0/28 On-Air Presentation 1982

Message from the station manager:

Promos:

Hosted break segments:

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Sir Nicholas Shehadie, chairman of Special Broadcasting Service.

His prediction to have SBS rolled out to each state capital was close but fell a bit short. He predicted a three-year timeframe (end of 1985), it was 3.5 (June 1986) :stuck_out_tongue:

Unfortunately any expansion to Darwin still took almost another decade.

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Any ideas who were introing the stuff on that night?

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When did SBS start broadcasting regionally?

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Silvio Rivier

Goulburn, Cooma - 1983 (coinciding with launch in Canberra)
Newcastle, Wollongong - 1985 (coinciding with Adelaide, Brisbane/Gold Coast)

Then progressively around the country during the 1990s. IIRC there was a big regional expansion around 1994ish.

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Bendigo and Ballarat (and Gippsland too IIRC) got SBS-TV in early 1992, a month or so after aggregation.

Interestingly, many Shepparton viewers installed seperate UHF antennas to receive SBS Bendigo because there was no local SBS-TV from Mt Major. I think they got SBS around 1997, along with most other regions.

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I would be interested to find out the commencement dates of SBS in the regional areas during the 1990s and 2000s. Can’t seem to find anything online.

The Department of Transport & Communications’ annual reports (for the late 80s/early 90s) are good places to start, likewise the old SBS annual reports. You can find them in NLA’s Trove. :slight_smile:

Department of Transport & Communications annual reports:

SBS annual reports:

According to the 1991-92 Department of Transport & Communications’ annual report, SBS commenced broadcasting in the Gippsland region in November 1991, whilst it commenced in Bendigo & Ballarat in April 1992.

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Yes i remember Gippsland had it around aggregation time as we could pick up the Gippsland UHF channels.

Not sure why Shepparton had such a long wait. It’s UHF frequency was included in Hills Antennas local aggregation brochure from 1991. But it just took years to come on air.

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According to the Wikipedia article, Shepparton got SBS in November 2001 and was the last city to do so.

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1982 2nd Anniversary Station ID and News Opener

YouTube: aussiebeachut0

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1982-83 Station ID.

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One very cool logo IMO. A masterpiece.

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Really emphasized the ‘0’ in Channel 0.

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Did they just ignore the 28 after 1983?

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Is it’s virtual channel 3 now?

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The VHF-0 frequency was only meant to be temporary. On 5 January 1986, SBS TV ceased broadcasting on channel 0, making it Australia’s first sole UHF network.

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That was until the mid 1990s when SBS stations started to pop up in the VHF band in some remote areas.

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Was that in regional Australia?

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The full logo (1980-83) included “Channel 0 and Channel 28”. But realistically, probably 99.99% of its viewers were watching Channel 0 - if they could pick it up.

sbs_1980

By about 1983, around the time it became Network 0-28 and expanded into Canberra, etc., there was a push to get Melbourne and Sydney viewers to convert to watching Channel 28, as the original close-off date for Channel 0 was fast approaching (December 1984 IIRC) and SBS was looking at losing most of the few viewers it had. Although SBS did manage to get a one-year extension and Channel 0 didn’t switch off until January 1986.

But the “O” component of logo continued to feature until 1993.

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