Rage (TV program)
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- The correct title of this article is rage. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
rage is a popular all-night Australian music video program broadcast on ABC TV on Friday and Saturday nights. It was first screened on the weekend of Friday, April 17, 1987.
rage starts anywhere between 11pm and 1am and finishes at 9am on Saturdays and at 6:30am on Sundays. On Friday it plays new and recent releases. On Saturday it has specials and often has guest programmers, including local and international personalities from the music industry. In the past rage has shown the Australian Top 50 music chart on Saturday and Sunday mornings, however in mid 2006 this practice ceased and it now shows selected new release video clips and a one hour guest programming/special programming slot on Saturday morning, with new release videos on Sunday morning.
Between July 1993 and May 1995, rage aired a special New Releases program weekly from 2am until 4am on a Friday morning.
| Music of Australia [ ] | |
|---|---|
| Indigenous Australian | English, Irish and Scottish |
| Pub | Other immigrants |
| Timeline and samples | |
| Genres | Classical - Hip hop - Jazz - Country- Rock (Indie · Hardcore punk) |
| Organisations | ARIA |
| Awards | Australian Music Centre · ARIA Music Awards · The Deadlys |
| Charts | ARIA Charts, JJJ Hottest 100 |
| Festivals | List: Big Day Out · Livid · Homebake · Falls · Stompem Ground Tamworth (Country) · Womadelaide · Splendour In The Grass |
| Media | CAAMA, Countdown, Rage, Triple J, ABC |
| National anthem | "Advance Australia Fair" |
| Cities and regions | |
| Adelaide - Brisbane - Canberra - Perth | |
rage has a good reputation among viewers for its minimalist format which has remained largely unchanged for almost two decades. The only time a human is seen on rage delivering dialogue to the camera is when guest programmers appear on the Saturday night edition. Otherwise, the videos are run end-to-end with the occasional quick branding clip or the "rage" logo accompanied by a voice that simply says "Rage!" to break them up. A "crawl" is also used at times during the program, with details of upcoming Specials and Guest Programmers printed in text at the bottom of the screen during a short snippet of a selected clip, which, as the name suggests, crawls across the screen. The titling on the videos is also very simple, with the artist and song name displayed briefly after the beginning of each video. No other logos or watermarks appear over the clip as it plays.
Similar to ABC's Triple J radio station, rage tends to play more alternative genres of music. The Saturday night editions are themed. Often it's a simple dedication to an established artist by showing a large amount of their work. As an example of the other types of themes, in early 2004 edited highlights from Countdown (from the 70s and 80s) and Recovery (from the 90s) were shown over many weeks.
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[edit] Top Fifty
From around 7am to 10am on Saturday mornings and 4am to the end of show on Sundays it switches to the weekly Top Fifty from the ARIA Singles chart. rage aired the Top 60 chart from Sept 1990 to March 1991 and July 1991 to March 1994. If a video from the Top Fifty is unavailable, unsuitable or non-existent, it will be replaced by a splash screen of the "rage" logo with the position attained in the charts for the week, the artist's name and the track's title. Also, the videos shown until 6am are uncensored(after this, the rating is set back to G rated material). However, some clips are unavailable in this form, particularly due to heavier restrictions on clips which originate in the United States. Sometimes, two different video clips for the same song are shown in the one session. When this happens it is often a live (or sometimes remixed) version that is shown earlier in the night/morning, while the "mainstream" censored version shown after 6am is shown in the Top Fifty due to classification laws in Australia which prevent adult oriented material being shown in the after 6am timeslot.
rage has had to censor and remove videos which breach advertorial and editorial guidelines for ABC TV, for example in 1991 Adidas logos were blurred out in a music video by New Kids On The Block and in 2005 a music video by the Bratz Rock Angelz was removed due to its advertorial content. Post year 2000 rage is more liberal and lenient with censorship compared to the 90s. For example, rage by their own discretion opted to broadcast the Crazy Frog music video "Axel F" uncensored, showing the exposed penis of the frog, deeming it to be non-offensive.
