Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 12 December 1956, page 10


TELEVISION PARADE

● Channel 7 lurched on to the air last Sunday night with a one-and-a-half hour variety show that might have been sponsored by the two rival stations.

JUST about everybody

in Sydney who could sing, recite, or dance round a maypole was there—with

bells on.

Artists included George Foster with, of course, the in-evitable impersonation of Mo, Virginia Paris, loads of people from the Phillip Street Theatre, and an unidentified dancing couple.

As a variety show the pro-gramme was marred by almost non-existent lighting, poor make-up, crude camera work, and rough continuity.

The Phillip Street players were out of their depth at Epping. If they have any sense they'll return at once to Phillip Street and stay there.

Intimate revue is not tele-vision material. Even Noel

Coward flopped when he tried

it.

Channel 7 will beam six hours of pro-

grammes,

Monday through to Friday from 4.30 p.m. to

10.30 p.m., and its em-phasis is on live participa-tion shows that will dominate its week-day viewing time.

Highlight of their film shows will undoubtedly be their Sunday night theatre programme from 8 until 9.30, which will show feature films bought as a package deal from London Films.

First in the series, to be seen on Sunday, December 9, is "Mr. Benning Drives North," with John Mills.

Others to be seen shortly include "The Private Lives of Henry VIII," "The Ghost Goes West," "The Druin," and "The Small Back Room."

It sounds like a programme worth seeing.

ANNETTE MACARTHUR ONSLOW, of Macquarie Grove, Camden, with her puppet, Nicky. Annette has made her television debut and hopes to return soon on Channel 2.

THERE are those who argue

that a picture of a pretty girl is self-explanatory. How-ever, the two pretty girls on this page are here for a reason.

They are, for want of a better term, "TV starlets."

Annette Macarthur Onslow is perhaps a starlet with a difference, because you may never see her on a television

screen.

However, that fellow sit-ting on her shoulder is some-body she hopes you will be seeing a lot of. He is a pup-pet and his name is Nicky. According to his owner he "hopes to be a star one day."

Annette first started pulling puppet strings while studying Fine Arts at the East Sydney Technical College. Since then she has worked with pup-peteer Norman Hetherington doing shows for a number of

Sydney retail

stores.

She made her television debut on

ABN's opening night and is scheduled for return perfor-

mances in the New Year. She will probably appear with Hetherington and his puppets in ABN's Children's Club. ★ ★ ★

MARGARET MARSHALL,

on the other hand, is already an experienced tele-vision performer. She does commercials for TCN's Sun-day night News Magazine, "hosts" a drama programme in mid-week, and does a number of "voice over" an-nouncing jobs for Channel 9 whenever required.

She is also TCN's film and sound-effect librarian. Mar-garet is 22, English born, came to this country seven years ago, and has worked

MARGARET MARSHALL, glamor-girl of TCN. Margaret, 22, is English born and in between her television appear-

ances is the TCN librarian.

as a librarian and announcer for radio stations in Sydney

and Melbourne. ★ ★ ★

A FRIEND of mine who was working on the hustings during the municipal elections last Saturday (December 1) reported that the unusually large ballot paper for the elec-tion of Sydney City Council aldermen caused a lot of trouble for voters.

One voter, presented with his ballot paper with more than 100 names on it, com-mented that voting was "more difficult than tuning in that blasted television set I've got." ★ ★ ★

A PROGRAMME well

worth watching regularly is the Channel 9 "double-bill" on Friday nights between 8 and 9. In this hour two half hour dramas are presented Celebrity Playhouse and Douglas Fairbanks Presents.

Both programmes can be relied upon for good stories and at least one "name" actor

or actress.

On Friday (December 7) in Celebrity Playhouse Stephen McNally stars in "House Between Flags," which is yet another drama based on the American Civil War.

It deals with the plight of the desperate Confederate officers who keep two women as hostages in their own house while Union soldiers patrol the neighborhood.

One of the soldiers impor-tunes the lady of the house (Sylvia Sidney) and eventually the leader of the desperate trio is forced to make a de-cision—to sacrifice her or their freedom.

The title of the Douglas Fairbanks Presents drama is "Provincial Lady," which is taken from the play of the same name by Russian play-wright Ivan Turgenev. It stars

Douglas Fairbanks, jun., and Margaretta Scott. ★ ★ ★

A NEW television develop-ment in America augurs well for Australian country towns that are too small to support a full-size television

station.

To build and operate a television station in an Aus-tralian capital city is a mil-

lion pound enterprise. Rates

for commercials have to be

high because of the terrific overhead involved. This has

effectively ruled out tele-vision station centres like

Orange, Lithgow, Goulburn,

Wagga, and Canberra.

However, America has now produced a "package trans-

mitter" which it would be possible to install with all other equipment in a town like Orange for about £120,000.

With a station like this Orange would be able to tele-vise films and live pro-grammes, and in the fullness of time would be able to re-ceive via microwave link programmes relayed from the mother station in Sydney. ★ ★ ★

THERE are two principal

methods of relaying pro-grammes from one station to another. The first is by microwave link, which consists of beaming the signal from one high point to a microwave link on another high point, which relays it again until you reach the second station.

The second system is by coaxial cable, which is a direct link between stations.

It looks as if Sydney and

Melbourne will be linked by coaxial cable, the route hav-ing been already surveyed. Incidentally, when a television signal is not being transmitted

the cable is capable of hand-ling 7000 telephone calls simultaneously.