 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Radio and television production Distribution Licensing Media |
| Founded | 1945–2002 (as production house) |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Hector andDorothy Crawford |
| Products | Radio Television |
| Owner | WIN Corporation WIN Television (free-to-air broadcast rights) |
| Website | www |
Crawford Productions is an Australian former media production house, now primarily involved in distribution and licensing. It focused on the radio and television industries.[1]
Founded inMelbourne, Victoria in 1945 byHector Crawford and his sister, actor and voice artistDorothy Crawford, the company, also known asCrawfords Australia, is now a subsidiary of theWIN Corporation.[2]
The company has been defunct as a production house since 2002, and it now markets DVDs of it former programs.
Crawford Productions was initially founded exclusively as a radio production company in 1945, and then specialized in drama, light entertainment, and educational programs. Whenbroadcast television was introduced to Australia in 1956, Crawford Productions was one of the few Australian radio production houses to successfully transition to the new medium.
Early Crawford TV productions includedWedding Day (HSV-7, 1956), the first Australian-producedsitcomTake That! (HSV-7, 1957–59),ThePeters Club (GTV-9, 1958),Raising a Husband (GTV-9, 1958) and the drama playSeagulls Over Sorrento (HSV-7, 1960). They also produced segments of theExport Action documentary series,The Flying Dogtor cartoon series, and a local adaptation of the US game showVideo Village (HSV-7, 1962–66).
The company's production output differed from that of theReg Grundy Organisation, who specialized in quiz and game shows before transitioning to drama serials. Company co-founder Hector Crawford was anorchestral conductor and a prominent figure in the ongoing campaign for local content regulations on Australian television.
During the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, Crawford Productions dominated Australian drama series. They gained an early foothold with their first major TV series,Consider Your Verdict (1961–64), which presented dramatizations of court cases. Like other local producers, they faced heightened competition from imported overseas programming, as there were no local content regulations governing Australian television at the time. As a result of thisde facto free-trade agreement, most programs shown on Australian TV contentwere imported from America. At the time when police procedural seriesHomicide premiered in Australia in late 1964, more than 80% of all content broadcast on Australian TV came from America, and American productions enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the TV drama field. The report of the 1963 Vincent Commission into the Australian media found that 97% of all drama shows broadcast in Australia between 1956 and 1963 were American productions.
Australian producers competed against high-quality, high-budget imported programs that drew from an international talent pool and a skill-base that grew out ofHollywood. The competitive advantage enjoyed by imported content was exacerbated by the fact that the once-thriving Australian film industry had been decimated by competition from the major American studios. Since the beginning of the 1960s, film production in Australia had come to a standstill. Only one locally produced and funded feature film was made in Australia in the decade between 1959 and 1969. One of the major impacts of the suppression of the local film industry was a rapid erosion of skills and experience among local film-makers and an exodus of local talent to Britain and the USA.
Crawford television productions although only moderately successful upon inception, experienced mainstream success with its popular and long-running police procedural drama seriesHomicide, which premiered in October 1964 on theSeven Network. It became the first Australian TV drama series produced locally to become a major ratings success and compete effectively with imported American programming, hence being an attempt for Australia to demonstrate it could make high quality police precedurals as well as its US Counterparts[3]
As video technology was still in its infancy in Australia at that time, Crawford Productions developed a highly efficient integrated production schedule to combine studio scenes recorded on videotape with location footage captured on film for each weekly episode. Encouraged by the success ofHomicide (which continued in production until 1975), their next drama project was the ambitious espionage dramaHunter broadcast in 1967, which was purchased by theNine Network. It starredTony Ward and also made a star out of the actor who played its villain,Gerard Kennedy.
AfterHunter ended in 1969, a new police drama,Division 4 (1969) was conceived as a vehicle for Kennedy's talents and he became a dualGold Logie winner, the series also screened on the Nine Network; the other stars included former game show host and newsreaderChuck Faulkner,Terry Donovan,Frank Taylor andTed Hamilton. UnlikeHomicide, which concentrated on murder plots,Division 4 was set in a suburban Melbourne police station, and covered a broad range of police work, as well as occasionally featuring more light-hearted episodes.
