At the 50th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1998, Noble was named as one of the nominees for Most Outstanding Miniseries for his work on Moby Dick which was filmed in Australia.
[7] After Noble developed a pilot episode of The D-Generation for the ABC, two series of the program were produced which were met with critical acclaim.
[8] In September 1987, the ABC debuted a new live Saturday morning youth program called The Factory hosted by Alex Papps and Andrew Daddo.
[9][10] Just days before its first airing, the program's executive producer Grant Rule resigned with Noble urgently brought in as a replacement.
[23] All programs had some degree of success, with the exception of Paradise Beach which struggled in the ratings and was almost universally panned by television critics.
[23][27][28][29][30] Noble was protective of the network's drama offerings, going as far as writing a letter to the editor in 1996 in response to a reader's accusations of racism in Water Rats.
[31] After the failure of Paradise Beach, Noble seemed to be reluctant to consider any further soap operas for Nine and openly criticised the genre in 1995, declaring "The soapie is dead.
[33][34] In 1997, it was reported that the Nine Network and Britain's Whale Productions were filming the miniseries Moby Dick in Port Phillip Bay, with a cast including Patrick Stewart, Gregory Peck, Henry Thomas and Bruce Spence.
[35] Noble was impressed with the production quality stating "All the effects look great - everything is so real... People won't know where the location is and who is behind it.
Noble was named as one of the senior production staff in the Outstanding Miniseries nomination along with Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Fuchs, Robert Halmi Sr., Steve McGlothen and Franc Roddam.
[42] The unit's first project was the ambitious 22-episode space adventure Farscape, created by Rockne S. O'Bannon, which was produced in association with The Jim Henson Company.
[45] The 2004 miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was produced to conclude the show following the sudden cancellation of the series by the Sci-Fi Channel in 2002.
[47] Taking umbrage at criticism in The Sydney Morning Herald who described the ratings figures for Pacific Drive (airing at 11pm) as "one terrible embarrassment", Noble penned a letter condemning the ABA.
[47] Revealing that Nine had intended to schedule Pacific Drive at 3:30pm following The Young and the Restless, Noble said the network had lobbied the ABA hoping they would change their rulings to allow an Australian mid-afternoon drama to count as local content, arguing that if the program was high quality and not a "cheap excuse" to avoid their responsibilities regarding the drama quota, it should be irrelevant to when the program aired.
[47] Noble wrote: "The ABA, however were not amenable to this argument, clearly feeling that the strong afternoon viewing audience should be left to overseas soaps and talk shows, that an attempt to provide local product to their taste was somehow less worthy than providing local product for prime-time viewing tastes.
[49] Nine temporarily stopped production of the soap in 1997 to clear a backlog episodes which weren't able to air due to the network's live cricket coverage.
[49] At this time, Noble continued his argument for it to be eligible for local content quota points, citing the show's competitive ratings in the 3:30pm timeslot (with a 40% national audience share, with a 70%-80% share of the female 18-39 demographic), stating: "If quality Australian drama programs can compete with American soaps in the afternoon, then they should be able to qualify for local content quotas.
"[49] In April 1997, Noble defended Nine's decision to commission a television movie about Ronald Ryan, the last man legally executed in Australia for the 1965 murder of George Hodson.
[51] In 1999, Noble submitted a proposal to Nine to commission a fast-paced children's television show for pre-schoolers called Hi-5, created by Helena Harris and Posie Graeme-Evans, featuring original members Kellie Crawford (née Hoggart), Kathleen de Leon Jones, Nathan Foley, Tim Harding and Charli Robinson.
[61][better source needed] Produced by Queensland production company Wild Fury for ABC TV, Save Your Life Tonight was filmed in late 2013 in the Edwin Tooth Auditorium at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and commenced airing on 14 December 2014.
[68] He stated: "I think society has changed to a point where you can't put a sex scene at the beginning of a program and then expect high ratings - look at the backlash we had with Chances.