Australian Dictionary of Biography

Alf Potter, c.1980

Channel 7

Alfred Frank Ernest Potter (1919–1998), radio and television director, was born on 15 November 1919 at Richmond, Melbourne, elder child of English-born parents Alfred Nathan Potter, packer and storeman, and his wife Ada Lucy, née Goodwin. Raised in East Malvern and educated at Murrumbeena State School, in 1934 Alf joined the Melbourne radio station 3DB, owned by the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. Starting as an office boy, he became a turntable operator, then a junior technician. He attended night school at the Melbourne Technical College and ‘soon made his mark as a sound recording engineer’ (McLaughlin 1986, 58), especially at sporting events.

Potter’s career at 3DB was interrupted by World War II. Enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force on 15 December 1941, he served with the Australian Corps of Signals in Papua (June 1942–April 1943) and in the Netherlands East Indies (May 1945–January 1946) on Morotai and at Balikpapan, Borneo. He was commissioned as a lieutenant on 1 October 1944. Demobilised in February 1946, he transferred to the Reserve of Officers on 5 March. On 30 October 1943 he had married Shirley Kain, a stenographer, at St George’s Church of England, Travancore. They divorced in 1954 after which Potter had little contact with his son Russell. On 23 February 1957, he married Isobel Joan (‘Izzy’) King, a stenographer, at Darling Methodist Church, East Malvern. Living at East Bentleigh, they had two sons, Ashley (b. 1965) and Bradley (b. 1969).

Following the war, Potter rejoined 3DB and recorded radio serials with producers including John Hickling, Donovan Joyce, and Dorothy Crawford. For Crawford and her brother Hector, he recorded Music for the People, a series of outdoor classical music concerts, and he was the recording engineer for their biographical musical drama The Melba Story (1946). In the early 1950s he also produced many programs himself, including musical variety shows, the family sitcom Daddy and Paddy, and the talent show Swallow’s Juniors, which launched the career of Ernie Sigley, a lifelong friend.

Potter was an all-round amateur sportsman, playing cricket, Australian Rules football, baseball, golf, lacrosse, squash, and tennis. His interest in sport served him well when he left 3DB in 1955 to join HSV-7, the new television station owned by the Herald and Weekly Times. He studied television techniques at Melbourne Technical College, and his first job was to help install the station’s new equipment. When HSV-7 went to air on 4 November 1956, Potter directed a live variety show from a broadcast van outside Melbourne’s Tivoli Theatre. His next assignment was to direct the station’s ambitious coverage of the 1956 Olympic Games, with just three television cameras at his disposal. He later recalled that, the day before the games began, he visited the Melbourne Cricket Ground and ‘actually broke down [and] howled’ (Roberts 2001, 12), due to the enormous pressure he felt.

Early in his television career, Potter worked on game shows and musical variety shows, such as The Late Show (1957–59) hosted by Bert Newton. In 1960 he directed a live production of the comedy-drama Seagulls Over Sorrento (1949) by the Australian playwright Hugh Hastings; it was the first drama made by Crawford Productions, founded by Hector and Dorothy Crawford, for which Potter also directed five episodes of the award-winning police drama Homicide.

Potter’s greatest accomplishment was leading HSV-7’s football coverage for nearly three decades and developing ‘the visual style for covering Australian Rules’ (Beilby 1981, 116). Overseas experts had advised that it was impossible due to the speed of the game and the size of the playing fields, but Potter proved them wrong by successfully directing a trial telecast in August 1956. From the beginning, HSV-7’s coverage was superior to the other television stations, largely due to Potter’s style of ‘following the game as a spectator might’ (Beilby 1981, 116). ‘I’m a mood reader,’ Potter later explained, ‘I like tight shots and reactions of the players. What you’re trying to do is recreate a continuous picture, like a feature film, without being able to cut and edit’ (Wilmoth 1983, 38). The HSV-7 football commentator Mike Williamson later recalled: ‘Alf Potter was just marvellous, the best in the business’ (Roberts 2001, 23). Potter also directed the sports panel shows World of Sport and Football Inquest.

As director of outside broadcasts, Potter supervised the telecast of major events including Anzac Day marches, Moomba parades, and the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal, as well as news stories such as the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt in December 1967 and the collapse of the West Gate Bridge in October 1970. Directing live telecasts required intense concentration and Potter was warned by a doctor early in his career that he could not keep it up. Although he did not drink, he was a heavy smoker.

For his pioneering work in football telecasting Potter was the recipient of a Victorian Football League special merit award in 1980 and was inducted into the Channel 7 Football Hall of Fame in 1981. He also received a Penguin award (1985) from the Television Society of Australia. Retiring at the end of the 1984 football season, he moved to the seaside town of Queenscliff and was an active member of the Freemasons and the Returned Services League of Australia (RSL). He spent many hours at the Channel 7 studios identifying and cataloguing old television footage. Survived by his wife and their two sons, and the son of his first marriage, he died on 19 April 1998 at Geelong and was cremated after a funeral at St George’s Anglican Church, Queenscliff.