What Australia watched on TV on New Year’s Eve, 1959
Sixty years is a long time in television – so just how much has changed in Australia’s New Year’s Eve viewing habits? Kit MacFarlane explores Australia’s TV past in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Broadcasting fireworks on TV was a ratings success for the ABC as 2018 turned into 2019, with 1.95 million viewers. But 60 years ago, a New Year’s Eve in front of the TV was a very different experience.
I study historical television and popular culture to develop a small sense of shared experience with the people who watched those same broadcasts.
Television was still quite new in Australia in 1959, introduced to Melbourne and Sydney in 1956 and to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth three years later. Everywhere else was still waiting.
If you were one of the Australians who happened to have a TV set in 1959, what were you watching?
