Few people can claim to have promoted the audio industry in Australia as much as Herald and Weekly Times editor Peter Familari.
Evidence suggests it's not an inflated claim. It was Rupert Murdoch himself who asked about his consumer supplement on a fleeting visit to check his accounts. He noticed a ledger filled with new advertisers and swollen with lucre. “Who's the bloke behind this audio and electronica advertising?”, he reputedly asked, while seeing they had come from his archival, The Age. He was told the byline belonged to the diminutive history master turned journalist four floors beneath him on Flinders Street.
He brusquely complemented his section editor with a simple “good work,” grinning and rewarding Familari with a pay rise. Paying a single cheque for the dual talents of a popular audio/ consumer goods columnist-cum-marketeer had clearly won Murdoch's heart.
From the early 1980s until his retirement 30 years later, Familari proudly and humbly nurtured a dormant industry that had been ripe for a renaissance when he joined the HWT.
The centrepiece of this action was 'Sound and Vision', the consumer
