About TV Week

TV Week

TV Week is an Australian weekly television magazine published in Sydney by Are Media. Founded in Melbourne in the first years of Australian television, it is the country's longest-running TV listings magazine — and the institution behind the Logie Awards, Australian television's night of nights, which the magazine instigated in 1958 and continues to organise and sponsor. Each week's issue combines television program listings with celebrity interviews, entertainment news and the reader voting that decides the Logies' popular awards.

Overview

TV Week's identity is inseparable from the Logies. The awards began as the TV Week Awards, with the first voting coupons printed in the magazine in late 1958, two years after television arrived in Australia; they were renamed the Logie Awards after Graham Kennedy coined the name in honour of television pioneer John Logie Baird. For more than six decades the magazine has been the conduit through which Australian viewers vote for their favourite stars and programs, with the Gold Logie for the Most Popular Personality on Australian Television the industry's most coveted popular prize.

Beyond the awards, TV Week is a classic listings-and-celebrity weekly: program guides, soap and drama coverage, reality-TV news, and interviews with Australian television personalities, published weekly for a national audience.

History

The first edition appeared in Melbourne as TV-Radio Week, covering the week of 5–11 December 1957. In 1958 the name was shortened to TV Week, and in July 1958 a Sydney edition was added — then the only other television market in Australia. As television launched in other capital cities and regional areas, the magazine expanded its editions to follow.

The late 1950s were crowded with television guides. A rival, Television Preview, launched in 1957; TV News appeared from the ABC; and Australian Consolidated Press published its own TV Times. ACP and the ABC entered a co-publication agreement that merged their magazines into TV News-Times, soon simplified to TV Times — but at the end of 1958 the rival was incorporated into TV Week, leaving two strong competing publications (TV Week and the Listener In-TV, later renamed TV Scene in 1976) to contest the market for the next two decades.

The magazine evolved with the medium. TV Week introduced colour internal pages in 1962, moved to glossy colour covers and internal pages in 1967, and in July 1968 doubled in size from A5 to A4 — its final format evolution. By 1971 it had a national weekly circulation of 400,000.

The title's corporate journey tracks the consolidation of Australian magazines: through the Herald & Weekly Times and Southdown Press/Pacific Magazines lineage, to Bauer Media Australia (which agreed to buy Pacific Magazines in October 2019, completing the purchase in May 2020), and then to Are Media, formed in September 2020 when the Sydney investment firm Mercury Capital bought Bauer Media's Australian and New Zealand assets and rebranded the business.

The Logie Awards

The Logies are TV Week's most enduring creation. The first awards — then the TV Week Awards — were presented on 15 January 1959 on an episode of In Melbourne Tonight. Only Melbourne television personalities were nominated, across eight categories including two for American programs; the most prestigious award, Star of the Year, went to IMT host Graham Kennedy. The following year Kennedy coined the name "Logie" for the awards, honouring the Scottish engineer John Logie Baird, and the first Gold Logie — the equivalent of the Star of the Year — was presented in 1960, again won by Kennedy. The record of five Gold Logies apiece is shared by Kennedy and Ray Martin.

The Logie statuette was designed by Alec De Lacy, chief designer for Melbourne trophy makers KG Luke, and its design has barely changed in more than 60 years: the National Film and Sound Archive holds the 1959 TV Week award presented to Panda Lisner as the most popular female personality of 1958. The ceremony was first televised by the ABC in 1961 and has grown into an elaborate annual television event. The 2020 and 2021 ceremonies were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic; from 2018 to 2022 the ceremony was held on the Gold Coast before moving to Sydney in 2023 for the first time in 37 years.

Under the current structure, the popular awards — including the Gold Logie — are decided by viewers, who register their votes through TV Week magazine and its website over a four-week period beginning in February, with the ceremony held in late April or early May. Voters originally clipped coupons from the magazine; they now use online forms or SMS. Industry-judged categories recognise "most outstanding" achievement, while the public vote decides "most popular" program or performer. To be eligible, a personality must have appeared in an Australian-produced program, set in Australia with a predominantly Australian cast, broadcast on Australian television in the previous year.

Logie records and milestones

The State Library of New South Wales notes that the majority of Logie categories are fan awards, with the Gold Logie for the Most Popular Personality on Australian Television the most prestigious. Readers of TV Week cast their votes over a four-week period beginning in February, with the ceremony held in late April or early May; voting migrated over the decades from coupons clipped from the magazine to online forms and SMS. The first Australian female star to win a Gold Logie was entertainer Lorrae Desmond in 1962. The record for the most Gold Logie wins — five apiece — is shared by Graham Kennedy and Ray Martin. The National Film and Sound Archive's account of the first awards records eleven categories in total for 1958, announced both on In Melbourne Tonight and in print in the magazine's 1–7 January 1959 issue, which devoted a three-page feature to the inaugural winners.

Content and Features

The weekly magazine combines television listings with entertainment journalism: program guides, previews and recaps, soap-opera and drama coverage, reality television news, and interviews with Australian stars. The annual Logies voting period is the brand's high point, when the magazine carries nominee lists, voting forms and campaigns for the popular awards.

The magazine's dual role — listings guide and awards institution — has been its commercial engine for more than sixty years. The Logies voting period turns readers into participants, and the televised ceremony, long billed as Australian television's night of nights, returns the audience to the magazine each autumn. TV Week's covers during awards season traditionally feature the Gold Logie contenders, and the magazine's red-carpet coverage extends the event across its print, digital and social platforms.

Coverage and Audience

TV Week is distributed nationally through newsagents and supermarkets, with print and digital editions sold through Are Media's subscription platforms. Its readership is built around committed television viewers — the same audience that votes in the Logies — and its brand extends to the televised awards ceremony, one of the biggest annual events on the Australian entertainment calendar.

Ownership

TV Week is owned and published by Are Media, the Sydney-based magazine company owned by the investment firm Mercury Capital. Are Media was formed in September 2020 from the rebranded Bauer Media Australia, which had acquired Pacific Magazines, ACP Magazines and Australian Consolidated Press assets during the 2010s. The magazine is based in Sydney, New South Wales.

Digital Presence

TV Week's digital presence centres on its website, through which readers register Logies votes alongside the magazine's coupons and SMS voting, and which carries television news and entertainment content between weekly issues. The brand maintains active social media channels promoting each week's issue and the annual awards season, and its digital editions are sold through Are Media's online platforms.