Australian TV Plays: Autumn Affair (20 Oct 1958-20 Oct 1959)

The first daytime serial on Australian TV.

Started in Melbourne on GTV-9 on 2 Feb 1959 see here.

Production

Brian Wright told Susan Lever:

We were trying to flog, at the time we were trying to flog, a big variety show to David Jones. And retailers had not sponsored anything on television at that time. They didn’t think television would ever be any use to them. But we were trying to sell this show to David Jones. As Production Manager, I was there with Len Major, the Station Manager. I’d hauled along Richard Lane, the writer, and one of the founders of the Writer’s Guild. Dick I’d known from radio days. And Dick was to write the new variety show for David Jones.

   Well, the meeting flopped. They refused to accept the show. The three of us were standing outside in the rain on Elizabeth Street outside David Jones. I don’t know who came up with it first. We were throwing around what we needed to do. I remember somebody started to say, “You know in radio, the daytime soapy was so big in radio. The stations used to run one after the other. And those of us who worked in it, made our living from them. So why shouldn’t we do a soap on television?” We started to throw it around. “It wouldn’t cost that much money!”

   So I remember turning to Dick and said, “What about you, Dick? Would you like to write one?” And Dick would certainly like to write one. So we shot off Dick to write one, and I was put to the job of sort of planning the production. I think I had a few hundred pounds for the above the line cost as my budget per episode, and we came up with Autumn Affair, with Muriel Steinbeck playing the lead.

   And we did three episodes a week. I remember writing a letter, a memo, to the Board of Directors, asking for the money. Saying: “I can’t guarantee that this will be good. It will probably be very bad. The script writer knows nothing about television. The director knows a little bit about television. I know very little about television. But if we don’t start doing it, we’ll never learn, so this will be worthwhile as a learning project, but I cannot promise you any return on it.” And they gave me the money, not very much, a few hundred pounds. We kicked off and we ran for a year with three episodes a week. And actually, they made a little bit of profit! Dick told me some years later--well, quite a few years later after - I had managed to write a contract giving him residuals for his scripts. I was a writer myself, and I thought this should be done. Dick said that eventually after a few years they came to him and said, “Could we buy you out of your residuals?” They bought him out. And he managed to carpet his flat with the money he was bought out for. But that was Autumn Affair that started it all off. ..

It was a radio script with pictures. And, you know, we were all learning. I think we started with one set, and I think as we went on, we managed to get two sets. No film exteriors, or anything like that. .. We had very little money. Our management, the business side of our management, couldn’t really get the concept of drama. All they could see was this costs a great deal of money. And it’s much cheaper to do variety shows of various kinds. They didn’t think the audience would take it.

Ratings

Melbourne ratings appear to have been strong. An average rating of 13! It played in the aafternoons there.

It ended in Syd on 20 Oct 1959. It was replaced by The Story of Peter Grey.

Went in Melbourne until 27 Jan 1960.