Channel 9's Wally Lund conducts city's music talent into the new medium of live TV on 'Adelaide Tonight'
Wally Lund as a young accordianist (left) and as NWS9 and Adelaide Tonight musical director, rehearsing a song with Channel 9 presenter and former Miss South Australia Pat Morris. All Channel 9 on-air personalities were enouraged to work on their performance skills.
Walter (Wally) Lund guided Adelaide music into the new medium of live television with NWS Channel 9 from 1959.
Lund, an accordionist, pianist and composer, had been one of Adelaide’s best known band leaders in the 1950s before he was employed by the city’s first television station Channel 9 as its musical director.
Lund was given the added pressure of putting together a Channel 9 orchestra and the music for a live variety show, Adelaide Tonight, that made its debut at 9.30pm on Saturday, October 17, 1959, soon after the station was launched. Among the acts featured on that first show were Adelaide singers Paula Kitson and a 24-year-old Malaysian student calling himself Kamahl.
Adelaide Tonight continued for years and grew from one to four nights a week at its peak. The show had demanded “seat of the pants” learning and teamwork to get to air. It turned into a productions that brought many international stars and interstate performers to Adelaide that would otherwise have not included it on their itineraries. Among them were Donald O’Connor, Des O’Connor, Lonnie Donergan, Winifred Atwell, Nelson Eddy and Matt Monroe. Johnny Farnham and the Bee Gees also appeared in their earliest phases.
When the demand for musical talent on Adelaide Tonight increased with the number of weekly shows, the station formed its own talent agency, Southern Talent, to offset costs by supplying imported talent to city and suburban hotel floor shows. As the need for talent reached its peak with four shows a week, Southern Talent amalgamated with a Sydney agency run by Jack Neary and Adelaide expat Bobby Limb and became Southern Talent/NTL.
More challenging for Wally Lund was dealing with local talent, often booked for their looks rather than musical talent. Regular talent auditions were held at Channel 9, usually presided over by programme director Rex Heading, John Trost and Lund.
