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Host of Bandstand,and later the network's legendary newsreader,Brian Henderson in 1958.Credit:Nine Network

It was heady stuff,early TV. That said,the TCN-9 studio in Artarmon Road would go on to become something of a spiritual birthplace for TV,where they madeBandstand andThe Paul Hogan Show,The Mike Walsh Show and60 Minutes. It was where Normie Rowe fought with Ron Casey onMidday. And where Kerri-Anne Kennerley did the Macarena with politician Peter Costello. In a footnote only TV could write,Costello is now the chairman of Nine.

But the site,which stretches for three hectares in the heart of Sydney’s northern residential suburbs,was acquired by the property developer Mirvac Group in a deal worth almost a quarter of a billion dollars,and is now in its final stages of disassembly. Mirvac will turn it into apartments and open green space;Nine has relocated to North Sydney.

Television can be an unsympathetic business,despite its often overwhelming sense of nostalgia – remakes,anyone? – but the closure of the site ends a chapter of television defined by media titans like Sir Frank Packer and his son,Kerry,the free-spending Alan Bond,and a so-called “dream factory” that churned out stars such as Brian Henderson,Bert Newton,Don Lane,Ray Martin and Jana Wendt.

Richard Lyle,the network’s chief classification officer and director of broadcast standards,joined Nine in 1968 after answering an ad for television cadets. “My first impression of the site was,my god,this place looks like such a dump,” Lyle recalls,laughing. “We were absolutely out in the ’burbs.”

Then and now ... the TCN-9 site in 2020 and,inset,the transmitter tower during construction in 1956.Credit:Nine Network

Over the years Lyle was assigned to work in news,the programming and publicity departments,as a video tape editor and in on-air presentation,“that terrible job where you have to check everything is running on time,” he says. On-air presentation also introduced Lyle to the legendary “red phone”,a hotline from the home of Sir Frank Packer and,later,his son,Kerry.

“He could be phoning up to check the latest cricket score,or he’d call and say he wanted the news department to make an announcement and nobody would tell him it was 9pm in the evening and the news department had long gone home,” Lyle says. “But I learned the fear and terror that you live by if the red phone ever went off in the control booth.”

The network’s director of television Michael Healy arrived at TCN in September of 1989,in the final days of Alan Bond’s brief ownership of the network. Bond had famously bought Nine from Kerry Packer for $1 billion in 1987 but was forced to sell it back for $250 million three years later. “You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime,” Packer later quipped.

Healy’s first months at the station were juxtaposed by the announcement of staff redundancies and,in contrast,a 50th birthday for the network’s boss Sam Chisholm which involved the gift of a Harley-Davidson bike being winched onto the executive “third floor” as it was too large for either the stairs or the lift.

The Seekers,featuring lead vocalist Louisa Wisseling,perform in the TCN-9 studios in 1975.Credit:Nine Network

“It spoke to the times,really,” Healy recalls. “Which was the excesses of the 1980s and the coming of an economic realisation.” Other touches from the Alan Bond era,such as bar refrigerators in executive offices,were ripped out on Packer’s orders. “Any signs of the excesses of the time were stomped out and[the marble floor was] carpeted over,” he says.

That said,TCN’s studios were – thanks to the live dailyToday andMidday programs – a whistle-stop for visiting celebrities,such as Robin Williams and Joan Collins. Early in his tenure,Healy recalls looking out of his office window and seeing American actress Audrey Hepburn in the parking lot.

“For me it was like walking into a Hollywood studio because you’d walk past them in the corridor,you’d see them in the canteen,” he says. “You’d get head snaps looking at people. And they were everywhere. And I think they all lived large back in the day. So it was an extraordinary experience.”

To some extent in Australian media history,the fortunes – both rising and falling – of a business have been tied to the earth on which they stand. Ten’s rebirth was marked by a move from North Ryde to Ultimo. And Seven’s surge from second place to first in the 2000s came as they closed their Epping studio and moved to Pyrmont.

Filming of The Don Lane Show in the TCN-9 studios.Credit:Nine Network

The resurrection of Nine’s ratings fortunes in the 2010s has already come,but the shift to a new location in North Sydney,and the sale of the Willoughby lot,represents a cathartic moment in the evolution of Nine,and the laying to rest of many of its infamous ghosts.

Some items from the site were personally souvenired;others were brought to Nine’s new offices. Healy,for example,has a bust of Caesar in his office that once stood guard on the third floor. And the old boardroom table,the site of many contretemps,including the now-legendary lunch where then-CEO David Leckie described the press as “reptiles”,is in the new Nine staff bistro.

Healy says such connections to Nine’s past,however they are perceived by history,are part of the cultural bedrock of the business. “You can’t talk about Willoughby without acknowledging the influence of Kerry Packer,and I was very much of the view that things like[the board room table] should travel to North Sydney because we don’t want to just be a cold,sterile building. We are proud of our history,and that should be a part of who we are going forward.”

Nine is the owner of this masthead.

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