Mike Walsh interviews Graham Kennedy in 1970, his first appearance on TV since his departure from GTV9 and In Melbourne Tonight (IMT) on 23 December 1969.
Mike Walsh mentions that Graham didn't win a Logie award last year and Graham comments on the politics behind winning the award. Graham was writing articles for Listener In-TV in January 1970, which reflected on his radio and TV career and the reasons he left IMT and GTV9 at the end of his contract. Listener In-TV was a rival magazine to TV Week, which ran the Logie Awards.
Graham talks about his close connection with the awards. The first television awards, the TV Week Awards, were state-based and presented on an episode of In Melbourne Tonight, which Graham hosted. When Graham was presented with the Star of the Year award he suggested the awards be renamed The Logies, as a salute to one of TV’s inventors, John Logie Baird. Graham had won three gold Logies by the time of this interview and would receive three more by the end of his career, including the peer-reviewed 1997 Hall of Fame Gold Logie presented at the 1998 ceremony.
Notes by Helen Tully
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.