It’s partly this endlessly streaming loop of history that keeps Countdown alive. Twenty-seven years since that last episode, it’s now been gone for twice as long as it was here.

“We’ve been able to uncover [previously unseen] moments from all eras but particularly from the early years when Countdown was in its formative stage,” says ABC executive producer Cathie Scott. It’s well known that scores of episodes were erased by the ABC in the ’70s and early ’80s, but the archive contains around 480 of the 580 episodes, she says. Recovery of the lost hundred from other sources is ongoing.

“Countdown 50 Years On will focus on what made Countdown the cultural phenomenon of its time, a must watch institution for a generation of young Australians and a series that transformed both the local music industry and music on television,” Scott says.

What she can’t or won’t say is whether this once-vital service to culture and industry might stage a return to the national broadcaster in 2025, as per the latest cycle of rumours that buzz around music and media corridors every few years.

Inundated by global market forces like never before, Australian artists sorely miss the concentrated exposure of a single, expertly curated portal focusing the divided attentions of the nation’s youth. But given the maddening range of options now streaming, is a single, sacred source providing “all the answers” even remotely possible?

“I’d love to think so,” says Braithwaite. “But I mean, television just doesn’t have the same appeal to that younger demographic that watched Countdown. It was a family show of course, but the teenagers were leading the way. And they obviously have ways of finding new music that are completely different now.”

Steele is more optimistic. She cites BBC2’s Later… with Jools Holland, a long-running success in the UK now with millions of viewers worldwide. Melbourne’s Amyl and the Sniffers recently performed on the show alongside Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, the kind of exposure they couldn’t buy at home.

“That’s one of the best ways in the UK that you discover new bands,” Steele says. “Australia is crying out for that. I think we’re really missing that format. The rest of the world has it. Why don’t we? It should be a priority.”

Michael Ross from Adelaide duo Electric Fields — they’ll perform a-ha’s Take On Me for the 50 Years special — recalls the original program vividly.

“Australia’s Top of the Pops,” he says reverently. “I might be a bit too young to have been watching it but the memories of seeing it are just there somehow, whether it’s from YouTube or … it’s just a part of the furniture in my mind.”

As kitsch as some of it looks from here, the progressive nature of the furniture is a big part of its legacy. For Ross, the show’s most abiding image is of its host, Ian “Molly” Meldrum: “This incredible queer man that Australia somehow accepted into their hearts as their musical guide, curating pop for the rest of us.”

Meldrum’s skills in that regard seemed secondary at the time to the chaotic energy he brought to the show. Among Braithwaite’s fond memories is the infamous 100th episode, in which “Molly was tired and emotional” after a flight from the UK. He and John Paul Young wound up holding the broadcast together with hastily scribbled cue cards as Meldrum swung punches backstage.

But to give our curator his due, Countdown was social education by stealth for Australian teenagers of the ’70s and ’80s. Whether it was Bronski Beat calling out gay oppression with Smalltown Boy or some band called Goanna letting us know we were standing on sacred ground, there was food for serious thought beyond the bumbling, the screaming and the razzle dazzle.

“That’s what artists do, through storytelling and artistic expression,” Michael Ross says. “It’s a sharing, especially of the fringes of society and outside of the mainstream. You know, with a teaspoon of sugar and some deadly pop hooks, we can tell stories that you wouldn’t hear otherwise.”

Molly has retired from appearing on TV, “so will be enjoying [this weekend’s special] from his lounge room,” says Scott No doubt he’ll appear in flashback form as Myf Warhurst and Tony Armstrong “guide the audience through some of the unexpected and unlikely moments” of the show’s history.

Countdown 50 Years On premieres on November 16 at 7.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.

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