From 2005 the Top Fifty was added to the ABC2 digital channel programming schedule as well from 8am to 11am. The Top Fifty was also broadcast to Asia on ABC Asia Pacific and has a large cult audience in Asian countries due to the prevalence of pop music there.
The weekend of 22 and 23 July 2006 was rage's last broadcast of the Top Fifty countdown. In its place at 8am to 9am on Saturday mornings is a preview of the upcoming guest programmer or special, followed by the jtv Saturday program. rage programming on Sunday mornings includes a mix of new and hit songs. The decision to remove the Top Fifty countdown was made by ABC management, not rage production staff.
[edit] Guest programmers
rage have had many bands and artists host the show on Saturday nights. They select and introduce their favourite music videos of all time. This gives an insight into the bands and artists influences which are highly regarded by fans. Tapings of rage guest programmers are not only valuable but highly sought after too. rage has had several artists host the show over its vast history, including the likes of:
[edit] Simulcast
From New Year's Eve 1992, Triple J had simulcast rage from 1am until 6am. This ended in 2003 when Triple J introduced their new dance show The Club in the same timeslot.
Considering televisions are increasingly stereo as opposed to older mono sets, the simulcast's advantage is now moot. Digital television was also becoming popular, and digital television broadcasts can not be precisely synchronised with FM radio transmissions.
[edit] Theme Song
The theme song used to open the show is sampled from Iggy Pop's "Real Wild Child", with Pop's vocals and the word rage manipulated backwards throughout.
The song used during the closing credits of the show is "Speed Your Love to Me" by Simple Minds.
Several years ago, a third theme was produced (also based on Iggy Pop's "Wild Child") to break up the Guest Programmer or Special's clips on Saturday nights.
In the last few years the show has been using another theme specifically for the for Top Fifty - sampled from the song "She Said" by now-defunct Brisbane band Lavish. It is now used instead of the opening theme to begin the Top Fifty and replace any missing clips.
During T.I.S.M's appearance on the show, they described the theme as "...new and exciting..." and its repetition as "...always stimulating.. why see different songs when you can see this one four or five times?"
[edit] Day of broadcast
Due to the fact that the show usually starts on one day and ends on the next, it is often unclear which day the show belongs to. The producers have decided that even if it begins after midnight, it belongs to the earlier day (Friday or Saturday) even though the majority of the show (if not all) will be on the later day. This is most likely because television guides in Australia start and end each day at 6am.
[edit] End Of Year Specials
For the last weekend of each year, rage has two specials. On the Friday night, a selection of the preceding year's videos is played. On the Saturday night, they have a selection of the year's Guest Programmers. This show will start with a series of Guest Programmers introductions that were shown at the beginning of each of their shows and will then include them introducing a few of the videos they selected during their program, followed by one or two of their videos.
For the first weekend of each year, the Top 50 timeslot on rage is used for the Top 50 songs of the previous year. This will no longer be the case from 2007 (for the Top 50 songs of 2006).
rage usually broadcasts music videos of songs from the Triple J Hottest 100 over two nights, several weeks after the Hottest 100 broadcast in late January each year.
[edit] Tenth anniversary special
On April 19, 1997 a special episode was aired to celebrate rage's tenth anniversary. It included a selection, by year, of some of the clips that had aired on rage in the past ten years. It also included some footage of Guest Programmers from over the years. It was repeated later that year on December 20. rage's 20th anniversary will take place in April of 2007.
[edit] Trivia
During his John Safran's Music Jamboree series, John Safran successfully demonstrated "...even a dog can get a video on rage.". He put a dog on a skateboard, equipped with a camera, and submitted a clip to rage - which subsequently aired - with sped-up footage of the dog's perspective as it moved through a busy street.
[edit] External links
- Official rage website
- ABC Broadband (Includes rage videos on demand)
