A Quick Look Back At 2007…

2007 was known as the year dominated by Seven in ‘07, with the Seven Network winning 38 out of the 40 rating period weeks in the year, with the other two weeks being claimed by the Nine Network.

The quiet achiever for the year was the ABC who gave the commercial networks a headache on Wednesday nights due to its line up of Spick’s and Speck’s, The Chaser’s War on Everything and Summer Heights High, only to be replaced with The Librarians when its season was over. Of course a lot of the ABC’s Chaser program’s publicity can be credited for some of the controversial sketches performed, especially when the team managed to get past security in Sydney for the APEC conference.

As mentioned above it was the year of the lucky number seven with the success of the network coming down to its locally produced shows. The juggernaut for the year was Kath and Kim defecting over from the ABC and also the networks other production City Homicide. The network was also the first to go into high definition multi-channeling in October with 7HD without any fanfare, or any inspiring programming, also lacking in an Electronic Program Guide. However 7HD added afternoon programming to is schedule in December when the channel was originally meant to launch.

2007 was a year to forget for the Nine Network with the fall from grace of C.E.O. Eddie McGuire who returned to on air duties with 1 vs 100 while still filling the role as the head of Nine. By mid year he was to step down to concentrate on his on air roles and shortly after 1 vs 100 was ‘rested’ and the network returned Who Want’s to be a Millionaire. There was some light at the end of the tunnel for the future of Nine with the return of David Gyngell as the new C.E.O. and the announcement that the Nine Network and Foxtel have secured the rights to the London 2012 Olympic Games. It was also announced that the network needed to grow its balls back if the network was going to get its ‘heart’ back.

It wasn’t such a fantastic year for Network Ten either with a fall in its share of ratings and also the death of the networks news reader Charmaine Dragun. However Ten was the first to announce that it would be offering a new high definition multi-channel in December, only to be beaten by an egar Seven Network in October out of fear that the Nine Network would be first in November only to postpone till March 2008. Ten HD launched on the 16th December with a special Totally Wild episode on Antarctica, then officially launched with the movie Black Hawk Down. Ten did however have some success with the return of Rove on Sunday nights and the return of the hit Thank God You’re Here.

SBS also had its fair share of news, especially in its own news department with Mary Kostakidis leaving the network after two decades of service, because of the changes implemented into the SBS World News Australia service, the introduction of Stan Grant and the new one hour long format. SBS also changed how it would present its advertising by having adverts placed in the middle of the program rather than have it all in between programs. The reasoning for this was because it was found people switch from SBS when the ads were on and forgot to tune back in because viewers found something else to watch in the mean time. Also their was some small talk about the possibility of SBS merging with the ABC due to a lack of funding.

As for What’s On The Tube, the site has undergone some minor and not so minor changes over 2007. The ever changing heading at the top of the page has changed so many times its even hard for me to keep track of it, and then the whole site went into a temporary purple phase. The Australian Television Archive was formed so that it would complement the blog posts by offering more images and as a resource to look back on in future years to see what has changed. More and more videos have been up-loaded to YouTube, but has been limited due to the Internet connection. The site has now settled into a new brighter yellow and orange scheme, for how long though that’s anyone’s guess, hopefully this will last quite a while.

In 2008 I hope to have more video’s up and about, as well as working on the archive to have more information such as some station history. There has also been a request to have in the archive information about community television (Channel 31) so hopefully that will be a beneficial addition. Of course the month of August will be a busy one with this being an Olympic year, so that will be covered to see how well Seven present their coverage.

For now anyway, Happy New Year and see you again in 2008…

Feel free to use any images or content on this site, but please provide a link back to where you found it, and don't forget to subscribe via RSS or the new e-mail subscription.

Popularity: 28% [?]