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PETER LUCK is one of Australia’s
most respected media personalities. He has presented
and produced most of Australia’s major current
affairs programs, including This
Day Tonight, Four Corners, Sunday, Hinch, Today
Tonight and Inside
Edition as well as creating enduring TV
series like This Fabulous
Century.
Producer/presenter
of Bicentennial Minutes…A
Time to Remember, The Australians, Where
Are They Now? and
This Fabulous Century he has been a familiar
figure in press, radio, television and magazines
for 30 years in a wide variety of roles including
executive producer, producer, reporter, columnist,
photographer and cartoonist. His Bicentennial
Minutes series was unique in Australian TV history
– 266 separate mini documentaries shot on
350 locations which ran throughout 1988 on the
Seven Network. In 1995 Peter produced for
Nine the stunningly successful 50
Fantastic Years Specials and Salute to Australians
At War minutes to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the end of World War II.
In 1996 he rejoined the Seven Network to help
create and present Where
Are they Now? which became one of the big
successes of the 1996 television season. In 1998,
while also hosting Today
Tonight, Peter re-made This
Fabulous Century which ran head to head
with Hey Hey It’s Saturday
until the latter show was cancelled. His most
recent production was a documentary/concert with
Nelson Mandela.
The
books which Peter produced to accompany This
Fabulous Century and Bicentennial Minutes –
A Time to Remember have sold more than
250,000 copies. Luck is also the author
of seven other books, including Australian
Icons which was accompanied by a popular
exhibition at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks.
Peter’s most recent book is a photographic
essay on the theme of Rust launched by the Premier
of NSW, The Hon. R.J.Carr along with an exhibition
of Peter’s photographs at the Michael Nagy
Gallery of Fine Art in Potts Point, Sydney,
In 2003 he joined an illustrious group of Australian
photographers whose works were hung in the inaugural
Citicorp Private Bank Australian Photographic
Prize held in conjunction with the New South Wales
Art Gallery’s famous Archibald Prize.
Luck
was a member of the original This
Day Tonight team in the 60s, which included
Bill Peach, Gerald Stone and Mike Willesee.
He helped set the pattern for the nightly current
affairs shows which Australians now regard as
part of their way of life. He has also been
a reporter on ABC TV’s Four
Corners and for two years, was Executive
Producer of Channel Nine’s Sunday
Programme. He has compered The
Hinch Summer Series and Newsworld
for Channel Seven, as well as Good
Morning Australia for the Ten Network.
Among his ouput for the Ten network was a documentary
about the life and times of John F. Kennedy.
In
1972, Peter was awarded a Churchill Fellowship
to study film techniques in England, France, Sweden
and the United States. His documentaries
on Joern Utzon, designer of Sydney’s Opera
House, and the Aboriginal murderer and author,
Kevin Gilbert, were both highly commended at the
Cannes Film Festival.
Peter
is best known, however, as a popular historian.
In 1979, he was executive producer, co-writer
and presenter of This Fabulous
Century a 36-part television series, which
told the story of Australia in the 20th century
using archival film and interviews with 300 significant
Australians. The series topped the ratings
for nearly a near, and won a Logie in 1980.
Peter also produced and presented the opening
night block-buster for Australia’s multicultural
television network, SBS. The program, Who
Are We? traced the history of immigration
in Australia.
Peter
Luck Productions (Australia) Pty. Ltd. has made
numerous short films, including A
Salute to Australian Television, produced
for screening at the Bicentennial conference of
the Federation of Australian Commercial Television
Stations held in Los Angeles, two films on the
role of Australia’s National Film and Sound
Archive and a film about the role of the National
Maritime Museum which was presented to American
President, Ronald Reagan, in 1988.
There
are few jobs in the media that Peter has not done.
His radio recollections range from being news
editor of 5AD on the morning President Kennedy
was shot, to hosting the popular “PL on BL”
for ABC radio 2BL (702) in 1989-90. During
1989 he also made daily news commentaries for
radio 2SM. For seven years Luck wrote the
popular TV critique Fifth
Column for the Pink Guide in The Sydney
Morning Herald. As well as his serious works,
Peter has written and produced, with Michael Carlton,
an LP record And The Word
Was Gough which satirised the political
history of modern Australia. Peter Luck
is 59 and lives with his wife Penny, and children
Anthony and Anna, in the Sydney suburb of Balmain.
Visit
Peter's website at www.peterluck.com.au
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