Reg Grundy began as a sports commentator in the 1950s. Credit:Laurie Shea It is a testament to Grundy's vision that two of those - Family Feud and Neighbours - are still on Australian TV screens; three, in fact, if you include the Foxtel remake of Prisoner, Wentworth. It is also telling that two of them - Family Feud and Wentworth - won television awards on the eve of his passing. Grundy's vision for Australian ideas was global. And local. It was born at a time when local TV screens were packed with imported programming - American westerns, comedies and variety shows, mostly - and when there was little momentum to develop local content. And Grundy's company, under his guiding hand, broke barriers by selling not just program tape, but ideas as well. Notably, he steered foreign-language versions of the iconic dramas Sons and Daughters, The Restless Years and Prisoner, pushing back against the idea that Australia's natural place in the television food chain was only to import formats from bigger countries.

Sale of the Century with host Tony Barber (centre) Credit:Channel Nine Many of those remakes, including Sweden's Sons and Daughters adaptation Skilda Världar and the Dutch remake of The Restless Years, Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden, became massive hits that would long outlast the originals. And yet Grundy's greatest success was not in knowing how to navigate the boardrooms of the world's biggest broadcasters, though that environment would prove to be a native habitat for him, but in understanding the little guy, and what he (or she) wanted to watch. The cast of the TV drama Prisoner. Some of Grundy's greatest successes - such as Prisoner - would prove to be jewels in the crown. Its foreign versions, such as Germany's Hinter Gittern, were hits.

And a remake, Wentworth, would go on to become Australian cable TV's most successful drama ever. While others, such as the medical drama The Young Doctors, would become infamous for never winning an awards. Grundy, curiously but perhaps unsurprisingly, was unaffected. Family Feud is still on television. Credit:Jessica Layt He loved all his children equally. More meaningfully, at a time when television offered only male action heroes, Grundy's programs gave birth to Australia's strongest women: Sons and Daughters' Pat the Rat, Prisoner's Joan Ferguson and The Young Doctors' Grace Scott were uncompromising, unyielding superwomen. The Grundy logo.

The actress Colette Mann, who starred in the iconic Grundys drama Prisoner, and now stars in another Grundy original series, Neighbours, paid tribute to the veteran executive's courage in creating strong television roles for women. "He really was the man who changed roles for women in television in the late 1970s," Mann said. "He gave the greenlight to Prisoner and to the beginnings of so many careers." Mann played inmate Doreen Anderson in Prisoner, a role which with she is associated to this day. She currently plays Sheila Canning in Neighbours. "Reg recognised the need to make women the focus of drama back in the 1970s," she added.

"It seems extraordinary to me that people are convinced that is something that has only been done recently." The chief executive of Fremantle Media Ian Hogg described Grundy as a "national treasure". "[Reg's] legacy to Australian entertainment is insurmountable," Mr Hogg said. "His visionary ability to know how to connect Australian families through some of this country's most loved programming has stood the test of time. Mr Hogg said generations of Australians had experienced Grundy's touch as a storyteller.

"His innate understanding of great storytelling and entertainment lives on today through programs such as Family Feud, Wentworth and Neighbours," Mr Hogg said. "Reg is an icon and he will be sorely missed." Fremantle Media's head of drama Jo Porter added that Grundy's name remained inextricably linked to the birth of Australian television. "Programs produced by his company has given opportunities and careers to so many of our brightest creative talent on and off the screen," she said. "He was an innovator in both content but also modes of production," Porter added. "Australia via Grundy's took the production model of the daily drama to the rest of the world."

Ten Network executive Rick Maier, who worked as a script editor and writer on iconic Grundy dramas such as The Young Doctors, The Restless Years, Neighbours and Prisoner, said the Australian television owed everything to pioneers such as Grundy, and his legendary contemporary Hector Crawford. "When Australian voices and faces were still to be heard on our screens Reg brought us home grown game shows and serials," Maier said. "From every network into every home he put entertainment first and foremost, changed the way television drama could be produced, and then exported that expertise to the world. "So many of us owe our training and our craft to the man who started it all. His legacy is boundless," Maier added. Foxtel's director of television Brian Walsh said Grundy, with other pioneers such as Hector Crawford, laid the foundations of the Australian television industry.

"Grundy's was the powerhouse production company, diversifying across drama, quiz shows and light entertainment and Reg was the master showman," Mr Walsh said. "It's hard to think of another single individual who has had so much influence on the small screen," he added. "He had a profound influence over many careers and leaves a legacy of outstanding achievements in Australian television."

What Grundy leaves behind is twofold. His company, long ago dissolved, now forms part of the larger machinery of Fremantle Media Australia, one of this country's "super-indies", and responsible for a slate of programs including The X Factor Australia, Family Feud, Neighbours and Wentworth. But more importantly he leaves behind an echo which still resonates in Australia's television schedule: a lesson that every idea, whether it is as risky as Prisoner, or as ordinary as Neighbours, can contain within it the seed which gives birth to television's greatest gods and monsters. Tribute plaques in memory of Reg Grundy will be broadcast during tonight's episodes of Neighbours and Family Feud on Ten, and on this week's fourth season premiere of Wentworth on Soho.