Update of Countdown episodes still to be played.

This is a cut and paste from an earlier post I did a few years ago with relevant changes made. Please let me know if there are errors.

Of the 47 surviving 1970's episodes, all have been shown (multiple times quite often) except for the following 4:

Dec 26 1976 Top 100 clips No78-64 (only the clip inserts tape exists)
Dec 11 1977 Top 100 clips style show (only the clip inserts tape exists)
ep 142 March 19 1978 Adelaide Festival (faulty audio - cannot be broadcast)
ep 159 July 16 1978 hosted by Jon English (exists as off air recording only)
.... for ep 142 they have now shown one Dragon performance from it this year

The 43 broadcast quality surviving 70's episodes have been shown a combined total of 76 times with Aug 31 1975 (Sherbet) airing 5 times, July 8 1979 (Iggy Pop) 4 times, 6 others 3 times, 12 others have been shown twice and the rest at least once. As much as I love 70's episodes I do not want to keep seeing these episodes being repeated over and over when there are still so many from the 80's that have never aired on Rage, although I was glad to see 6 episodes shown on Sept 24 2016 for the Michael Shrimpton tribute.


For the 1980's I think it is as follows (Some later Countdown Awards and Summer shows were not included in the numbering of episodes):

1980 47 episodes made, 45 shown, 2 believed missing with none in the archives to air

240 (May 18 1980) Steve Gilpin (Mi-Sex) from Brisbane *****lost episode******
241 (May 25 1980) Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats) replaced Gary Numan***lost ep***


1981 46 episodes made, 41 shown with 5 still to air

272 February 15 1981 Dennis and Ray (Dr Hook)
275 March 8 1981 Molly (insert show due staging assistants strike)
296 August 9 1981 Craig Johnston (Mother Goose)
- September 29 1981 Wendy Stapleton (Wendy & The Rocketts) (standby program)
304 October 4 1981 Swanee


1982 52 episodes made (summer shows pre-recorded in 1981), 49 shown with 3 still to air. Also at least 3 episodes - No. 10, 19 and 20 - of Countdown Friday (clip show hosted by John Peters) exist in the archives.

- January 10 1982 Molly (Summer Special #4 Export bands)
351 October 31 1982 no host (Advance Australia theme - songs introduced by live acts)
356 December 5 1982 Wendy Stapleton (Wendy & The Rocketts)


1983 46 episodes made including two standby that were not aired at the time but one (ep 91 with Molly in vaults) since shown on Rage. 35 shown with 11 still to air assuming ep 367 exists. A few off air recordings of episodes of Countdown Flipside known to exist.

367 April 24 1983 episode not confirmed to exist - possibly missing
371 May 22 1983 no host
373 June 5 1983 Wendy Stapleton (Wendy & The Rocketts)
374 June 12 1983 Tim Finn
376 June 26 1983 Greedy Smith (Mental As Anything)
378 July 10 1983 John Hood (EONFM) and Keith Neill (Muir?) (7HT)
388 September 18 1983 James Reyne and Brad Robinson (Australian Crawl)
389 September 25 1983 Pat Wilson
398 November 27 1983 James Reyne (Australian Crawl)
399 December 4 1983 Ross Wilson (Mondo Rock)
- December 5 1983 standby program of Molly’s favourite bands/videos


1984 48 episodes made, 43 shown with 5 still to air. Ep 432 Thriller Dance competition episode only known to exist in an off air recording, it may not be in the ABC archives.

417 May 20 1984 Marc Hunter (Dragon)
425 July 15 1984 State Heats Beatstreet competition
430 August 19 1984 David Reyne (Takeaways)
432 September 2 1984 Thriller Dance competition (not in ABC archives?)
442A November 17 1984 U2 Special


1985 47 episodes made, 32 shown with 15 still to air

450 February 17 1985 Richard (No Nonsense) and Eric (Mondo Rock)
451 February 24 1985 Brian Mannix (Uncanny X-Men)
452 March 3 1985 Marc Hunter (Dragon)
460 April 28 1985 Ben (teenager)
464 June 2 1985 Brian Mannix (Uncanny X-Men)
468 June 30 1985 Molly interviews David Lee Roth
469 July 7 1985 Angry Anderson
471 July 21 1985 Dave and Brad (Hoodoo Gurus)
478 September 8 1985 Richard Bruce (No Nonsense)
480 September 22 1985 no host
481 September 29 1985 Greedy Smith (Mental As Anything)
483 October 13 1985 Lyn Buckfield (Electric Pandas)
485 October 27 1985 Kids In The Kitchen
489 November 24 1985 Brian Canham (Pseudo Echo)
- December 29 1985 Summer Show No 1


1986 51 episodes made (with 4 summer shows pre-recorded in 1985), 25 shown with 26 still to air. Ep 515 June 29 may be missing and ep 520 not made due to Commonwealth games.

