After 27 years the Nine Network's respected Sunday program aired for the final time, ending a chapter in Australian television history.
Past reporters including Charles Wooley, Jennifer Byrne and Ray Martin, as well as original host Jim Waley reminisced with current presenter Ellen Fanning as the curtain came down on the once prestigious program.
The Nine Network announced late last month it was axing Sunday because of flagging ratings.
The two-hour show featured highlights from the program launched in 1981 and a political interview with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Sunday's first executive producer Allan Hogan said the original concept for Sunday was for a political interview sandwiched between "all the stuff that came off the satellite they couldn't find a home for elsewhere".
Fearing that format would fall flat with viewers, Hogan said he fought hard to secure a budget to hire reporters to produce local stories.
"That was the challenge [securing a budget] because the masters that were at that time didn't want to spend a lot of money on it, but I thought it was never going to work," he said.
"If it was only going to be a political interview and a receptacle for all the ABC and NBC stuff that no one else wanted then the program would not fire."
Over the years Sunday aired countless long-form investigative pieces, breaking news and winning awards including Logies for the program and journalism awards for its reporters.
Former Nine head of news and current affairs Peter Meakin said there had never been any "sacred cows" as far as Sunday was concerned.
"Whether it's Care Australia or Greenpeace - I know one reporter who was devastated that he'd left before he'd done a job on the Salvation Army," he said.
Ray Martin, who quit the Nine Network earlier this year, paid tribute to the cameramen and producers who worked on the show.
He said Nine had made a big mistake axing the program.
"[It's] not just about nostalgia ... it's a dopey idea to drop a program like this because this almost says to an audience, `well we don't do current affairs anymore, why don't you go and watch the ABC or go and look at Sky Television, we don't do it anymore', because this program did it, this program propped it up."
Mr Rudd said the program had been a staple of current affairs coverage in Australia and its demise shows the media is undergoing a period of great transformation.
"Half a century ago, it was the move from prints exclusively into the new media of television, of course radio had come along some time before that," he said in an interview on the final show.
"Now we're at another point of great transformation it seems from television and different types [of television] including pay TV, as well as what's happening with the new media and the digital revolution.
"We're in a period of enormous flux and this program going the way in which it's now gone is, I think, evidence of that."
Sunday will be replaced by a one-hour news bulletin, starting at 8am, from next week.
