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https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/07/abc-countdown-50-years-on-anniversary-shows>
"At 6.30pm on this day in 1974,
Countdown made its television debut. Perhaps
it didn’t change Australia overnight – that really happened on 1 March 1975,
when Skyhooks heralded the dawn of colour transmission in Australia with a
special midnight broadcast – but it’s safe to say music television would never
be the same again.
This weekend and next, the ABC will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
program’s appearance on our screens. Hosted by Myf Warhurst and Tony Armstrong,
Countdown 50 Years On features a long list of luminaries past and present
paying tribute, from 70s mainstays Daryl Braithwaite, Marcia Hines and Leo
Sayer to the likes of Regurgitator, Katy Steele and Kate Miller-Heidke.
It’s not just nostalgia.
Countdown maintains its hallowed place in Australian
cultural memory because nothing effectively replaced it since it last went to
air on 19 July 1987. Perhaps nothing ever could. “Sadly, I think you’ll never
see a show like it again, because times have changed,” Warhurst says.
It’s gone down in Warhurst family folklore that in 1976, when she was a
toddler, she crawled out of her brown velour beanbag to plant a kiss on the
image of Braithwaite on her television screen. The singer, wearing a wide-lapel
blue satin jacket over his bare chest, was lip-syncing Sherbet’s monster hit
Howzat. “It was the beginning of a huge life journey,” Warhurst says.
For Warhurst and millions of other Australian children and teenagers who grew
up in the 70s and 80s – this writer included –
Countdown was a formative
musical education. “
Countdown is one of the reasons I’m probably on the path
that I followed,” Warhurst says. “It was a step-off point for a lot of people.”
Our guru was Ian “Molly” Meldrum, a flawed presenter but terminally
enthusiastic music fan who never condescended to his audience. It didn’t matter
that Meldrum could barely navigate his way from the beginning of a sentence to
the end. Neither could we, so he was speaking our language. He was the eternal
teenager; he was one of us."
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