Caroline Jones pioneered the 'revelatory' interview on TDT

I believe that a substantial aspect of such 'gold standard' was the 'revelatory' way of interviewing, that Caroline Jones began to pioneer on This Day Tonight.

I had the privilege of witnessing Caroline developing this style when I worked with her during the heydays of TDT for three years until the end of 1972.

To understand this uplifting, collaboratory, truth-revealing and unity-building interviewing approach, it needs to be put in the context of the only other dominant interviewing styles, which existed on ABC TV news and current affairs programs before Caroline Jones' debut on TDT.

Those styles were, firstly, the traditional, boring and subservient political interviews on ABC TV news before the advent of TDT and secondly, the no holds barred combative style of daily interviewing that exploded with TDT into Aunty ABC's hitherto mostly tranquil landscape.

Until Caroline Jones joined TDT one year after its inception, it was this primarily combative style for which TDT was known.

Historian, Ken Inglis wrote:

When people in Sydney were asked late in 1967 to name their favourite program, TDT came out on top, well ahead of the most popular commercial features.

Gerald Stone, who was with TDT since its birth, wrote the following about its arrival:

Blasphemy is what we all committed almost every night as we took on the sacred cows of Australian life and tried to show our audience the huge amount of bullshit they were mired in: the accumulated moral hypocrisies and double talk of the double-breasted Menzies-Calwell years.

When ABC management gave its blessing to the launching of TDT in 1967, they got more than what they bargained for.

By the time Caroline Jones arrived to TDT in 1968, the Michael Willesee/Richard Carlton confrontative interviewing style was a chief trademark of the program.

So what was Caroline to do?