Bernie Cannon, the man behind one of Australia’s pioneer music shows GTK, has passed away.
Get To Know (GTK) was an ABC filler in its 10-minute slot from 6:30pm to 6:40pm. The show ran from 1969 to 1975, pre-dating Countdown.
The ABC ran the Australian soap Bellbird in a lead-up to its 6:55pm local news bulletin followed 7:00pm national news. GTK was designed to slot in the 10 minutes of vacant time before Bellbird.
Because there were next to no music videos back then GTK mainly featured live performances from mostly local Australian bands. The appeal of the show were the daily live in-the-studio performances from both the famous and unknown Australian acts. The recordings were done on a Monday with each act putting down four songs. Those songs were then spread out across the week.
GTK was broadcast from Monday to Thursday to fit in with the Bellbird broadcast afterwards. Neither show aired Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
Most of the 1000+ episodes were filmed in Black & White as Colour Television was not introduced into Australia until 1975.
Bernie came aboard as the GTK producer. He stayed with the ABC for Funky Road in 1976 before moving to 2 Double J.
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