IIRC it was sponsored by SSW supermarkets so they probably extended the sponsorship to country stations to promote their stores across the state
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Todayâs TV: 22.3.1981, Melbourne
Cold Chisel is not listed for the TV Week Rock Awards, but were definitely there!
Source: TV Week
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Did GTV9 get that much of a advantage in terms of ratings by being the only 24 hour station back then?, because the other stations werenât in a hurry to follow GTV in broadcasting 24/7.
Interesting to see Bert Newton hosting the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. I knew he hosted a number of those events here but I didnât know he hosted in London as well?
And The Towering Inferno, the '70s really loved those big disaster movies and they were ratings gold in the early 1980s. The Poseidon Adventure which aired a year earlier got ratings in the 40s. And The Towering Inferno rated similarly, getting 42 in Melbourne and 39 in Sydney
https://twitter.com/Thetribalmind/status/1258203812667351042?s=20
While Nine was dominant, I doubt gained any significant advantage being on 24/7. So few viewers after midnight would have made any advantage overall negligible. I suppose it was a good PR move just being the âalways onâ station, and for some time GTV did trial keeping the newsroom open overnight and presenting newsbreaks on the hour after midnight (IIRC radio announcer Don Lunn and actor/presenter Sue McIntosh were included on the roster of overnight news presenters), but as you say the other stations werenât in any real hurry to follow suit.
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My first thought was that Nine substituted the British host with Bert linking the acts to give it an Australian flavour?
Could have been.
The Australian Womenâs Weekly listing for the same night (Sydney) lists the event as being from 1980 and doesnât mention Bert Newton at all. Youâd think if he was hosting the show the Womenâs Weekly being a Channel 9 magazine would have made a big deal of it. So maybe his role was fairly tokenistic as you suggest, maybe just to introduce the telecast.
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TCN also had the Royal Variety Performance at 8.30pm but ATN went for titillation with their Jackie Collins, âvery adults onlyâ soft core porn offering The World Is Full of Married Men.
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Given the ratings for The Towering Inferno on Ten I reckon both Seven and Nine would have come off poorly 
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Wikipedia, the Royal Variety Charity website and YouTube indicates that it was indeed the 1980 performance, and that there was no host. Maybe thatâs why Nine slipped Bert in?
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I remember being excited that Eve Plumb (Jan Brady) was in it when I first saw that movie. I wasnât aware of who O.J. Simpson was at the time but wouldâve been cheering for his death had I known what was to come years later, even if he did save a kitten from a burning apartment in the movie.
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Years ago I got the dvds for The Towering Inferno, a couple of Airport movies and Earthquake. I think I might have got The Poseidon Adventure as well. Used to love those old disaster films. Earthquake in particular has some incredibly dodgy visual effects, itâs hilarious. I noted that it was showing on 9Gem a few weeks back, so itâs still getting some airtime.
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I take it UHF-46 was ATNâs Kings Cross relay?
Yes, it was. It later moved to UHF-49 after ABC (along with SBS) started transmission from that translator in February 1983, taking up UHF-46, prompting ATN to move frequencies.
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Seems a bit ridiculous to promote the UHF channel to essentially all of Sydney when itâs really just a localised signal to a specific area? How many people tried to tune in to Channel 46 or 49 or whatever and just found a lot of static?
It was the same in Adelaide when those Adelaide Hills translators were promoted on the main channel with no clarification
Strangely, in Melbourne I donât think any of ABC or the commercial networks gave any promotion to their UHF translators that were popping up in the urban fringes, such as around Marysville, Warburton, etc. Barely got a mention anywhere.
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From SAS-10, circa 1980s.
Either SAS had two UHF channels or UHF-52 was moved to UHF-55.
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ATN, TCN and TEN all had the UHF channel on the station promos after the translators were launched. I remember trying to tune our television to the channels but got nothing, whereas I was able to pick up a fuzzy picture on WIN and ABC Wollongong.
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The Adelaide Foothills translator (which was the first UHF TV transmissions anywhere in Australia, even predating SBS!) did have SAS on UHF-52 when it first started transmission in April 1980. When SBS started local transmissions in 1985, the ABC & the Commercial stations moved frequencies to accommodate it.
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The University of NSW television channel VITU launched in 1966 and was apparently broadcasting on UHF 48, 667MHz. It had very limited coverage and programs were restricted to university lectures.
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Interesting to hear about these experimental things that came up. VITU sounds similar to a university-based channel established in Brisbane in 1959, but on VHF. The electrical trades section of Brisbaneâs Technical College in George Street had been granted a special experimental licence to broadcast a low-power signal on Channel 10. The special channel was intended to aid the school in training new TV servicemen and any signal emanating from Channel 10 was likely to only be receivable from within the immediate area around the college.
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I recall when the Como inner-city Melbourne translator began transmission in 1992 there was only a couple of paragraphs mentioned in the Age Green Guide of it, with a picture of a typical aerial designed to receive it. ABV2 was re-transmitted on UHF-61, HSV7 on UHF-49, GTV9 on UHF-52, ATV10 on UHF-55, SBS on UHF-58. In 1996 C31 had a translator on UHF-64. Its range was only limited to the CBD, South Yarra, Richmond, Hawthorn, Toorak, Armadale, Prahran and St Kilda. All these stations still transmit on digital from the Como site today, but on UHF channels 40-45.
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