The Graham Kennedy Show

The Graham Kennedy Show was an Australian talk show that debuted on 19 September 1972, on the Nine Network.

On 23 December 1969, host Graham Kennedy has quit as host of In Melbourne Tonight, exhausted, and rested for two years. In spite of his fame and fortune, he later described that period as "years of misery". After a special on 2 March 1972, he returned with this series.

Kennedy sparked controversy after a "crow-call", which sounded highly reminiscent of the word fuck, was broadcast in March 1975 (see below). Forced to pre-record from that point on, he abruptly departed following GTV-9 censorship of the 16 April 1975 edition.

The Crow Call Incident

On the show of 5 March 1975, Kennedy imitated a crow ("faaaaaaark") during a live read of a Cedel hairspray advert by announcer Rosemary Margan. The Nine Network reportedly received hundreds of complaints, followed by a rash of newspaper headlines the next day, and furious Nine executives reported the incident to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal's Broadcasting Control Board. Kennedy was banned from performing live on TV for an indefinite period of time and was forced to pre-record the show on videotape. Some have claimed that Kennedy deliberately engineered the crow-call incident so that the show would have to be pre-recorded, allowing him to get home earlier, while others suggest that he did it so that Nine would sack him.

In 2002, in The Age, writer Jonathan Green reported that the...
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