This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme.
My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP).
JF: We were talking last week about the establishment of channel 0, and it occurs to me that really they fought early a bit to start with didn’t they, with that frequency problem. What was all that about?
MP: Well, what happened… I filmed them digging out a tunnel and building and there was an interview with Reg in front of it, and we used to put out weekly bulletins through the tower which was already operational. And from the tower we used to play music and show some silent footage of channel 0 being built.
Once the building was finished and the equipment started to come in, the tech was really ripped – you know, they were like really surprised. ‘What is this? Gee whiz, this is the latest where you don’t have the wires all over the place but you have a little slide that you put it in a rack!’ and they were surprised at the advancement in technology. And that was put into the equipment, because most of the techos that I had from ABC or 9, and they were used to old type of piece of copper wire and soldering, where you had to look for faults or anything else. But here, you had racks that you actually could do a slide up with another slide in, with little transistors and what have you, and things got fixed.
The equipment that arrived was first class. It was American equipment, first class. And once we went on air, picture was beautiful – except you couldn’t see it in Melbourne because it was a different frequency! It was a frequency made for long distance. You could actually… when we were in Hayman *Island doing a story there with Mary Queen? we could actually receive little snippets of channel 0 from Melbourne, up as far as Queensland.
Well, I don’t know whether Reg put something special into there so we could watch it because this was his island! But you couldn’t do it in Melbourne. So they tried everything.
They invented firstly, they were going round homes and free of charge adjust their television sets, which meant changing the direction of the antenna and changing something else – which interfered with the other channels. So that wasn’t good enough, and somebody designed a little black box that you put it in through your aerial and your television set, and they were given free to people in Melbourne and surrounds, just anywhere they want it, so they can put it onto their television set so that they could see channel 0.
Well, that worked but not 100 percent because you wouldn’t have everybody looking at putting some additions to it. You know, it’s different now with a set top box or whatever. But in those days it was nuisance. So basically, channel 0 was so far behind as far as viewers were concerned, that the revenue wasn’t coming in because advertisers weren’t keen to give you money when you can’t be received in Melbourne!
So that was a constant struggle.
JF: But the programs were good programs?
MP: There were some terrific programs. Magic Circle Club, Young Talent Time, Ray Taylor Show – there were some very very good programs that would have rated the pants off everybody else if they could have been received in Melbourne.
JF: So what was the attitude of the people on the road? Other crews, did they look down on channel 0?
MP: Oh, they just sniggered. What are you going to go with this for, you can’t even see you anyway!’ You know, what are you bothering about? Which is a bit of bullying to put you down in what you do, because Melbourne news were doing really well and at one stage they were beating everybody. And then they had to do something about it, so they, channel 9 used money to buy people out! (Laughs)
JF: Was that when they started to get personalities for the news?
MP: Yeah. One that really pulled the plug from under channel 9 was (David) Johnson and Jana (Wendt) with their sort of humorous little bit of bantering around, plus we had quite a concise news service. Our pictures were always good, we were always filmed within the top time of providing service, and channel 9 discovered that they were losing ratings left, right and the middle.
Channel 7 wasn’t even in the race. So what happened? They bought Jana and then they bought what’s her name – Jo Pearson. So the personalities were gone, the type of news service was gone. And Johnson alone just couldn’t pull them in.
JF: Yeah, I remember that when I came in 76, I think Bruce Mansfield was reading the news for channel 0, and maybe Naylor was possibly over at 7, or Johnson.
MP: Yes. Well, Bruce was a bit of disaster.
JF: He wasn’t really a newsreader was he?
MP: Well, he’s Mister 10 percent. (chuckles) No, not really…
JF: In fact, having Bruce on board was heavy baggage in a way, because news reading – he was regarded more as an entertainer wasn’t he.
*MP: Well, he was just a voice over man really, like Geoff? Like Smith at channel 9. He’s been there for years, but to put him down as a newsreader or whatever the management did…
The problem was that the management keep changing, and the management keep changing people.
For instance, we had a program called ‘Dateline’ which was fronted up by Barry McQueen, Mickey *deStoup, Andrew Carroll, Phil Monteley? And that was rating up to about 26 – 28. So every time the ratings came out and they were high, the program was changed to a different time slot. And then the ratings would drop down and gradually work it up again, as soon as it goes up to a higher figure – stop it there, put it somewhere else!
And final knockout was when we did a story about an agricultural college in Sunbury discharging pigsty into the local creek. Beautiful pictures of green slime getting into the creek and pigs just about 2 metres from the creek itself. Everything’s overflowing, flowing into the creek, and well of course, we got clobbered by people who said that whoever is making disreputable of them, and the nuns refused to fly and the friars used to stop praying – and that was the end of Dateline.
Because Dateline was virtually based on ‘you ring us and we’ll go and investigate’. Which was a story that actually made Willesee rich afterwards, with his dude busting which we did for years. Except that when we started rating, the program was taken off.
JF: What was the story with the nuns and the friars? I’m not quite with you there.
MP: Well the friars owned the piggery and the school, Whitefriars. And we had two priests actually turn up in our boardroom and basically, blatantly say ‘Well, you know, consider the possibility of withdrawing our support for transport as far as our people are concerned unless you do something about this problem.’ Political pressure.
JF: Did political pressure happen a lot? Was Reg quite happy for the news to run as it did?
MP: Basically he was really happy for the news to run as it did. His management was considering the possibility of losing a lot of aircraft passengers one way or another, so management says ‘Look, we’ll just have to fold.’ Same thing, we had a story on swimming pools – roman pools, which is same company that is manufacturing blinds and what have you, and garage doors.
Well the pools were alright, except that what they were doing, the walls of the dugout and the plastic, they used to put polystyrene in it. Well of course, polystyrene is not strong enough to withstand the pressure of the water, and the pools used to crack within about a fortnight after being installed, and they wouldn’t accept the responsibility because they didn’t really know what was going on. Well they DID, but then they, you know.
So we did two stories on that, on two pools, showing what was wrong and what they looked like, and of course the tear jerkers, my children for Christmas, and all this sort of crap. And of course the company that manufactured them said ‘Okay, fine. We’ll withdraw all our advertising of the rest of our products.’
So every time you did something wrong, you were dead against the wall. You didn’t have protection.
JF: You can’t really run a current affairs show and not upset people.
MP: No.