GTK (TV series)

GTK was an Australian popular music TV series produced and broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series title was an abbreviation of the phrase "Get To Know". The series one of of several significant popular music programs produced by the ABC, and like the later establishment of Double Jay, GTK was created to address the perception that the Australian youth audience was being poorly served by commercial radio and TV and that much important international music and especially Australian popular music was being ignored by commercial TV and radio at that time.

GTK premiered in mid-1969 and ran until about 1974. The first series was produced by noted TV and event director Ric Birch. Because colour television was not introduced in Australia until 1975, much of GTK was produced on black-and-white film or videotape, although segments of programs ca. 1974 are known to have been filmed in colour.

Running for ten minutes per day and broadcast from Monday-Thursday, just before the main 7pm news bulletin , GTK's magazine-style format included interviews, film-clips, concert footage and a daily live-in-the-studio performance segment, specially recorded by GTK and featuring many notable Australian acts of the period.

It was thought for many years that most of the videotapes of the program had been erased during an ill-advised ABC economy drive in the late 1970s, but recent discoveries at the ABC, notably during and after the closure of the old Gore Hill studio complex in Sydney, have revealed that much of the series was shot on film before being trnasferred to video (including the unique live segments) and that 80-90 percent the series has survived. recent discoveries have inlcuded exclusive GTK interviews with Pete Townshend and Marc Bolan and unique colour footage of Lou Reed's 1974 Sydney concert and his legendary Sydney press conference, which also features noted Australian TV journalist Ian Leslie.