Cheez TV logo.
Cheez TV was a 90 minute Australian wrapper show created by Bill McQueen, that primarily aired cartoons and anime on weekday mornings (as well as on Saturday mornings, under the name The Big Cheez), spanning 10 seasons and 2,547 episodes. It was presented by Jade Gatt and Ryan Lappin (joined, for a time, by a third presenter, Decoder Ring's Lenka Kripac, during The Big Cheez) and aired on Network Ten from 2 July 1995 to 20 August 2005, although presenters Gatt and Lappin officially left the show on 31 December 2004, after which time it, for a short period, became a simple cartoon block with no in-between segments. On 22 August 2005, 2 days after the last ever Cheez TV episode aired, it was replaced with Toasted TV, now often cited as being the series' spiritual successor (despite being considered a far inferior series by most Cheez TV fans).
Showcased by Cheez TV during its 10 years on the air were anime series' such as Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptors, Beyblade, Zoids and Yu-Gi-Oh, alongside such cartoons as SpongeBob SquarePants, Rugrats, Rocket Power, Street Sharks, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, X-Men, Inspector Gadget, plus a host of others. Inbetween segments featuring Gatt and Lappin included interviews, prize giveaways, pop culture parodies and other skits of a family friendly nature. Notably, Cheez TV is said to have been the first Australian TV show to have an internet address, established in 1995, the year of the show's premiere.
Disappointingly, in the years following the show's retirement, Gatt and Lappin (and Cheez TV itself) seemingly faded into obscurity, (bar the odd commercial appearance by Lappin);[1] however, in recent years, several fan tribute groups and pages have shown up online. One such Facebook event scheduled for October of 2010 calling for a reunion show of Cheez TV quickly caught the attention of Cheez TV fans, as well as Gatt and Lappin themselves, who mentioned the then-upcoming event in an August 2010 radio interview. The amount of petitions sent to Network Ten and other third parties related to the show is said to be in the hundreds and prompted an unnamed third party to lodge a complaint, resulting in the closure of the Facebook page. Less than a year later, in mid 2011, it was announced that a reunion of sorts was indeed going to come to fruition, in the form of special guest appearances from both Gatt and Lappin at the then-upcoming 2011 AVCon (Adelaide's Anime and Videogame Convention), during which the pair were included in multiple guest panels, as well as featuring in an hour long AVCon vodcast.
Sadly, of the show's massive run, only a handful of episodes and segments have shown up online, including the last episode featuring the presenters (a retrospective episode titled "Best of Cheez TV"), as aired in late December of 2004 (with the actual shows presented having been edited out by the original ripper/uploader). Several Cheez TV fan groups and pages are still active today and fans alike hold onto hope that more taped episodes show up online in the future.
The LMW Cheez TV archive[]
Episodes and segments uncovered via the Lost Media Wiki can be found below:
References[]
- ↑ Dare Iced Coffee "Boss" commercial, featuring Ryan Lappin. Retrieved 26 Mar '14.