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COUNTDOWN IS BACK THIS JANUARY, 2019 ...  ON rage !!!!!
Stay tuned below with regular Countdown full archival information for each Countdown episode rage shall be airing every Saturday throughout January ...

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No Retro January

Rage have just announced that retro month will be in February this year to allow them more time to search the vault

Re: No Retro January

The five weekends in January was too overwhelming for them.

Re: No Retro January

Not happy, as yet they haven't even stated a reason. I think Rage should be careful not to change too much, consistency and lack of change is what makes the show successful. Saturday morning changed earlier this year and now retro month.

Re: No Retro January

Oh boy.

Rage always air the Triple J Hottest 100 in February, too, so I guess that will be one of the 4 weekends sacrificed to that on top of this $hitty decision.

Re: No Retro January

While I understand this year has been all over the place, I don't think that's any excuse to change the season to February.

Even with the restrictions elsewhere, etc Rage have had plenty of time to organize a good January season. It seems quite convenient for them to move it from a January month that had 5 Saturdays to February which only has 4.

Plus Rage would have had plenty of suggestions left over from this year's Retro season in order to program suggestions, etc.

I can't fathom what they want to show in January - seems like this decision was only just made, very strange and disappointing.

Re: No Retro January

ohnoitisnathan
Oh boy.

Rage always air the Triple J Hottest 100 in February, too, so I guess that will be one of the 4 weekends sacrificed to that on top of this $hitty decision.
They could do the hottest 100 on a friday night

Re: No Retro January

Disappointing move as I was looking forward to five weekends.
I hope the reasons given for the move (more time to find footage) is at least true.

Re: No Retro January

Because of COVID, i am now taking leave in February to go to the Oz Open which i have been going to for the past three years. So I was looking forward to being at home and watching retro month on rage. Now i'm f u c k e d taking leave in Feb and not seeing retro month. **** me and **** China!

Re: No Retro January

As Nelly put it 'Why do all good things come to an end'?

Re: No Retro January

Patrick
While I understand this year has been all over the place, I don't think that's any excuse to change the season to February.

Even with the restrictions elsewhere, etc Rage have had plenty of time to organize a good January season. It seems quite convenient for them to move it from a January month that had 5 Saturdays to February which only has 4.

Plus Rage would have had plenty of suggestions left over from this year's Retro season in order to program suggestions, etc.

I can't fathom what they want to show in January - seems like this decision was only just made, very strange and disappointing.
Except I doubt we're going to even get 4 full nights of retro content in February. Rage always air the Triple J Hottest 100 on a weekend in February (usually the first one). Most recently, they have aired the bottom half of it on Friday night, and the top half of it on Saturday night, which means it will eat into about 3-3.5 hours' worth of retro month content on the weekend that it airs. I'm guessing we could also 'look forward' to the Saturday morning preview hour that week being an hour of previous Hot 100 entries as our 'retro' content.

I can't not see them airing the Hot 100 in February. It's rage! They live for all things Triple J...

Re: No Retro January

Will feel strange having Retro on in February but the upside for me is there's still time to request a few things such as more Flashez inserts and Rock Arena's

Re: No Retro January

I am SO annoyed about this!

I was telling my sister only last week how lucky she is that her birthday is in January as mine is in February and I wish that I got Countdown episodes on February and WELLA!

BUT ... now that 'rage goes retro' is announced for February I am so not pleased.

The reasons being, January is the tradition and that's how it's always been and I was SO completely overjoyed we had 5 Saturday's this January which meant more content and in the unfortunate awful case - announcement of a possible Recovery 90's night, it would mean 4 weeks still of mainly 80's Countdown's/Rock Arena ....


NOW, this means one possible night in February lost to Recovery which means less Countdown and this JJJ Hottest 100 is very much a concern!

And NOW because of the nightmare of social media, rage are asking the general sheep what they want to see and I have already seen some horrific suggestions that is steering away from what January's and retro month is supposed to be!


Myself and Patrick and others have sent them enough suggestions over the last months and some here would have sent them suggestions over the past few years they still haven't played!


At least 'rage goes retro' is still on at all, they could have scrapped it completely but this means an extra 5 weeks to wait and one less weekend!


I am hoping they play the JJJ Hottest 100 in January and not eat into February!

Re: No Retro January

Having read some of the posts on Rage Facebook after they asked for suggestions revealed some gems like this one:

"Please play real Retro. The Aria Top 50s Like Rage Used to be on weekend mornings with more 90s00s Pop/Rock/R&B. That’s what retro is"

Apparently real retro includes 2000s R&B. I must be getting old. It'll be an early night for me if that comes to fruition.

