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The smartest, funniest, most talked about show on Australian television returns to ABC1 this Wednesday night at 9pm for its third season after 17 months off air.
Catch up on season two, from all the way back in 2007 here.
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Australia Network, the international television service of the ABC has refreshed its identity and introduced a new slogan ‘From our world to yours’.
With the channel available in over 44 countries throughout the Asia Pacific region, the refresh needed cross cultural appeal, while also standing out in an already saturated television market.
The end result is a very fresh and contemporary on air look that perhaps our local ABC1 could learn a little from..
Credits: Saatchi Design / Motion Foundry / Sopheric.
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The ABC has been teasing its viewers lately with the tagline “TV out of the box”. Well, this evening the ABC announced that its BBC iPlayer-esque service initally dubbed ABC Playback is now open to the public, and has been rebranded as ABC iView.
The BBC have been very succesful in establishing iPlayer as a brand despite its ordinary name, but really, iView was the best they could come up with?
Anyway, derivative name aside, the just launched ABC iView service is fairly similar to the beta version of the ABC Playback service that I reviewed earlier this year. And while the video quality is fine, and the content has increased to include news among other things, the interface still bugs me badly, and the whole thing doesn’t come close to the user experience of the newly launched BBC iPlayer 2.0.
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The Hollowmen is a new political comedy/drama coming to ABC1 from July 9th. With this being the first on-air promo for the new show. The use of photographs in the video is a possible allusion to a 2004 election campaign commercial that adopted a similar style, or perhaps I’m just reading too much into it.
Produced by the Working Dog, the team behind Frontline and The Castle, the show is about “the workings of an internal think tank, set up by the Prime Minister, whose responsibility is long-term policy vision”.
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“You may love May”.. Are they suggesting there’s a chance we won’t? That’s the ABC’s confidence lacking tagline being used in this otherwise resplendent promo.
And while its obviously in reference to the month its the kind of thing your unlikely to see on another network. The ABC received some bad press over a recent Logies promo that went to air, so this deliberately low key outing is probably welcome.
Outside of the ABC however, May should be an interesting month for Australian television with a new look SBS set to launch, and Arena’s Bravo-style rebranding.
While I was recently reminded of, and amused by the success of the BBC’s video-on-demand iPlayer service in the UK, it did get me thinking about the ABC’s digital ambitions, in particular the National Broadcaster’s recently beta launched iPlayer-like service ABC Playback.
What follows is my take on the ABC’s latest step into the future… Continue reading ‘Playing with ABC Playback.’
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It’s just been reported that the Australian mockumentary Summer Heights High has been sold for international broadcast to BBC Three in the UK, and none other than HBO in the United States.
Chris Lilley won a Rose d’Or for his previous show, We Can Be Heroes, and will no doubt garner even greater attention with these new distribution deals. And while various other Australian productions have made their way onto American television, this will certainly be one of the most high profile.
Continue reading ‘Summer Heights headed for HBO and BBC Three.’
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The ABC made some big announcements about its digital future today, including the launch of an iPlayer-esque service called ABC Playback, a for-pay download store, and the groundwork for the long anticipated 24 hour news channel.
And while theres plenty of time to talk about the need for platform agnosticism and critique the interface and branding, the one thing that is entirely clear is that the national broadcaster is leading the way among Australian broadcasters, and further demonstrating its relevance during this digital revolution.
Read all the details here or check out some of the action in the video above.
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