Mal Walden
A prominent figure in broadcasting and television for over 5 decades
Mal Walden has been telling it like it is for over five decades. Starting his career in broadcasting and television in 1961 at a Warrnambool radio station 3YB where he was the breakfast announcer for three years. From there he moved across the Bass Strait to Tasmania where he joined 7EX and later moved Channel 9 in Launceston. Between 1966 and 1969, Mal was a general announcer and news reporter for Melbourne's 3DB.
Taking a year off in 1969 Mal backpacked around South East Asia and Europe spending six months on a kibbutz in Israel, where he produced his first radio documentary.
Returning to Melbourne in 1970, Walden joined HSV-7 where he hosted a number of shows, including the popular program Jeopardy. In late 1971 year he began a journalism cadetship with Seven. One of the highlights of Mal's seven years as a reporter at the station was his scoop as the first reporter at the scene of Cyclone Tracey which decimated Darwin between December 24 and 26 in 1974.
In 1978 Walden became the first working journalist to be appointed a senior television presenter, a trend that has since been adopted by most other Networks. In April 1987 Mal not only read the news, he made the news. His public sacking from HSV7 by the Fairfax Sydney Television Group led to public protests, staff walkouts and a plunge in news ratings. His immediate move to the TEN Network saw a record news rating of 40 and so began a long association with TEN.
At Network TEN Mal presented the news bulletin with David Johnston along with a new innovative segment called "Mal's Melbourne" which covered a wide variety of human-interest stories. This segment saw happy endings to many stories. In 1990 Mal presented the weekend news bulletin.
A noted highlight of Walden’s career was covering the Melbourne bid for the Olympic Games from Tokyo - coverage praised by the Prime Minister himself.
In December 1995, Mal was appointed newsreader of Network Ten's 5pm Melbourne News. In 2006 Mal became the longest continually serving face on Australian television and in June 2011 he celebrated 50 years in the Australian media.