Summary

Painted wooden advertising title card.

This title card is one of a set of three used to produced an early TV advertisement for British Paints, broadcast on Melbourne TV station HSV Channel 7 in the first year of television broadcasting in Australia (1956-1957.) It promoted British Paints' MacQuarie Colour Service, which was located in the Allans (Music) Building, in Collins Street, Melbourne. It also gave information about a related offer (details unknown), available through Channel 7 at a cost of 10 shillings.

It was most likely hand painted by someone from the Set Department at the Channel 7 Studios in Dorcas Street, South Melbourne. It is not known if it was produced using British Paints. This was most likely the third card in the series.

The card is part of a set of three which were purchased by the donor at Chapel Street Bazaar in Prahran in the mid 2000s.

Physical Description

Rectangular title card made from a piece of compressed board. The front has been painted light grey, and has words written on it in black and white paints. The back has been painted dark pink, and has words written on in pencil.

Significance

This title card is significant due to its links to the earliest days of television broadcasting in Melbourne, during the mid to late 1950s. As producing a filmed piece was prohibitively expensive for many companies wanting to advertise on the new medium, and the equipment and personnel to do so was hard to find, they were offered the alternative of a 15 second commercial consisting of a voice talking over (usually) three slides or title panels, such as this. The set of three cards this comes from is the only known examples of this techniques still to exist.

It is also important due to it links to HSV Channel 7, Melbourne's first television station, which began test transmissions in July 1956, and commenced broadcasting on November 4th of that year. At the time it was owned by the proprietors of The Herald and Weekly Times, with its callsign HSV coming from its Herald and Sun newspapers and the state Victoria. In the opening ceremony, host and station news reader Eric Pearce declared "We dedicate this station to the full service of the community. To Australian life, the happy families in the homes, we promise to serve you faithfully and well". It was launched in time to broadcast highlights from the Melbourne Olympic Games.

It is also significant due to its links to the post war building boom which occurred throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when companies such as British Paints saw advertising on television as a way of promoting their products to a wider market.

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