- January 5 1986 Summer Show No 2
- January 12 1986 Summer Show No 3
- January 19 1986 Summer Show No 4
- January 26 1986 Summer Show No 5
496 February 16 1986 Martin Plaza (Mental As Anything)
501 March 23 1986 Bernie Lynch and Grace Knight (Eurogliders)
502 March 30 1986 Brian Mannix (Uncanny X-Men)
505 April 20 1986 Live program prior to Countdown Awards
506 April 27 1986 Robert Blackwood (Molly chose him at a Sting concert)
508 May 11 1986 Molly (interviews Lloyd Cole & The Commotions)
510 May 25 1986 Video Story Board Competition
511 June 1 1986 Martin Plaza (Mental As Anything)
513 June 15 1986 Brian Canham (Pseudo Echo)
514 June 22 1986 Replacement program - Oz For Africa highlights
515 June 29 1986 not known to exist but probably in ABC archives
516 July 6 1986 Molly (interviews in London)
522 August 17 1986 Molly (interviews Elton John re. marriage)
523 August 24 1986 Molly (interviews Bananarama)
524 August 31 1986 Molly (interviews Neil Finn and Paul Hester)
525 September 7 1986 Molly (interviews Red Symons)
527 September 21 1986 Gavin Wood (live Uncanny X-Men, Dragon, Hoodoo Gurus, Reels)
528 September 28 1986 Stephen Cummings (insert show)
531 October 19 1986 Angry Anderson and Joe Cocker
532 October 26 1986 Molly (from Adelaide Grand Prix)
534 November 9 1986 Molly (interviews David Sylvian)
538 December 7 1986 Brian Mannix (Uncanny X-Men)


1987 24 episodes made, 18 shown with 6 still to air

542 February 22 1987 David Reyne
547 March 29 1987 Mondo Rock
548 April 5 1987 Paul Young
552 May 3 1987 Molly (Georgia Satellites interview)
557 June 7 1987 Molly (live bands intro next segment)
559 June 21 1987 Greedy Smith and Red Symons

I believe there are 402 episodes of Countdown that definitely exist with possibly 405 if 3 episodes that had not been archived actually do exist as we saw in 2017 with the missing James Freud and Lene Lovich episodes airing.

Rage have aired 331 episodes after the 2022 Retro season (assuming there are none this week in the 90s-00s) which will leave between 71 and 74 (depending on missing episodes) still to air. If Rage show around 10 episodes per year we could see the remaining ones that haven't aired in the next 7 years but that may be being a little optimistic, particularly seeing how many episodes from 1986 are yet to air.

Hi there Armin,

Pretty sure the episode with the Dragon clip from the Adelaide festival also had The Ferrets “don’t fall in love” broadcast from it in 2014.

This is such a GREAT reference so thankyou :)

An excellent bit of research Armin - thanks very much for the update...

Thanks Armin!

I always have to re save these documents that you do, you are a lifesaver!

With the way that rage are going, we will never see all the COuntdown's left to play. 5 Countdown episodes played this month is so SLACK!

Frankster 30. The Dragon & Ferrets clips from the Adelaide Festival have been played from time to time on Rage over the years. I have them in my collection. Dragon was played on 24/12/19 and the Ferrets were played on 6/6/17. Cheers

Armin,
Ep 527 - 21.09.1986 - Gavin Wood (live Uncanny X-Men, Dragon, Hoodoo Gurus, Reels) has aired. Can't say exactly when it was aired but I have a file created date of Feb 2015.

Thanks Armin. Your updates are so interesting and useful when calculating what has been played and what is still yet to be played on rage. There are still so many episodes to air, especially from 1983, 1985 and 1986. Let's hope we have a larger number of Countdown episodes played on rage next year.

You are right, I have got Countdown Sept 21 1986 as well.

I can't seem to find the old playlists on the Rage site anymore and Jason hasn't updated the Rage Re-runs page for 10 years so can't confirm the year but it was probably about 2015.

Thanks for letting me know, I'll update my records.

Circumstantial evidence only, but I'm going to guess it aired on Sunday 18th Jan 2015,
because that is the one night of retro month I completely missed out on since 2014, and I don't have a recording of Ep 527, so that kind of matches up.

According to my notes, 21/09/86 was missed when scheduled to air in the regular 2015 retro season, it must have been something else running overtime.

Due to a large number of people complaining about the show being missed, the Rage team relented and showed it on 04/02/2015 - about the only time they have ever done this...for some reason my notes say "ABC 3" - but Ive got no idea what that means...

Armin - one of your older postings in here which has all Rage dates that Countdowns aired does have 21/09/86 with (2015) in brackets next to it.

Cheers Brett
One of my cut and paste jobs must have had a glitch, or maybe as the episode was shown separately I overlooked it.

I just had a look at the episode and noticed that there was no watermark on it which was nice, just the occasional Rage subtitles with the episode date. I think this sometimes happened on ABC3 at the time so that would match your notes. I do remember there was one episode they showed in a usual replay slot section after Retro month as it was bumped from the original scheduling.

I just typed "527" as the search word at the top of this page and we had a bit of discussion going in 2009 (when I found the run sheet details on TARA which hadn't been listed by Jason) and 2015 (when they aired it).

Anyhow I guess that means we need 25 episodes (not 26) from 1986 and there are 70 (not 71) episodes still to go....assuming I haven't botched anything else.