centres of Bendigo and Ballarat.

    The desire is there. The audience is there.

    The power to make it happen is yours, Minister.

    “OzTam official ratings data shows that CTV has very small audiences.  Over the last five years with an average annual daily audience in prime time (6pm to midnight) for all stations of about  6000 viewers. To put this in perspective the total viewing market is about 15 million viewers.”

    As has been said by others before me, using “average” ratings to compare the niche broadcasting of community TV to the other stations is not a fair measure and misses the point entirely.

    The nature of the diversity of programming on community TV means ratings for individual programs are going to vary wildly. C31 Melbourne & Geelong says community TV reaches 3 million viewers each month.

    Regardless, achieving high ratings is not the primary aim of community TV. It exists to give people experience in broadcasting, to air programming the other big TV stations wouldn’t touch with a ten foot TV pole and content which appeals to smaller, less commercially-viable sections of the community.

    Community TV is supposed to have smaller audiences. That’s the point.

    Does anyone know how many people actually watch those God awful shopping channels?

    “In the short term (from 2016) sixth-channel spectrum will be used to assist free-to-air broadcasters in the migration to MPEG-4, a video compression technology that is almost twice as efficient as the MPEG-2 standard they currently use. This migration will allow for more channels and better picture quality with the same amount of spectrum.”

    So, if it’s possible to have more channels on the TV spectrum… can you not just give community TV one of those channels?

    And secondly, why should we be bothering with this spectrum upgrade at all, if you say the future of television is on the internet?

    I don’t see how it’s possible to have it both ways there. Unless of course this is all bullshit and based purely on some right wing ideology.

    Community TV is somewhat of a passion of mine. If you think it’s important to keep it, I’d encourage you to sign up at Commit to Community TV, and continue sharing the passionate articles written by proponents. Including this blog entry.

    If for no other reason than just so I can see how Malcolm Turnbull responds 🙂

    Kind regards,
    TV’s David M. Green

    PS. Many thanks to Tony Sowersby for that fantastic cartoon. He draws others, you know. Check them out on Facebook!

  • I’M making 31 Questions Season 3… are YOU?

    Yes. Yes! YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!

    We’re back in the crowdfundorium that is Indiegogo to raise some legal tender for the production of our third and most likely final season of 31 Questions – coming 2014 to your local community TV station and/or Internet.

    If this is your first visit to my website and you’ve never heard of 31 Questions, you’re a dull boy, Billy.

    This is what it’s all about:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaUYb1qKVL8

    If you like what you see and would like to help MAKE the TV game show everyone’s listening about, go to our campaign page on Indiegogo and make a contribution. Like last time, there’s also some fabulous merchandise on offer, including badges.

    Did I mention we got badges?

    I’ve never seen my semen under a microscope, but I imagine it looks something like that.

    We also have NEW MUGS! They’re like the badges, but with a larger concavity at the rear, perfect for holding liquids, if you know what I mean:

    Like last time, we’re also keeping track of our crowdfunder locations on this planet of ours (to the nearest suburb). 3 days in and we’ve already had donations from FOUR different countries! And New Zealand isn’t even one of them!

    Check out our fabulous Season 3 Crowdfunder Map as it gradually becomes infected with more and more little blue markers:


    View 31 Questions Season 3 Crowdfunders in a larger map

    As of writing this blog entry, we’ve already raised an amazing $570! The goal this time is $5,000, so we’re already more than 10% of the way there.

    Last season, we managed to raise $1,846 and that was fantastic, but it still left a large gap between that figure and the actual cost of making season 2. And this time we’re hoping to invest in a totally new set and pay some of the key crew members.

    Ahh community television. It’s a low price to pay for total creative freedom.

    Big thank you to all our contributors so far. I’ll post the full list of names at the end of the campaign after December 14, and of course every donor will get a special thanks in the show’s credits.

    And merchandise is, if not in, then on the way to being in, the mail.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Past tense of Indiegogo? Indiewentwent.

  • 31 Questions Season 2 Episode 3

    S2E03 of 31 Questions premiered on C31 Melbourne & Geelong Saturday evening. See above.

    I enjoyed repeatedly slapping Anthony. And special thanks to this week’s contestants Richard and Simone. It was a tight game. Though not quite as tight as THIS WEEK’S game… Tune in on C31 Melbourne & Geelong Saturday 8.30PM (Look out for cameos from Dan Ilic and Rex Hunt!).

    In other news, to the surprise of many (including us), Season 2 began airing in Brisbane this week! It’s now on the 31 Digital schedule, Tuesdays 9PM. Those Queenslanders have obviously been preoccupied with deciding the next federal government, so no hard feelings. It’s not like they also did it last year as well.

    Na, Brisbane you’re great.

    We were due to start airing in New Zealand on Wednesday, but thanks to our good friends at Australia Post, we’re now premiering NEXT week: 9.30PM Wednesdays on Face Television from August 21. Apologies if you haven’t worked out how to use YouTube.

    But more importantly… 31 Questions BEGINS IN SYDNEY TONIGHT 9.30!

    That’s me aged 9 in Darling Harbour. I assume that water feature is still there? I remember being excited because I’d seen it in the opening (or was it the closing?) titles of Aerobics Oz-Style before Agro’s Cartoon Connection. Anyway Sydney, I’ll talk to YOU on Twitter later this evening.

    As for Adelaide… well I discovered their fabulous community television station has gone through some structural changes recently. I’m not sure exactly why. But I do know that their name, phone number and address have all changed. I also discovered this after I mailed them the first 2 episodes. In a media format they no longer accept.

    As far as I can tell, it’s no longer called “44 Adelaide”, but rather “Channel 44”. Good move, in my opinion. Why limit yourself to Adelaide? They’re looking at the big picture. And the picture is magnificent. Assuming you’re in the Adelaide metropolitan area where the picture is transmitted.

    Doesn’t look like 31 Questions will be airing in Adelaide until September or October. Though we might get a repeat of our first season before they start showing Season 2. I’ll keep you updated.

    I’ve been getting more requests for ways you can throw money at me, and to a lesser extent, the show. I can now announce there are TWO types of mugs available from the 31 Questions online store:

    Perfect for holding all types of liquids. And for the fabulous price of $20 + postage, you can support me, 31 Questions, community television AND own a mug.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Now where were we?