50 years of Australian TV - An insider's view 1956-2006
Author: Peter Luck Publisher: New Holland Recommended retail $39.95AU

Only a few thousand of us had TV sets when television began in Australia on September 16, 1956. Most of the population didn't care too much - it was too expensive and who wanted an "idiot box" anyway? But when the neighbours bragged about seeing Dawn Fraser and Betty Cuthbert and Murray Rose winning gold medals at the Melbourne Olympics, without leaving their living rooms, it started to niggle a bit. And when we caught a glimpse of I Love Lucy and she could make us laugh even from inside a shop window while we huddled outside on the footpath….well…. maybe… Within a year the TV audience in Sydney and Melbourne had grown tenfold and soon we would have - wait for it - three stations! 50 Years of Australian Television by one of the familiar figures of the Australian media during the past four decades - journalist, photographer, TV presenter and producer, Peter Luck - brings back many fond memories from television's first half century. Here are insights gained from encounters with Get Smart's Don Adams, Robert Vaughn, The Man from UNCLE, Bewitched's Erin Murphy, Alan Alda and Jamie Farr of M*A*S*H and John Astin, Gomez in The Addams family. Batman, Adam West, and Robin, Burt Ward, speak to Peter - but not to each other. But this book is far more than just tales from Tinsel Town. Peter Luck was a pioneer of television current affairs in Australia as a member of the original This Day Tonight team, he produced and presented the opening night program for SBS, introduced the "Hypothetical" to Australia and created two mammoth year-long award winning television series documenting the history of Australia. He's made hundreds of programs while working for every network in Australia and rubbed shoulders with the men and women who created our TV industry - men like Bruce Gyngell, the first face on television, first quiz show host and first head of SBS, proprietors such as orphan-made-good, Kerry Stokes, along with the trail blazing women like Caroline Jones, host of Four Corners and Australian Story. Best of all, along the way, Peter photographed them all for posterity - from international celebrities like Academy Award winners Geoffrey Rush (Shine) and Dean Semler (Dances with Wolves), to his erstwhile neighbours over the back fence in Balmain, George Negus and Kerry O'Brien. His camera gets up close and personal to his friends including Bill Peach, Gerald Stone, Mike Carlton and Richard Carleton, the late Andrew Olle and many others, to create a rich and nostalgic album - a treasure trove of stories, facts, trivia, observations and anecdotes for those who've loved and loathed the telly for the past 50 years.