Comments on: Vale Peter Conroy : October 23rd, 1938 – September 9th, 2009

By: Samuel Francis

Samuel Francis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:48:27 +0000

Milton Francis was my grandfather and it makes me so happy to hear that he was a respected and loved member of the olympic and channel 9 community.

By: Steve Shanahan

Steve Shanahan — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:56:10 +0000

Peter Conroy was Station Manager and General Sales Manager when I joined STW9 as an accounts clerk in August 1967. Every month I had to face Peter to get him to approve Credit Notes for Advertisers because the Station had charged them incorrectly or the Advertiser claimed we had erred. This could be an intimidating experience. However, Peter was scrupulously fair, listened to my ramblings with great patience and approved my recommendations where appropriate.In a very short time I got to like him a lot as well as appreciating his immense intelligence and great ability. From – mostly unreliable – memory Peter left around the time of the venture into the live Tonight shows in 1968. I always felt that Peter Conroy was a great loss to STW when he joined Parkes Clemenger Advertising Agency. A number of years after Peter left I produced a fairly comprehensive rate-card for the sale of airtime on the Station. There were a couple of hundred calculations involved (in the days before PCs.)Despite double checking I had made one small mistake – Peter Conroy found it!
Peter Conroy led a Sales Team at Channel 9 that included some very talented people: John Lord-Football, John Foote-Drama,Frank Oliver-Cricket, Ron Guyot-WW2 Hero and Milton Francis-Olympic Rower.I worked with Milton during all of my tenure at STW.It was always an enjoyable and often highly humorous experience. Milton – like Ron Guyot in Sydney -earned the confidence and, often, friendship of the relevant Ad Agency people in Melbourne. Even when STW ratings were not so good, Milton managed to generate more than his fair share of ad revenue. This success was due, in no small part, to a gregarious personality that was very,very infectious.
To hear of the passing of these two great men around the same time is particularly poignant.

By: Ian Parkes

Ian Parkes — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:56:58 +0000

I first met Peter in the mid sixties when he was Sales Manager at 6KY. From the very beginning, I liked his style and we had an instant rapport. We lured him away from STW9 in late 1968 and he was a Director of Parkes Clemenger until he reinvented himself in 1982. Peter had many great qualities, but chief amongst them were his loyalty and his honesty. We shared many successes – and a few setbacks – and the operative word is ‘shared’. When Peter set up his sports marketing consultancy in an office in West Perth, he and I continued our relationship with long talks over many cups of coffee. We remained friends right to the end. We met in person for the last time when he was in Perth this time last year and it was sad to see the evidence of his decline. But, Peter being Peter, in all our succeeding telephone conversations, remained stoical. He was a very special person – a great business partner and a great friend.

By: Peter Harries

Peter Harries — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:16:52 +0000

The news of the passing of Peter Conroy reminds me of the joy of the day when Noelle brought their baby boy to Channel 9. A very sad day was when the friends and associates of the Conroys gathered to commemorate the loss of that son Cameron, an outstanding Pilot Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. Peter Conroy was ever smiling, optimistic, enthusiastic and able to apply himself totally to whatever the project in hand. I always enjoyed the company of that truly ‘gentlemanly’ individual. I usually accept death as being the inevitable lot of everybody, but on this occasion I really wish that such a good man had been spared longer to enjoy with Noelle,his retirement in Tasmania.