Twenty years ago, February 14th fell on a Monday, and that's the day we picked for the first broadcast of 7News. Channel 7 had been on the air since 1981, but the news started 13 years later. It would be impossible to compile or even estimate how many stories we've aired since then, but what really counts isn't the numbers, hopefully it's the difference we've made to our viewers who we hope have been enlightened, inspired, tickled, and yes, saddened and outraged too. And while we can look back at a quite vast body of work, reflecting on it today, Jules Vasquez recalls that it was almost a failed experiment. He's been the news director since then, while Audrey Matura Shepherd was the first news producer. We asked them both for some light reflections today:..
Jules Vasquez, 7 News Director, 1994 - Present
"February 12th 1994 was a day of utter chaos. I recall extremely well that I was alone in the control room because nobody there knew anything about what we were doing and I had it all in my mind which is not a good place to have anything if you ever worked in a newsroom. So, it was a completely misconceived mishandled misadventure and it as I recall I don't think went very well as a virgin flight."
Audrey Matura Shepherd, 7 News Producer, 1994 - 1996
"You know you are really taking me back to memory lane because I was young, I was energetic and I felt I could conquer the world, so when I was asked by Jules on behalf of his dad to go start off Channel 7 News - we literally went to a little almost broken looking house on the Western Highway and I was everything; the reporter, the editor and the anchor, so you could imagine and then we eventually got Indira Craig to start coming and read the news for us. I would run from morning right into news time just all over the place getting news. When you are that young it was exciting."
Jules Vasquez, 7 News Director, 1994 - Present
"I guess along the way we became known for a certain hard-nose-ness or I guess you could say a hard-headed-ness because that the only way you would continue against such insurmountable odds of repeated failure, I guess that became a culture internally and it became our personality and what people I how appreciate that there is a certain tenacity and a bogginess about how we operate."
Audrey Matura Shepherd, 7 News Producer, 1994 - 1996
"But I think one thing we had was like a heart, young people, vibrant and I mean television was new, this was a new era. You have to remember that was the time when there was a massive breakthrough. We use to have massive censorship before that and so we were that era or crap of journalist who were breaking barriers and saying no we want independence and so Channel 7 came as one of the first private newscast. When we went into Channel 7 there was more of a freedom and that's the kind of thing I was looking for. I needed to flourish on fertile free grounds and so because my boss didn't know much about it then they took my advice and I just ran away with the project. As I talk about it it's fun memories."
Jules Vasquez, 7 News Director, 1994 - Present
"All I remember about those first newscast was the Queen was coming and so that added to the cast; the Queen of England was coming; the lady who is on our money and we don't have a reverence now that we did then, so it was a big deal and it made the cast even more pronounced. I remember we had a newscast with a dog dress-up for the queen which is still a good story. I would actually do that story today."
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