The ABC’s iconic Elsternwick studio, home to Countdown, Recovery and more recently The Weekly and Mad As Hell has been sold to Woolworths.
The ABC studios in Melbourne’s inner city suburb of Elsternwick were built for the introduction of television in Australia in 1956.
Countdown, the music television platform that made Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum a household name in Australia, was produced from the studios from 1974 to 1987.
In 1996 the ABC created ‘Recovery’, another music show but unlike the one-hour weekly capsule Countdown delivered, ‘Recover’ was targeted to a slightly older audience. Recovery was produced at the same address from 1996 to 2000.
Woolworths paid $40 million for the property at 2-16 Selwyn Street, Elsternwick.
ABC staff are currently being relocated to the ABC studios in Southbank. ABC’s Southbank studio has been mainly used for ABC radio including Triple J and Double J. The HQ is being renovated to take in the television studios and productions as well.
