[2] Over its run it was hosted, in turn, by Alan Field (1964), Ian Turpie (1964–66) and Johnny Young (1966–67) and Ronnie Burns[1] The series was known for having a regular roster of performers including The Strangers, a line of go-go dancers who appeared from week to week, Olivia Newton-John and Pat Carroll, Lynne Randell, Normie Rowe and The Twilights.
premiered in August 1964, the other major competing television popular music show series Bandstand, was made by the Nine Network in Sydney.
While that series had been an important outlet for the first wave of Australian rock'n'roll, it did not engage strongly with the so-called "Beat Boom" acts which emerged in the mid-1960s and onwards; Bandstand subsequently settled into a more mainstream musical variety format aimed at a broad general audience.
was broadcast on the same station: in December 1965, ATV-0 commissioned a second pop show, Kommotion, produced by the Willard-King organisation and hosted by popular Melbourne radio and TV personality Ken Sparkes.
Show focussed on the more sophisticated youth market and tended to concentrate on local solo performers, while Kommotion (which was in part modelled on the American series Shindig!)
pursued a more group- and chart-oriented format, as well as featuring a troupe of go-go dancers and a regular team of young performers who mimed to the latest overseas hits.
During taping of an episode, he began "fumbling and making silly mistakes", reportedly forgot the name of the artist he was meant to introduce, and subsequently collapsed on camera.
They notably secured one of the first sponsorship deals in Australian pop and were provided with a set of distinctive "El Toro" model electric guitars and basses made by the noted Melbourne-based luthier Maton.
Strangers singer-guitarist John Farrar became a prominent session arranger in the late 1960s before moving overseas and achieving great international success in the 1970s and beyond as a producer for Olivia Newton-John.
According to Kommotion host Ken Sparkes, the main cause was the imposition of an Actors Equity ban on miming in TV programs, which effectively put both shows out of business.
Most of the more than 200 episodes were subsequently destroyed when the network archives ran out of storage space, although numerous fragments and several entire programs have survived.