Part social history and part memoir, They Gave Us a Television Station to Play With is the story of the arrival of ABC TV in Darwin told by an ABC journalist of the era. The arrival of television in Darwin was inevitable, Darwin being the only Australian capital without TV at that time. The only questions were when and in what form it would appear. With detailed research and a touch of humour, Richard Creswick explores these questions and the lives of Territorians as that significant milestone ushered in one of the most eventful decades in the Territory's history. Television, Cyclone Tracy and self government were landmarks in a period of social, cultural and constitutional change, chronicled here with a bit of history and a few characters thrown in for good measure. As Dawn Lawrie has written in her foreword, 'this book is a great contribution to the history of television and the Northern Territory in its triumphs and tragedies and will be enjoyed by many.'