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Four Corners: TV killed the radio star

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Middle-aged woman
Four Corners: TV killed the radio star

SUBJECTS:  History

YEARS:  9–10


Can you imagine a time when, instead of watching dramas at home on a screen, people listened to them on the radio — a time when the most popular of those dramas were made in Australia?

This Four Corners program from 1964 examines the reasons for the death of Australian radio serials, the role played by television in their demise, and the lack of local content in television and film.


Things to think about

  1. 1.How important is it to have Australian-made television dramas and movies? From the 1920s to the 1950s, radio brought about enormous changes in Australian leisure activities. Radio programs were very different from today's. They included many drama serials, most of which were soap operas like 'Blue Hills'. They were inexpensive to produce, so most were locally made. Television's arrival in 1956 changed all that.
  2. 2.What effect did the arrival of television have on Australian radio-drama serials? By what percentage had production of commercial radio drama been reduced? How did this affect work opportunities for Australian actors and writers? What point does Hal Alexander make about the impact of American television drama in Australia in the 1960s? What was the state of the Australian film industry?
  3. 3.Among the people interviewed in this clip was Ken Hall, a former pioneer of the Australian film industry who worked as an executive for Sydney's Channel 9 television in the 1960s. Consider the reasons he gives for his station's failure to make any Australian television drama. Discuss whether you find those reasons convincing or whether there could have been other reasons.
  4. 4.Between 1957 and 1978, the ten most popular television drama series in Australia were US productions. Interview at least two Australians who grew up in that era, to find out how much the US dramas influenced their ideas. Using your findings as evidence, write an argument outlining your beliefs about the extent to which US television dramas influenced Australian popular culture.



Date of broadcast: 1 Jan 1964


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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