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Rage is a popular all-night Australian music video program broadcast on ABC TV on Friday and Saturday nights. It was first screened in April 1987.
Rage starts anywhere between 11pm and 1am and finishes between 11am to 12pm on Saturdays and at 6.30am on Sundays. On Friday it plays new and recent releases. On Saturday it has specials and often has guest programmers, including local and international personalities from the music industry. Sometimes these specials/guest programmers run long and cut short the top fifty, however if they run short (which has rarely happened, especially in recent years), they will repeat clips from the previous night's show.
Between July 1993 and May 1995, Rage aired a special New Releases program weekly from 2-4am on a Friday morning.
Rage has a good reputation among viewers for its minimalist format which has remained largely unchanged for almost two decades. The only time a human is seen on Rage delivering dialogue to the camera is when guest programmers appear on the Saturday night edition. Otherwise, the videos are run end-to-end with the occasional quick branding clip or the rage logo accompanied by a voice that simply says "rage" to break them up. The titling on the videos is also very simple and no other logos or watermarks appear over the clip.
Similar to the Triple J radio station, Rage tends to play more alternative music and other non-mainstream genres than its commercial counterparts during the early hours of the morning. The specials on the Saturday night editions vary over time. Often it's a simple dedication to an established artist by showing a large amount of their work. These types of specials are a gold mine for any fan wishing to record video clips, although this practice has largely become irrelevant as music DVDs have appeared. As an example of the other types of specials shown, in early 2004 edited highlights from Countdown (from the 70's and 80's) and Recovery (from the 90's) were shown over many weeks. Due to its huge timeslot Rage can devote the air-time to show such large amounts of material.
Top Fifty
From around 7am to 10am on Saturday mornings and 4am to the end of show on Sundays it switches to the weekly top fifty from the ARIA singles chart. Rage aired the top 60 chart from Sept 1990-March 1991 and July 1991-March 1994. If a video from the top fifty is unavailable, unsuitable or non-existent, it will be replaced by a splash screen of the Rage logo and the charting position and the title and artist. Also, the videos shown up to 6am are uncensored (if they are available in that form). This arrangement is sometimes used to show two different video clips for the same song in the one session. When this happens it is often a live (or sometimes remixed) version that is shown earlier in the night/morning, while the "mainstream" censored version is shown in the top fifty due to classification laws in Australia which prevent adult oriented material being shown in its particular timeslot.
Rage has had to censor and remove videos which breach advertorial and editorial guidelines for ABC TV, for example in 1991 Adidas logos were blurred out in a music video by New Kids On The Block and in 2005 a music video by the Bratz Rock Angelz was removed due to its advertorial content. Post year 2000 Rage is more liberal and leniant with censorship compared to the 90's. For example, Rage by their own discretion opted to broadcast the Crazy Frog music video "Axel F" uncensored, showing the exposed penis of the frog, deeming it non-offensive.
From 2005 the Top Fifty was added to the ABC2 Digital channel programming schedule as well from 8am to 11am. The Top Fifty is also broadcast to Asia on ABC Asia Pacific and has a large cult audience in Asian countries due to the prevalence of pop music there.
Guest Programmers
Rage have had many bands and artists host the show on Saturday nights. They select and introduce their favourite music videos of all time. This gives an insight into the bands and artists influences which are highly regarded by fans. Tapings of Rage guest programmers are not only valuable but highly sought after too. Rage has had several artists host the show over its vast history, including the likes of:
Simulcast
From New Year's Eve 1992, Triple J had simulcast Rage from 1am up until 6am. This ended in 2003 when Triple J introduced their new dance show The Club in the same timeslot.
Theme Song
The theme song used to open the show is sampled from Iggy Pop's "Real Wild Child", with Pop's vocals and the word rage manipulated backwards throughout.
The song used during the closing credits of the show is "Speed Your Love to Me" by Simple Minds.
Several years ago, a third theme was produced (also based on Iggy Pop's "Wild Child") to break up the guest programmer or special on Saturday nights.
In the last few years the show has been using another theme specifically for the for top fifty - sampled from the song "She Said" by now-defunct Brisbane band Lavish. It is now used instead of the opening theme to begin the top fifty and replace any missing clips.
During TISM's appearance on the show, they described the theme as "new and exciting" and its repetition as "always stimulating.. why see different songs when you can see this one four or five times"
Day of broadcast
Due to the fact that the show usually starts on one day and ends on the next, it is often unclear which day the show belongs to. The producers have decided that even if it begins after midnight, it belongs to the earlier day (Friday or Saturday) even though the majority of the show (if not all) will be on the later day. This is most likely because television guides in Australia start and end each day at 6am.
End Of Year Specials
For the last weekend of each year, Rage has two specials. On the Friday night, a selection of the preceding year's videos is played. On the Saturday night, they have a selection of the years guest programmers. This show will start with a series of guest programmers intoductions that were shown at the beginning of each of their shows and will then include them introducing a few of the videos they selected during their program, followed by one or two of their videos.
10th Anniversary Special
On the 19th of April, 1997 to celebrate Rage's Tenth anniversary, a special episode was aired. It included a selection, by year, of some of the clips that had aired in Rage in the past ten years. It also included some footage of Guest Programmers from over the years. It was repeated later that year on the 20th of December. Rage's 20th anniversary will take place in April of 2007.
= Trivia =
During his Musical Jamboree series, John Safran successfully demonstrated "even a dog" can get a video on Rage. He put a dog on a skateboard, equipped with a camera, and submitted a clip to Rage - which subsequently aired - with sped-up footage of the dog's perspective as it moved through a busy street.
External links
- Rage official website
- ABC Broadband (Includes rage videos on demand)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation shows | Australian music television
"Rage (TV program)"