ABBA On The Web - March 2004
Television was the medium that best presented ABBA to the world. They were young and photogenic, their stage costumes were colourful and eye catching, and their music literally jumped from TV set’s mono speakers.ABBA’s international breakthrough occurred through the television broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest. Their amazing popularity in Australia was kick-started after the promotional film for ‘Mamma Mia’ was shown on a TV pop show. And they experienced their biggest sales successes in America after appearing on a prime-time special.
During their career, ABBA made hundreds, if not thousands of television appearances, many television specials, and of course their legendary, ground-breaking promotional films. Now they are all being documented on the internet at ABBA on TV, created by Sara Russell (née Barnes) from the United Kingdom.ABBA on TV will eventually chronicle every possible television (or film or video) performance or appearance by ABBA as a group, and eventually the four members individually.
Currently, you’ll find listed every known television appearance from most of ABBA’s active years. There are a couple of years missing, but Sara assures me that they are under development, and in fact one of those important missing years is “not too far off being ready”. Great news indeed!ABBA on TV is an easy site to use, with all the years listed across the top of the screen in a toolbar-type arrangement. Clicking on a year will reveal a list of dates and television programmes to the left, and some highlights from that year to the right. Clicking on a programme title will reveal information about that show in the panel on the right, with a full description, a list of songs (if any were performed), broadcast details of the programme, any fun little things to watch out for, whether the appearance is available in any home-video format, plus photos (if available).
Sara tells me that this is the fruition of a project that has been on the boil for many years. She started gathering information on ABBA’s TV appearances for a proposed article for the fanzine ABBA Report (which she co-produced – you may have recognised her name), but when the fanzine folded a few years ago she had no outlet for all that she’d found.Later inspired by many enquiries about ABBA’s TV appearances, including much discussion on the ABBAMAIL internet mailing list, she decided to put it all together in a website to share with fans everywhere. She even took a course in web design just so she could learn how to create this site, and with the help of another web-savvy fan (Robert Verbeek, of ABBA Plaza fame), she started work on this enormous project.
ABBA on TV is “a giant ABBA fan collective effort”, Sara says. Check out the huge list of those who have contributed to the site so far. Sara welcomes any information about any TV appearance that isn’t listed, or any additional information about something that is.Sara tells me that she gets very excited whenever she learns of a previously unknown appearance. If you have anything that you’d like to share with Sara, you’ll find her e-mail address on the site. She adds that with help “we should eventually have a bible of ABBA on TV for the use and information of all ABBA fans.”
