The new triple-CD set with all your favourite 70s and 80s hits, including Duran Duran, Blondie and David Bowie.
The Countdown team was a beast of many parts.
The original executive producer and conceptual architect of the show was Michael Shrimpton who came with a background in light entertainment production. With director/producer, Robbie Weekes, Shrimpton made the key decisions on the style and format of the show. The creative general of the team, Weekes decided how to technically deliver a snappy, popular, ground-breaking youth-music show. At a later stage Weekes took over the role as executive producer.
Ian Meldrum was the first and most important ‘personnel’ element of the show. He was chosen as a talent coordinator, whose job it was to select what music would be played and what artists would appear live. Before long Meldrum – rebadged as ‘Molly’ – became the face of the show.
The original voice-over man was Jon Peters. Paul Turner became the first long- term voice of Countdown and then he was replaced by Gavin Wood, whose menthol tones took the show to its conclusion.
Other important team members included: director/producer Paul Drane who shot some of the seminal clips that made Countdown and its Aussie stars famous; Grant Rule, who had been a dancer with Meldrum on the pop show, Kommotion, was to be involved with Countdown for many years as producer, director and executive producer. His first assistant director, Ted Emery became a long-standing Countdown director and producer. Kris Noble began as a cameraman on Countdown but tossed in the higher paying technical side to get into directing. He progressed through the ranks from second assistant director to first assistant director to director, producer and ultimately executive producer.
Tony Vuat, Rob Pemberton, Lindsay Dresden, Johnny Walker, Walter Boston, Karl Steinberg, Peter Trofimovs, Geoff Tanner, Adrian Harvey, Graham Thorburn, Clive Sell and Stephen Jones were other director/producers who delivered Countdown to our screens. Carolyn James wrote many of the Countdown scripts and set up the Countdown Council. Lighting director Rick Hunter was a fixture on the show and integral to its originality.
The Countdown foot soldiers included the legendary security man Paddy, Beryl on reception and Audrey Burgess in makeup. And who can forget the delectable Countdown dancers.
There was great team spirit in the Countdown crew and personal pride about giving their very best which was one of the main reasons Countdown ran so successfully for so long.
Read more about the Countdown story:
About Countdown
Countdown beginnings
The Countdown Influence
The end and the last top ten
National top ten charts
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history may as well be be correct
Paul Turner from Melbourne's number one radio station 3XY was the first voice over person on Countdown. I know this because I joined the team in early 1978 to create a new form of program audience research, then moved onto writing the voice over scripts and host wrangling somewhere in the year. Gavin didn’t come into the team until 1979 sometime. Then in response to audience research requesting ‘a more natural voice’ we introduced Jon Peters as voice over somewhere in the early 80's.
Also as Co-Producer of the Countdown Awards for Australian Music I was the only female to ever be credited as producer of the program and find it some what sad that the ABC in the spirit of being an equal opportunity employer has not bothered to get this kind of detail right as online content, or more importantly claim the creation of the Countdown Awards as a ground breaking initiative. I guess someone would have to be interested in the history before this could happen.
While we are at it, some other myths perpetrated on this site need correcting. Cold Chisel wrecked their TV Week Rock Awards set, not their Countdown Awards set as remembered by James (Australian Crawl) In fact it was because of Cold Chisel's documented objection to appearing on the TV Week Rock Awards, we as a production unit were given the moral ground to create the first peer voted music industry awards system in Australia.
Cold Chisel's protest was not the surprise most reports make it out to be: we predicted Chisel had some kind of protest in mind when their manager Rod Willis had a go at negotiating their appearance as the final act into the middle of the show. I advised EP Director Robbie Weekes not to fall for this and to stonewall them into accepting end of show slot or nothing. 'East' had been too big for them as an album to not appear so I programmed an in theatre segue from Chisel’s live cacophonic protest to an even harsher live mix of Neil Young underlining the statement: hey hey.. my my..rock and roll will never die...its better to fade out than it is to rust...and this was so effective some attending print media ‘accused’ Cold Chisel of collaborating with Countdown. Would have to go down as one of my favourite moments in production. I saw Jimmy latter that night at the Warners after party and gave him a big hug and told him I thought the whole thing was amazing. If you are looking for evidence maybe one of the fan sites have included this segment..listen like thieves and you will hear Jimmy screeching... “now you wanna use my face to sell TV Week.. well eat s***t”
So while we are at it lets debunk the Midnight Oil myth. Midnight Oil did not refuse to do the show- they were fired for being late. Michael Shrimpton ran a ‘no favoured nations’ ship. This meant no one received special treatment, and this included Midnight Oil. All bands were called to rehearse from 11.00am-2.00pm on Saturday mornings. Needless to say all working bands found this an excruciating requirement but fronted up because they or their management or their record companies knew the sales impact of a broadcast performance to 2 million people. Because of an in-show media policy, taken directly from a philosophy that had more to do with Her Royal Highness than the rough and tumble of Australian music industry, no one from the program was ever permitted to refute Garret’s claims.