As Australia swims in nostalgia for the gaping hole in live
music broadcasting, Andrew Stafford looks back on the moments etched into his memory

• We’re celebrating the unforgettable moments of
Australian TV. Nominate yours here
Last year’s debut of The Set on ABC television – a house party style music variety show, with the tagline “live music has a new home” – was an attempt to plug a gaping hole in the national broadcaster’s programming: for a long time, live music had indeed lacked a home on our television screens.
The gap had grown so wide that it had generated its own nostalgia. We’ve had a TV mini-series on Countdown’s Ian “Molly” Meldrum, as well as Classic Countdown, and a recent documentary on the ABC’s late-90s music television program Recovery (to go along with its reboot on
YouTube, Recovered, with original hosts Dylan Lewis and Jane Gazzo).