The letters published in Melbourne's three TV magazines (Listener In-TV, TV Week and TV Times) during the establishment period of the city's television service offer an insight into a number of the issues, concerns and interests that were a feature of the public negotiation of television during this period, as well as attesting to an understanding that the local production landscape was a shared enterprise answerable to the viewers who supported it. The vociferous discussions that took place in the public arena of the letters pages were not necessarily representative of any general response to the city's TV service, but they unsettle the idea that TV was something that ‘happened to’ viewers who would soak up whatever entertainment was on offer. In this discussion, I explore the role and function of these print-based TV forums by focusing on the correspondence generated by In Melbourne Tonight's most famous barrel girl, Panda Lisner, whose changing fortunes demonstrated the determination of a number of viewers to play a participatory, even regulatory, role in the Melbourne production landscape.
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