Four Corners 50th anniversary
It was 50 years ago today that the ABC's prestigious Four Corners first arrived on Australian television.
- Published by David Knox
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It’s television special won’t air until Monday night, but today actually marks 50 years for the ABC’s prestigious Four Corners.
Australia’s longest-running television programme began in August 1961. Across 5 decades it as been exposing scandals, triggering inquiries, firing debate, confronting taboos and interpreting fads, trends and sub-cultures.
As the recent story on cattle exports shows, it is still relevant today.
The program’s current reporters are Liz Jackson, Marian Wilkinson, Debbie Whitmont, Quentin McDermott, Sarah Ferguson, Matthew Carney and Andrew Fowler.
But Media Watch‘s Jonathan Holmes writes a tribute piece for The Drum that tells us more. Holmes has been associated with the show for many years.
He writes in part:
It’s a small band of people – six reporters, six producers, three researchers, and these days a full-time web producer, with dedicated crews and editors and a tiny administrative staff. They have to cover the field, from politics to business, the environment, social policy, natural disasters, even foreign affairs. They work ridiculous hours. To research and shoot, write and edit a 45-minute documentary in six or seven weeks, often about subjects of daunting complexity, can impose crushing burdens on everyone – and especially on the reporter, whose reputation rests not, like the vast majority of senior journalists, on scores or even hundreds of stories, but on just four or five programs each year. The expectation is that each one will say something new, and arresting.
Four Corners is still one of the few programs on Australian television – SBS’s Insight is another – where you can find serious issues being dealt with in a grown-up way. And in 50 years, it’s changed remarkably little.
But change is now upon us. When we all get our video content down a fibre-optic tube, from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night, will Four Corners survive? Will the ABC? Will television?
Nobody knows.
Ah well. Fifty years is a long time, by anyone’s reckoning. This time around, I’m not laying money on Four Corners’s demise any time soon.
Four Corners will launch a dedicated website on Monday and ABC Ultimo will also host a multimedia exhibition open to the public.
TV Tonight will be marking the 50th year with more stories in coming days.
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3 Responses
I think its amazing that a current affairs show has lasted 50 years. Its safe to say that it has lasted this long because its on the public broadcaster. The stories it produces are very good may well it continue for another 50.
Well done 4 Corners
There’s still a place for intelligent, thoughtful, responsible journalism, despite the apparent popularity of talk-back radio, TT & ACA, and the tabloid muck infesting most of our major daily newspapers. But if they want to be relevant in tomorrow’s world, they will need to adapt.
That doesn’t mean that they’ll have to chop everything up into bite-size pieces and add some whizzo graphics like Hungry Beast, but it will mean embracing new and emerging technologies and media. A dedicated website is an excellent step down that path.