Looking back over the historic events and programs that have appeared on Australian television it might be hard to pinpoint the greatest time in its existence.
If you were to take a gander at Australian television in 1975, it’s not hard to see why many consider it the year that Australian television came into its own.
One of the main reasons of this rebirth of Australian television is that C-Day occurred March 1. C-Day was the day that all television stations across the country broadcasted full-time in colour.
1975 was also the year of two major debuts. It was the first year of a massively successful eight years of The Don Lane Show. It’s hard to really fathom how much “The Lanky Yankee” brought to the Australian airwaves.
TEN10 Sydney also launched the country’s first hour-long news program titled Eyewitness Newshour. It is a format that most news programs still take today.
This was also the year of two major controversies in Australian Television. Who could forget “the bomb blast” episode of Number 96? The groundbreaking episode was made to bring rating dominance back to the show while shaking up what the producers felt was a stale product. Producers felt that “whodunit” episodes like “the knicker snipper” were ratings gold but they wanted something even bigger. Series writer David Sales off-handedly said that they should blow up the building to get rid of characters audiences felt had run their course.
This is of course exactly what they did. The episode carried on as normal with most of the characters going on with their business until Les Whittaker finds a note that tells him that there is a bomb in the building and he has two minutes to warn as many people as he can. His efforts were in vain as the bomb did go off and killed series regulars Aldo and Roma Godolfus, Miles Cooper, and Les himself.
The cliffhanger cause fan outraged but established the show back at the top of the ratings mountain. Viewers didn’t have to wait long to find out that it was resident no-good-nick Maggie Cameron that set the bomb. She had done it as a scare tactic to get the tenants out of the building so she could sell. Her character was also written out of the show going to an asylum.
Another big television controversy for 1975 saw “The King” of Australian television banned from doing live television. While the initial reason was the start of a calling card gag for Graham Kennedy when he did his impersonation of a crow call which sounded a little too much like a four-letter swear word for the Nine Network. However, it was Kennedy’s scathing attack on the Minister for the Media, Senator Doug McClelland and the Australian Broadcasting Control Board in the opening minutes of The Graham Kennedy Show on April 16.
Kennedy said that there was a drop in local television being made as the networks were buying cheaper content from the yanks. He concluded, “It’s beneath my dignity to even go into the laughable and inane carryings-on of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board which the good Minister of the Crown, Senator Douglas McClelland, is in charge of, but I know I can speak for a lot of my colleagues in this industry, and several other industries in the entertainment field, when I demand, here, tonight, nationally, that Senator McClelland be dismissed from office; and I would suggest most strongly that the portfol … the portfolio itself be dropped.”
Kennedy said in the commercial break that he wasn’t sure the network would air the remarks. They didn’t and he resigned as a result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPfO4J8Fli8