I’m a little surprised that NRN-11 didn’t get more. Since the Newcastle Herald had a wide distribution.
I don’t know if this is still the case but I remember as a kid on family holidays up at Nambucca Heads you could buy the Newcastle Herald up there
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I think because NRN wasn’t commonly received anywhere south of Port Macquarie, except for the odd few around Laurieton and even Forster, a listing wouldn’t have been useful to many Herald readers.
You could say the same thing about NEN-9 Tamworth, which could be received by a small number of viewers from Muswellbrook to Scone.
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Yeah it depended on the antenna you had up there. NEN-9 in the Upper Hunter was like Novacastrians recieveing 7,9 and 10 from Sydney
And if the Herald had listed NEN-9 some readers would have confused that with the TCN-9 listing.
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Yup, you can get the Newcastle Herald up here in Coffs.
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As I noted in the Fairfax Media thread the other day, it looks like the Green Guide in The Age is no longer including regional variations either. Must be some cost-saving involved by removing a few words from their TV listings?!/
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Beyond 2000 ® on 7 and new eps on 10.
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And former prime time drama Quantum Leap shunted to midnight with former daytime soap General Hospital at 5am.
Today’s TV: 20.8.1962, Melbourne
Source: TV Week
- BP Pick A Box is still showing on GTV9 despite station affiliations swapped between the 7 and 9 channels. It would only be a matter of time before it moved over to HSV7 to align with ATN7 in Sydney where the show was made.
- Midday movies on both Channels 7 and 9, and the battle for the housewife audience with Video Village, Say When and Make Mine Music on Seven, up against Concentration, It Could Be You and Take The Hint on Nine. ABV2 mostly focused on children’s and educational programming during the daytime.
- Then it was the battle for the kids audience, with The Happy Show on Seven, The Tarax Show on Nine and Monday Showcase on ABC.
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What was the Preston Television Service? Just servicing TV’s?
Yep. There was a big industry in TV repair companies. TVs often went on the blink or something horrendous might happen like the picture tube dying. I don’t think it was anything unusual for any household to have had several TV repair calls in the space of a year. Some companies would try and rope people in with annual contracts. It was also good for business when older sets had to be converted to receive Channel 0.
Even in the 1980s we had a TV repair man who came to fix our set on a number of occasions.
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back before everything became disposable 
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It was always good if you had a repairman in the family. We used to take our dead TV’s and VCR’s to our Uncle who’d fix them or swap them for another one he’d repaired. Used to love going out to his shed, so many TV’s and VCR’s and other equipment there.
It’s not so much the disposability that’s killed that industry now, it’s the miniaturisation. Back then the entire TV cabinet would be filled with components down all the walls and even layers of boards in some and nearly every component could be replaced. I fixed a couple of TV’s during my apprenticeship from the late 90’s era and there was not much in them at all, the picture tube and one small circuit board with half the components missing for the more premium models/technically different specs. DVD players were even worse, a massive box with a small circuit board.
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How did your family deal with the TV going on the blink, TVAU?
I remember it happening quite frequently in the black and white and early colour days and it always felt like a major challenge to fill the void when the TV was off being repaired. Eventually my grandparents inherited a portable b&w that we would borrow. The front of it had a dark perspex cover that made for an odd viewing experience.
I purchased a portable colour TV in 1983 with money earned doing odd jobs over a year. A relative said he’d chip in half if I could save $200. That seemed like a small fortune back then. The family would always commandeer mine when the one in the lounge was being fixed. I got over 25 years use out of that little TV. Never had a problem with it.
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What brand was your little portable?
I used to have a great little 34cm Sharp colour TV with 8 preset buttons, somewhere along the line, part of one rabbit ear snapped off, and the volume knob came off, but I managed to put that back on with some Blu Tack 
. Never had any trouble with that either.
I think I’ve blurred out the trauma of that from my memory. There were times the repair man would take the TV away for days (or longer) to fix and monitor whatever had happened. I can only assume that we dragged out the old Philips B&W TV from the spare room (which was previously the old lounge room set) or… horror of horrors… no TV at all!!!
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It was a National brand Quintrix model. I had a soft spot for that brand (also had a National cassette player) because of those ads ABBA did for them back in the '70s.
A relative had a portable colour TV with a chord remote control- I think it had a channel up and down button and an on/off switch. I really wanted a similar model but there weren’t any available when we went to buy it at David Jones Warrawong. I’d been saving for a year and just couldn’t wait any longer and took the display model off the shelf. I’d never do that these days. It was a valuable early lesson in the value of a cent and saving for what you want. I washed cars, cleaned bird cages and raided my parents wallets for one and two cent coins to save for that thing.
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The “Newcastle Herald” 7 day TV Guide, which is published on Fridays, is on the ball…
In this week’s guide, they have correctly listed WIN with their variations to TEN’s schedule and no 6pm news.
They have also listed 7flix from this Sunday.
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The Coffs Coast Advocate’s weekly TV liftout still had it listed as Ten Nthn from today and the wrong channel numbers for One and Eleven. Program listings appear to be correct.
The Gold Coast Bulletin was the same. Still listed as Ten GC
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Today’s TV: 1.9.1977, Melbourne.
Source: Scene
- I think it might be school holidays as In those days of three terms a year there was usually a two-week school holiday in late August/early September. Channel 7 is starting earlier than its usual 10am, but ABC is running school programs in the morning but not in the afternoon. A bit conflicting.
- Channel 7 has its traditional Thursday night League Teams and Channel 0 has its VFA equivalent.
- Former Number 96 actor Chard Hayward hosts the game show $30,000 Treasure Hunt which was co-hosted by Marie van Maaren (The Early Bird Show). Although Blankety Blanks was doing well it was not helped by poor lead ins at 6.30. Treasure Hunt did nothing to help the situation and in 1978 Blankety Blanks host Graham Kennedy had a falling out with the channel over the situation, which then saw Blankety Blanks shifted in Melbourne to a midday timeslot. (I expect that Ten in Sydney kept Blankety Blanks at 7.00 to the end of the year)
- ABC is running The Goodies in the adult timeslot of 9.15pm. Strange to imagine now that The Goodies was originally conceived as an ‘adult’ comedy but for a lot of its time in Australia it was shown in the early evening (on ABC and later on Channel Ten) and was a hit with kids.
- The week’s final episode of Bellbird. By this stage Bellbird was screening three nights a week at 6.30pm. By chance you can view the first of this week’s episodes (the week’s episodes were titled Come Live With Me) on YouTube:
YouTube: Classic Australian TV
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