The Early Bird Show

The Early Bird Show was a television show aired on Network Ten in Australia from 1985 until 1989. The show was so popular that a magazine about it was published in 1989.

Format

Produced by Dixie Duncan and directed by Spencer Wilson, Ray McKenna and Bob Loxton, the show regularly featured Australian rock singer Darryl Cotton^[1] as host, along with Marie Van Maaren and Marty The Monster. The Early Bird Show ran for five hours every Saturday morning and was considered to be a children's variety show. The show also included a very popular remote control car segment, hosted by entertainer and musician, Colin Beaumont. In 1989, the show was shortened to two hours and renamed Club 10. This version lasted just ten weeks before being replaced with Video Hits, a music video show.

Other versions

An earlier version of the show had aired from 1977 until 1980. Shown on weekday mornings, The Early Bird Show featured hosts Mike McCarthy and Marie Van Maaren.^[2] The show was replaced in 1981 by the long-running Good Morning Australia (breakfast TV). A similar, but unrelated, show named Early Birds was broadcast by SAS10 in Adelaide in the early 1970s. The show was hosted by Veronica Overton and Fat Cat. "Early Birds" was a mix of cartoons, competitions and music clips. During one telecast, Overton resigned on camera, saying "Goodbye children. Fat Cat will be back on Monday, but I won't". Occasional stand-in, DiDi James, took over the show for a short while and later Jane Reilly became host.

TVW 7 Perth (TVW Enterprises owned TVW 7 Perth and SAS 10 Adelaide in the 70s) also had a very popular Earlybirds show in the 1970s and 1980s from 7 to 9 am. It featured Fat Cat and another character Percy Penguin, plus puppets, Wilbur Worm, who had a sarcastic streak, in the early days, and Sunny Sandgroper, who always told appalling jokes. There were two hosts, one male and one female, and those who appeared over the years on the Perth version were Keith Geary, Ian Teasdale, Sandy Baker (née Palmer), Carolyn Noble, Sharon Dale, Peter Dean, Ann Sanders and others. It was made at TVW Tuart Hill Studios and often presented outdoor broadcasts at shopping centers and other establishments. It ran mainly during each school holiday initially and then each weekday toward the end, when networking pushed it out of the schedules in favour of Agro's Cartoon Connection and ultimately new shows. TVW did a Saturday version of Earlybirds, calling it Fat Cat's Funtime Show. It ran throughout the late 1970s and 80s years until Saturday Disney brought about its demise.

In New Zealand, TV3 have also alternated and created their very own version of the show which went from 1989 to 1992. It originally aired on weekday mornings from 7:00am to 9:00am before shifting to weekend mornings (same timeslot). Also known as E.B.S., it was presented by Suzy Cato and a puppet character named Russell Rooster along with another puppet character, Aunty Kiri Kea and her family of Rubber Ducks. This version of the show contains a few different segments which include local skits, competitions, games, interviews, jokes with Kiri and the Rubber Ducks, how to draw cartoons monsters with Mike and also a variety of cartoons from overseas such as The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, Beetlejuice, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Garfield and Friends, Kissyfur, Dinosaucers, Dennis the Menace, Voltron: Defender of the Universe and The Real Ghostbusters. Cato later went onto host other television programmes such as Suzy's World, 3pm and You and Me and running a company called Treehut Productions which produces shows dedicating to share "Blue Light" safety messages.

References