NEWTON'S LAW

An interview with Bert Newton taken from Australian magazine New Idea 10 August 02

While TV has changed over the decades, one face has been there for more than 40 years.

if there were ever any doubts that Bert Newton is the uncrowned king of Australian television, the reception he received at this year's Logies well and truly put paid to them.The television industry is not easily impressed by one of its own and when Bert's peers spontaneously rose to their feet and greeted him with a thunderous roar of applause, their acknowledgment said it all.

Bert's relationship with television began only a matter of months after it was launched, so a more fitting 'expert' on TV's history and the way it has mirrored - and influenced - our development as a society would be hard to find.

He recalls a fond image of the nation's first encounter with television. There were pockets of people with eyes glued to the new medium suddenly springing up outside practically every electrical store around the country,' he laughs.

'Sometimes there'd be up to 200 people, including children in pyjamas and dressing gowns, often having travelled for miles on public transport, just to plonk themselves down to watch the "magic box".' Contrary to popular opinion, Bert believes that 'for the first 20 years television brought families together'. 'It may have ended the period of us all sitting at a dining table. But remember there would have been only one TV set in a home and most of the programming was skewed at a very broad demographic (a term which wasn't even known in those days), so the family would watch as one.

'At 6pm everyone would sit with their TV meals on their laps and watch until close, which was usually around 11pm.'

Television began in 1956 but the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS) didn't come into existence until 1960. The first four years were therefore classification-free and censorship was left to the discretion of executives, producers and the talent.

'It was an unusual feeling because everyone in the industry was starting off together. We got away with a lot of stuff because there was no comparison,' he says, explaining that even in films, television was hardly mentioned because big movie studios saw it as the enemy and so they did nothing to promote it.

'It was a brand new start. Almost like a new land being discovered,' Bert muses.

About a month after commencing as host of The Late Show at Channel Seven in 1957, a producer informed the 19-year old compere that they were going to try something new. 'He told me we were going to be doing some subliminal advertising,' says Bert, admitting he had absolutely no idea at the time what the producer was talking about.

The practice was stopped the following day. Bert recalls his shock when he learnt that people had been unaware they had received advertising hype.

'My background was in radio where you were a voice without a face,' he says. 'I think it was my second night at Channel Seven working with Noel Ferrier when I was travelling home on a tram that I became conscious that people were staring at something. It was me!' he laughs.

But it was impossible to become 'too big for your boots' back in those days. With national television still a long way off, local 'stars' like Bert would leave one state as household names and arrive in another state as a virtual nobody.

BY Jill Fraser

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