The Advent of Television (continued)

In the other States ABC and commercial TV stations employed their own weather presenters who used documentation and briefing provided by the Divisional Office forecasters. In many cases the presenters were beautiful young ladies, some of whom had been Miss Australia winners, whose understanding of the material they were presenting often did not match their good looks.

Item No 362 in Weather News No 51 of October 1960 reported that the Melbourne commercial stations HSV 7 and GTV 9 were dissatisfied with the presentation of their specialist 'weather girls' and 'weather men'. Channel 9 had tried a system in which charts and other information supplied by the Bureau appeared on the television screen while a Bureau forecaster, on direct telephone line from the Bureau, gave a 'voice-over' but this was not successful.

The ABC decided to replace the TV presentation by Bureau forecasters at its Sydney and Melbourne stations by staff of its rural department from 1 July 1961. This caused a flood of letters appearing in the Melbourne Age newspaper expressing viewers' dissatisfaction.

Melbourne commercial station HSV 7, realising that the former ABC TV weather presentation had a wide following, came to an arrangement with the Bureau for its Melbourne forecasters to present the weather segments on HSV 7. The publicity generated by this development is reflected in the cartoon featuring the Bureau's presenters which appeared in the Melbourne Herald newspaper. Bob Crowder and Peter Shaw had joined the team of Bureau presenters on ABC TV, replacing Tony Powell and Geoff Tyler and it was the team of Crowder, Hunter, Shaw and Woolcock who appeared on HSV 7 in Melbourne.

Figure 28 Bureau forecasters appeared on ABC television in Sydney and Melbourne, Allan Rainbird making the first segment in Sydney in September 1956. In July 1961 the commercial HSV 7 TV station in Melbourne secured Len Dwyer's agreement that Bureau forecasters Bob Crowder, Gordon Hunter, Peter Shaw and Arthur Woolcock should present weather segments.

Their switch to the commercial station gave the Bureau a much wider audience than before and each made his own special contribution. I will tell of Bob Crowder's experience, not because he was the more expert forecaster but because his whimsical (and almost winsome) expression had a special appeal for listeners.

Bureau of Meteorology