[1] With Soul Train and Video Hits no longer being produced, it is the oldest music television program in the world currently still in production as of 2025.
Rage was given an idiosyncratic and alternative flavour by music programmers and producers Stephanie Lewis (1987 to 1995) and Narelle Gee (1995 to 2008).
[4] Other early specials included Midnight Oil, The Cult, The The, Public Image Ltd., Tears for Fears, Scrap Metal, Mental As Anything, Crowded House, Paul Kelly, The Beatles, Hoodoo Gurus, Eurythmics, INXS and Split Enz, plus heavy metal and country music specials.
[6] Other non-musician guest programmers have included politicians,[7] music video directors (e.g. Richard Lowenstein),[8] and even members of the public.
Exceptions to this are often made when a well-known musician dies, and rage will play a tribute to that musician by opening Friday night’s show with a selection of their videos, bookended by simple white-on-black “In Memory Of” text graphics with the artist’s name and years of life.
The only time a host is seen on rage speaking to the camera is when guest programmers appear on the Saturday night edition.
A "crawl" is also sometimes used during the program, with details of upcoming Specials and Guest Programmers printed in text at the bottom of the screen during a short snippet of a selected clip.
On Fridays, when new and recent releases are played, rage often gives airtime to little-heard-of new names in the very early hours of Saturday morning.
During his John Safran's Music Jamboree series, John Safran successfully demonstrated "...even a dog can get a video on rage", by attaching a video camera to a dog, and editing the resulting footage together with simply produced looping music.
The Saturday night editions, if not guest programmed, are often themed, such as by showing a large amount of an established artist's work or a collection of music videos related to a particular topic or event, such as the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or NAIDOC Week.
Another theme in summer, started in 2004, is to replay historic music television programmes including Countdown (from the 1970s and '80s), Rock Arena (from the '80s), Recovery (from the '90s), GTK (1970s), Flashez (1970s) and Beatbox (1980s).
[9] From November 2015, 'vault' episodes of rage aired on a new programme on Monday nights on ABC, where older music videos are shown.
Prior to 2006, from around 5:00am or 6:00am to 9:00am on Saturday mornings and 4 am to the end of show on Sundays, Rage would switch to the weekly Top Fifty from the ARIA singles chart.
If a video from the Top Fifty was unavailable, unsuitable or non-existent, it would be replaced by a splash screen of the Rage logo with the position attained in the charts for the week, the artist's name and the track's title.
Rage has previously had to censor and remove videos which have breached advertorial and editorial guidelines for ABC TV.
The cessation of the Top Fifty countdown was due to ARIA initiating a commercial association with a telecommunications company[which?
Tex Perkins and Bernard Fanning are the most frequent guest programmers with five appearances on the Rage couch apiece.
The most frequently chosen videos by guest programmers include Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, The Saints' (I'm) Stranded, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer and Aphex Twin's Windowlicker.
The visuals include elements of Iggy Pop's "Real Wild Child" video and footage of Johnny O'Keefe performing "Shout" at Sydney Stadium in 1959.
In the last few years, the show has been using another theme specifically for the Top Fifty, sampled from the song "She Said" by now-defunct Brisbane band Lavish.
The nation celebrated with a week of programming including two specially produced documentaries which explored the Australian experience of watching the show.
The program featured a plethora of musical talent and songs from across the decades, musicians whose work has been a mainstay of Rage but who were also viewers themselves.
The second, Songs from the Red Couch: 30 Years of Guests Rage Programmers, delved into the archives to relive some classic moments from the studio.
The author is Narelle Gee and the book is titled Real Wild Child: An Insider's Tales from the Rage Couch.
The back cover description poses the question, What happens when the world's biggest musical acts sit down on Australia's most famous couch?
The website described Rage as an icon for Australian music fans and commended the ABC's decision to not alter the program from its original format despite it being on air for several decades.
The magazine said the show has been the "go-to" for any music lover since its inception, and that while rival programs have run their course, Rage is still going strong.