Day we tuned into colour

IT was a long time coming, but on March 1, 1975 Australian “televidiots” could finally watch Grahame Bond’s overblown Aunty Jack transition to full, glorious colour.

L-R: Rory O'Donoghue as Thin Arthur and Grahame (sp ok) Bond as Aunty Jack in Aunty Jack.

It was a long time coming, but on 1 March, 1975, Australian “televidiots” could finally watch Graham Bond’s overblown Aunty Jack transition to full, glorious colour.

Preparations for C-day began in February 1972, when prime minister William McMahon announced the date for Australia to follow America, Germany and Britain to colour television transmissions. In best bureaucratic ­fashion, the transition date was set for midnight on February 28, 1975, to give studios across the country time to update transmission equipment so the entire country could switch at the same time.

Australian Broadcasting Control Board chairman Myles Wright told newspapers in July 1972 that the shift to colour would be “just like the introduction of talkies all over again”. Government advertisements promoted the transition with the slogan “March first into colour”, while city television networks created their own slogans. ABC TV invited viewers to “Come to Colour”, Seven promised “Colours Your World” and Nine boasted of “Living Colour”.

Experiments with colour television broadcasts dated to British inventor John Logie Baird’s demonstration of “Phonovision” in London in 1927, followed by a ­demonstration of colour television to scientists and journalists in New York by Bell Telephone Laboratories in June 1929.

The BBC began television broadcasts from Alexandra Palace in 1936. In July 1939 Baird and Co conducted a successful colour transmission from the Palace to a tower two miles away. The BBC was researching three colour television systems in 1950 when it ­announced it “would take some time to resolve problems raised by colour television”.

After a test transmission between Los Angeles and New York by Columbia Broadcasting at the end of 1951, the US transitioned from black-and-white to colour television between 1953 and 1974.

Germany switched to colour in 1967 as Australia began colour test broadcasts, with Melbourne station ATV-0 telecasting the Pakenham races in colour under Broadcasting Control Board supervision. But only ATV-0 executives, Australian Broadcasting Control Board representatives and invited journalists saw colour images on sets installed at ATV-0 studios.

But in Britain, watching colour television remained a challenge until 1970, when it was reported that one in 17 colour television set owners had found smoke coming from it, and one in 40 reported an explosion. Over a 12-month period, nine-tenths of colour sets broke down at least once, and one in five broke down five times or more.

In Australia, switching to colour would cost the ABC $11.5 million over three years, prime minister McMahon advised in 1972, increasing to $46 million in six years. Commercial stations were “expected to spend about $70 million in capital outlays and increased operating costs” over six years. The Broadcasting Control Board estimated colour television sets would cost about $700 each.

Channel 7 managing director Bruce Gyngell favoured phasing in colour in Australia, with Sydney and Melbourne stations being the first followed by other major capital cities, then provincial stations. But when the Broadcasting Control Board chairman met 28 country TV station managers in Bendigo in July 1972 they agreed they could meet the March 1, 1975, deadline and decided to buy necessary equipment in bulk to cut costs.

Canberra station CTC 7 chairman Arthur Shakespeare announced CTC would spend about $2 million building new studios, completed in October 1974, for colour conversion. With its new equipment up and running, and most programs arriving in colour, CTC was transmitting 80 per cent of its programs in colour four months before Australia’s designated C-day.

As sales of colour television sets boomed in the national capital, at the end of 1974 the Broadcasting Control Board wrote to CTC manager George Barlin, advising the station should only be running test transmissions in colour for a few hours a week. The Board also advised that CTC should purchase specific equipment to “cut out the colour burst” in colour programs.

When Barlin advised early in 1975 that it would take several weeks to access the equipment, the Board agreed CTC could continue colour broadcasts.

At the end of 1974, a London-based journalist promised Australians that “televidiots” would find “there is something rather hypnotic about a colour television transmission”.

And from the outset of colour transmissions, using the European phase alternating line (PAL) standard, Australians were transfixed.

Originally published as Day we tuned into colour