Australian broadcasting legend dies at age 78
Australian broadcasting legend Clive Robertson has died at the age of 78 after a battle with cancer.
Robertson changed the faced of news reading in the mid-1980s, going off script and making jokes and becoming a ratings sensation for Channel Seven.
Robertson began his broadcasting career in 1972 with the ABC before moving to Seven in the 1980s.
He was the face of 7News programs such as 11AM and Newsworld, and was also a high-rating radio star.
At the peak of his fame as an Australian news broadcaster, he was married to another Seven star of the time, Penny Cook from A Country Practice.
Robertson once told ABC’s Talking Heads program of his unusual style of news delivery, “I thought I’ll muck around and then they’ll take me off it, you see. And it didn’t work that way … I’d have to say the order of things especially at Channel 9, the order of news items."
"And if I said, ‘Look, this is really important’, I’d look at the camera and say, ‘This is a really important story’ and set it up, and if it was an important story, then the audience think, ‘Oh this guy’s a good filter.’ If you said, ‘Look, this is a silly item, I don’t know why we’re running it’ and you run it and it is a silly item, you’ve got them."
Image credits: Seven