Re: No Retro January

Retro means different things to different people. Remember when Rage first started playing Countdowns it was only six years since it had ended. Perhaps we need two retro months- one for 60's-80's and another for the 90's-00's

Re: No Retro January

Times are changing and the whole nature of Retro Season is changing too. Even 2000 is now 20 years ago. When Rage first started showing old Countdowns they were only 6 years old. We need to grasp that concept I think.

Whilst it is disappointing that a January tradition has come to an end, sadly because of the pandemic for much of the year all staff including those at the ABC have had to work from home. Even now only a very small percentage of the workforce is back in an office. They cannot access older format tapes from the archive for digital conversion from home. Even the Countdowns we see are now 35 to 40 years old. I was expecting January to be completely cancelled due to all the issues Covid have caused in terms of producing a show relying purely on archival footage which has to be converted and rendered for transmission. As I said, the work cannot be done from home. We can be grateful they are making an effort and aiming for February. It is better than nothing believe me. Hopefully they wont take on board all the facebook requests for 2000's material, but lets face it, a large number of people of that generation on social media would now certainly regard that period as retro - and so will the Rage staff. Hopefully some of the Countdowns that have been requested will be shown.

Re: No Retro January

I hate that the 00's are now Retro. Playing 00's r&b means a complete no watch for me.

I would only tune in for Countdown and Rock Arena, unfortunately the Early 00's are now retro just like how in the 90's the 80's and 70's were Retro.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhh ...

Re: No Retro January

Unfortunately for Gen Y most of the music from the '00's sucked. So much so that many of them are going back to 80's music and pop culture. You see it all over you tube kids today loving music from the 60's to the 80's and bemoaning that they were born too late :relaxed:

Re: No Retro January

Brett (2)
sadly because of the pandemic for much of the year all staff including those at the ABC have had to work from home. Even now only a very small percentage of the workforce is back in an office. They cannot access older format tapes from the archive for digital conversion from home.
I get this, but there have been some excellent vault episodes throughout the year. Surely some of the same people are involved in retro month? If things have really been that bad for rage staff, I don't want to give them ideas... but why haven't they dropped the ball on the vault episodes as well? Yes, they were off for a few weeks with Dr. Who repeats, and there have been a handful of really short vault episodes - but other than that, they have been consistently producing them each week, with lots of music videos that haven't been aired since they were new releases in the late 80s/90s.

Re: No Retro January

OK, Triple J Hottest 100 will hopefully NOT encroach on February. I just checked, and it airs on radio on 23 January 2021. That leaves the following weekend (30-31 January 2020) for rage to get this out of their system. I think they have of late aired the Hottest 100 on rage the weekend after it airs on Triple J.

Re: No Retro January

Especially after the 1980 & 1982 Countdowns we had last January, Plus the Rage Guest Programmers from 1999 too, What else could the ABC Archives dig out? Rock Arena from 1988?

Re: No Retro January

ohnoitisnathan
Brett (2)
sadly because of the pandemic for much of the year all staff including those at the ABC have had to work from home. Even now only a very small percentage of the workforce is back in an office. They cannot access older format tapes from the archive for digital conversion from home.
I get this, but there have been some excellent vault episodes throughout the year. Surely some of the same people are involved in retro month? If things have really been that bad for rage staff, I don't want to give them ideas... but why haven't they dropped the ball on the vault episodes as well? Yes, they were off for a few weeks with Dr. Who repeats, and there have been a handful of really short vault episodes - but other than that, they have been consistently producing them each week, with lots of music videos that haven't been aired since they were new releases in the late 80s/90s.
The vault episodes with clips from the 80s and 90s are a different kettle of fish to complete Countdown episodes in the archives. The former have been digitised, the latter not.

Re: No Retro January

Wow, glad I dropped in to see what was happening. I saw the playlists for January and thought oh no.......

I am not overly sympathetic to this decision, covid or not, the ABC gets well over a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money. Covid or no covid, they still get the money and still pay the staff.

Oh well, February is better than it not happening at all, though like many here I was looking forward to 5 weeks and not 4.

Re: No Retro January

I have had a shocker and forgot about RAGE retro until tonight.

It's turned out a godsend for me, because I didn't miss anything for the 1st time since the 1993 retro started.

Re: No Retro January

I just saw this afternoon the ABC broadcast a New Wave Special. From the clips I saw they were all Australian (Jo Jo Zep Taxi Mary, and Edith Bliss Heart of Stone). Was it all Australian? Did anyone happen to record it?

Re: No Retro January
Re: No Retro January

Some awesome clips in there and I missed it :unamused: Will keep an eye on next Saturday night for sure

Re: No Retro January

So this Saturday i see we have a Metallica special to celebrate 40 years. Must have took a bit of time pulling this one together. Surely 5 episodes of Countdown wouldn't have taken much more effort? Bring on February!