Crawford's next venture was a rural police seriesMatlock Police (1971), which was sold to theNetwork Ten. Like Crawford's other ventures it enjoyed success and popularity. It starred veteran Australian actorMichael Pate, who had spent many years in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s, and featuredPaul Cronin, who was later given his own spinoff series:Solo One. With the success ofMatlock Police, Crawford Productions cemented its position as Australia's leading drama production house and gained the unique distinction of having a successful weekly drama series running simultaneously on each of Austraia's three major commercial networks.
In 1973, Crawford Productions created the action-adventure seriesRyan (1973), starringRod Mullinar as a private investigator. This was an all-film colour production (at a time when Australian TV was still in black and white and transitioning to colour) made to target overseas sales, but it only lasted one series and 39 episodes. In 1974, Crawfords moved into the realm ofsoap opera with its sex-comedy serialThe Box, which was set in a TV station, UCV channel 12. With the top-rating 0–10 Network serialNumber 96 as its lead inThe Box was an instant success.
Homicide,Division 4, andMatlock Police remained highly popular through the early 1970s, andThe Box was a big hit in its premiere year, ranking as Australia's second highest-rated program for 1974. With a highly popular police drama on each commercial network, the production company was booming. However, in 1975 and 1976,Homicide,Division 4, andMatlock Police were all abruptly cancelled. It has been suggested that this was because Hector Crawford and several of the actors who featured in his shows figured prominently in the contemporaryTV: Make It Australian campaign, agitating for stronger local content regulations to promote and protect local TV production.
Though the ratings forThe Box were significantly lower when compared to the figures from its first year, the show continued until 1976.The Box was cancelled in early 1977 and production ended on the series 1 April 1977. The company also createdsituation comedy seriesThe Bluestone Boys (1976) which was set in a prison, andBobby Dazzler, a vehicle for pop singerJohn Farnham, in 1977.Bluey (1976) saw a return to police drama but with a new spin; however, the series was not a major success.
Greater success came withThe Sullivans (1976–83), a critically acclaimed and highly period piece set during te years of World War II and starring former Matlock lead Paul Cronin andLorraine Bayly as matriarch Grace Sullivan. Continuing the trend at that time for evening soap opera type shows on Australian television they later launchedCop Shop (1977–84), a meld of soap opera with the Crawfords staple of police drama, and the series emerged as a popular success.Cop Shop featured George Mallaby and formerBellbird starTerry Norris. Briefly Crawfords produced the ill fatedSkyways (1979–81) a soap opera-meets-weekly adult drama hybrid ofCop Shop in an airport setting. Later programmes included legal dramaCarson's Law (1983–84), again another vehicle for former star ofThe SullivansLorraine Bayly, children's seriesHalfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left and the popular outback medical dramaThe Flying Doctors.
The company started life in small premises located inLittle Collins Street, Melbourne, moved to the nowheritage listedOlderfleet Building inCollins Street, then in 1972 to Southampton Crescent,Abbotsford, and in 1982 to Middleborough Road,Box Hill. In the 1980s, they set up an international branch Crawford Productions International, which its main purpose that Crawfords would film series for foreign companies, namely theUnited States, and Crawford decided to co-finance with American networkHBO in order to develop a second series of the long-runningAll the Rivers Run, which premiered on HBO in 1983.[4] That year, Nick McMahon and Mike Lake, had left the company to serve as consultant executive producers for the programs that were produced by Crawfords.[5] In 1987, Crawford Productions was sold to a diversified entertainment group, Ariadne Australia, and there would going to be a link between Crawford Productions and De Laurentiis Entertainment Limited, a subsidiary of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group in which Ariadne is the second-largest stockholder in the group. Crawford Productions required cash flow to underpin the construction of DEL studios to produce its own filmed projects.[6]
The company was sold toWIN Corporation in 1989.[7] Subsequent Crawfords drama productions includedState Coroner,The Saddle Club, andGuinevere Jones. The Crawford studios in Box Hill were demolished in March 2006 and aBunnings opened on the site on 30 June 2006. In 2009, Crawfords Australia had an eight-acre studio complex in Melbourne.[8] While the company is still in existence, it currently does not produce television, concentrating instead on marketing DVD releases of the company's earlier dramas.
Note:Nine Network,Network 10 (NRN) andWIN Television have the free-to-air broadcast rights to those shows, not the other rival networks[citation needed]
