The passing of Lady Sheila Cruthers Lady Sheila with Sir James Cruthers and part of the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art Kerry Edwards/The West Australian © With sadness we report that Lady Sheila Cruthers, a passionate art collector and wife of Sir James Cruthers, who established Channel Seven in Perth, died on Friday 30 December 2011, aged 86. She provided vital support to Sir James, who she met in 1945 just before he started work at The West Australian as a journalist at the Perth Daily News, after his war service in the RAAF. Lady Cruthers, who was born in 1925 as the ninth child...

We present here some nostalgia and the mostly good news stories that have happened in Perth, Western Australia during 2011. Though there were a few regrets with some much loved icons being demolished, there are also many new and exciting developments taking place in the new year. This includes plans for the future with reports on the almost complete Perth Arena, Perth’s proposed new stadium, the lowering of the railway with a new centre for the city and the futuristic riverfront developments. Perth is the most isolated city in the World, yet it is a modern metropolis with sunny...

Brian Williams (1st June, 1934 – 12th December, 2011) Peter Goodall sadly advised that Brian Williams (1934-2011) passed away at 6:40am on Monday 12th December, 2011, at the Kalamunda Hospital palliative care unit, following an operation and therapy, after suffering a brain tumour as a secondary cancer. Brian was convalescing at home before entering the Mount Hospital for three weeks following by the Kalamunda Hospice for one week. Channel Seven folk will remember Brian as a producer and director of many early programs at TVW from 1959 to 1967 and then from 1978 to 1979. Whilst...

Lamenting the loss of local Perth TV content and investigating modern means for re-cultivating it… regaining some semblance of local control. If you want to know where the local bands are playing, the newest show in town and where’s the latest club or nightspot in Perth, then television is no longer the best place to look, unless people have discovered it on the Community TV channel, Community Radio Station, or newspaper? We were better informed when there was lots of local live shows on 7, 2 and 9. Not only that but Seven and Michael Edgley were cross promoting everything from the...

Vic Kitney Tribute June Holmes sadly reported the passing of Vic Kitney, who for those working at STW9 in the 1960s, will remember as the station’s first Chief Engineer, from before the station was built and opened in 1965 until 1968. Cedric Woods with Vic Kitney at the TVW 50th anniversary in October 2009 Vic married Lorna Romey (1928-1998) on 1 April 1950 at St Peters, Ballarat, Victoria. There are three surviving children, Michael, Roger, and Karen from that union. In 1960, Vic married Evelyn McCullagh and have a son Philip. Vic served in the RAAF with the Number 3 Telecommunications...

The end of Local TV… or is it? At a recent gathering of folk involved in the media, former TVW Managing Director Kevin Campbell detailed the desirable affects of an intensely-local television format, which proved most successful in Canada. Former TVW Managing Director Kevin Campbell This is the Citytv concept. Kevin also outlined his funding initiative for community television, and the worth of this medium as a means of maintaining local content, since the big networks have moved away from providing this adequately. This notion involved commercial stations giving a small percentage...

New Age Museums can dramatically boost tourism In our recent story titled “Finding a new home for TV stations and memorabilia” we pointed out that the Australian Museum of Motion Picture and Television (AMMPT) has been seeking a home for the last decade, without success. It would seem that remembering our immediate cinema, radio and television past is not the highest priority in certain quarters. Meanwhile, the Wireless Hill Telecommunications Museum is undergoing changes where there will be a different emphasis and style of presentation… designed to appeal to more people and...

Most Popular WA TV History Web Pages According to Google Analytics, the WA TV History web site has to date had 1,145,714 successful requests for individual web pages. The actual figure is much larger than that as Google Analytics were not installed on the site as of day one. The visitors come from all over the globe, with the vast majority coming from Australia, followed by the Philippines, United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Over this period, our peak readership was during October 2009, following the many stories on Seven folk leading up to TVW’s 50th anniversary. The...

From Papers to PCs: the story of the media in Western Australia Exhibition from 27 October 2011 to 15 January 2012 The story of newspapers, telegraph, cinema, radio, television and the internet, and the impact they have made on the lives of Western Australians over the years. Media Exhibition at the State Library of WA Two Channel Seven veterans, Richard Ashton and Gordon McColl, visit the State Library of Western Australia’s latest exhibition at 25 Francis Street in Northbridge. Gordon McColl and Richard Ashton It was of particular interest to both...

Finding a new home for TV stations and memorabilia The ABC has moved house to soon be followed by Seven, Nine and possibly Ten. Moving, demolition and rebuilding seems to be all the rage in Perth at the moment. A number of concerns do so because they want to, some to improve profitability, others disappear because they’re unfashionable, while the odd not-for-profit effort is left begging for a home as former government buildings sit empty, idle and often decaying. Demolition of the Perth Entertainment Centre Times are a little crazy at the moment as familiar places are being...