Clip description
The very first Four Corners opens with vox pops in a busy Sydney street, asking people whether a future governor-general should be British or Australian. The reporter is Bob Sanders.
Curator’s notes
This simply made but effective sequence, from the first episode of Four Corners, shows us why the program went on to be such a success. There is real intelligence and wit operating here – in the choice of subject and interviewees, in the editing (allowing people to go on when they are amusing or revealing) and execution – but allowing the material to speak, so the program does not seem to be pushing a point of view.
This is fascinating to watch because it’s very much a time capsule of Sydneysiders in the early 1960s: their accents, their clothing and their views. There are schoolboys in uniform, ladies in pearls, blokes from the bush and even a couple of 'new’ Australians – all asked to declare their preference for either a British or an Australian head of state. The result is almost overwhelmingly in favour of an Australian GG! The two new arrivals to Australia are the only ones to ask why we need a governor-general at all.
Bob Raymond was determined to have ordinary people’s voices on air. Until then, the voice of the presenter or reporter had to be what is called 'educated Australian’. To broadcast vox pops of people with the full range of Australian accents with insights that were funny and irreverent was a first for television in Australia.
Four Corners began in the graveyard shift on Saturdays at 10 pm. As the last transmission of the evening, they were given permission to overrun their allotted 45 minutes if necessary. With early successes, they were moved to 8.30 on Saturday nights where the program remained a fixture for many years. These days its initial broadcast is on Monday night.
It wasn’t long before Four Corners began to acquire a harder edge with the exposure of the horrific conditions on an Aboriginal reserve in New South Wales. Such things had never before been brought into the living rooms of middle Australia. Tough programs about public housing and the RSL soon established the program’s reputation for upsetting governments, the establishment and ABC management.