Right station, wrong network…WBZ was a NBC affiliate at the time. They didn’t join CBS until 1995, as a result of CBS buying Westinghouse’s broadcast assets, with sister stations KYW Philadelphia and WJZ Baltimore also switching to CBS (the other 2 Westinghouse stations, KPIX San Francisco and KDKA Pittsburgh were already long-standing CBS affiliates).
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Today’s TV: 20.2.1988 Canberra, Wollongong and the Riverina
Source: Canberra Times via Trove
- The 1988 Winter Olympics from Calgary is covered by 3.5 hours of highlights by Nine and was relayed to CTC7, WIN4 and RVN2
- Seven’s coverage of the Australian Masters Golf is telecast live on CTC7 and RVN2.
- Early signs of network affiliation: Ten’s Video Hits is shown on CTC7 (replacing Sounds which aired on CTC in previous years), Seven’s Sounds is on RVN2 (although I presume it may be either repeats or a summer series as Sounds was replaced by Jono and Dano’s Saturday Morning Live in the beginning of 1988), Nine’s Wide World of Sports is on Saturday afternoons on WIN, plus Hey Hey It’s Saturday live at 6.30pm.
- Programmes from Italy, Egypt, Greece and Poland dominate the post-8.30pm schedules on SBS.
- Not Just Another Affair, an often repeated telemovie from the 1980s is the movie on ABC at 8.30pm, followed by the 1960s series “The Untouchables” before Rage all night.
- The Factory, a live music and magazine series for young people is on ABC at 9am, hosted by Andrew Daddo and Alex Papps.
- WIN4 had movies overnight, the only regional station to go overnight on weekends on a regular basis at that time.
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From memory that may have been the second last time that was Sounds was shown. I am pretty sure that Saturday Morning Live started on first weekend in March 1988, and It ran from 1988 to 1989, Over Summer 1988/89, they had a show called Top 40 Video.
Video Smash Hits replaced Saturday Morning Live in 1990, hosted by Michael Horrocks and Emily Symons and later Kym Wilson. Video Smash Hits was axed in 1994 and replaced with childrens programming.
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Top 40 Video was produced in Adelaide at SAS7 and was shown every week (SAS did not take Jono and Dano’s show), but was national during the summer non-ratings period when Jono and Dano took a break.
I think Video Smash Hits was connected to the “Smash Hits” pop music magazine that was around at the time.
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Today’s TV: 21.2.1980 Adelaide
Source: Victor Harbor Times via Trove
- No early morning programmes on all of Adelaide’s commercial TV channels, ADS7 and SAS10 began their broadcast day at 9am and NWS9 at 9.30am
- The Ted Knight Show, a shortlived US sitcom spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show screens in prime time on ADS7 at 7.30pm
- The Little River Band had their own TV special on ADS7, followed by highlights from the 1980 Winter Olympics from Lake Placid.
- Local Adelaide shows include Head Start to Beauty (a five minute advertorial), Channel Niners Super Thursday, and On This Day on NWS9, & Touch of Elegance and Crackerjack on SAS10
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Today’s TV: 22.2.1977 Melbourne
Source: The Age
- HSV7 did not start their broadcast day until 11.00am
- Only sport on that day was a golf exhibition match on the ABC
- Dick Emery in Australia (continuing the trend at that time for British comedies making specials or series in Australia) on HSV7 at 7.30pm
- Dr Jazz, a TV series focusing on jazz music is shown late night on ABC.
- House of Evil is the late night horror movie on ATV0 (although Deadly Earnest departed the airwaves a few years earlier)
- GTV9 continued to transmit all night with black and white movies overnight.
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Bonus Today’s TV: 22.2.1995 Canberra
Source: Canberra Times via Trove
- Open Learning dominates early mornings on ABC, interrupted with Australia TV International News and First Edition news at 6.30am
- Talk shows on Ten Capital include Ricki Lake, Donahue and Oprah Winfrey
- A premiere episode of The Simpsons is on Capital “Boy Scouts in the Hood”, this year Ten had two seasons of the Simpsons to go through in a year because they did not show any new episodes at all in 1994.
- The Larry Sanders Show followed by Dream On at 9.30pm on Capital, these shows did not last a month in that timeslot and was rested for a few months before resurfacing in late night timeslots.
- Australia played India in the Centenary Cricket Tournament in New Zealand, highlights late night on Nine/WIN. This was shown live earlier in the day on Galaxy’s Premier Sports Network (now known as Fox Sports).
- Infomercials aired at 2.00am on Capital (one hour), 10.30am and 12.30am on Prime (30 minutes each), and none on WIN.
- Prime had a half hour Canberra news bulletin at 6pm.
- Kiwi soapie Shortland Street airs on SBS. Other SBS highlights include Keith Floyd’s cooking series “Floyd’s American Pie”, a doco on the Atlantic Records label, and a French mini series
- A netball test series Australia v South Africa aired in prime time on ABC.
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The above TV guide took place not long after Capital adopted the Ten branding & became known as Ten Capital. This happened after Southern Cross Broadcasting, who owned Ten Victoria, took ownership of the station from Charles Curran, who also owned Ten in Adelaide & Perth.
About a month after the above guide, Prime changed their Canberra news format yet again to a half-hour composite bulletin at 6pm, followed by Today Tonight at 6:30pm.
In early 1996, Prime moved their local bulletin to 5:30pm, returning to a half-hour local bulletin, followed by Seven Nightly News at 6pm & Today Tonight at 6:30pm. This lasted until August 1996, when Prime moved their local bulletin back to 6pm, followed by Seven Nightly News at 6:30pm.
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Nine’s midday movie The Girl Who Couldn’t Lose starring Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson). Very shoddy looking telemovie. I don’t even think it was shot on film but on videotape 
. I have the last few minutes of it on VHS somewhere from a mid-dawn screening it had on Ten in the late 90s.
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What? Why not?
Any idea what year Seven took over the rights to Ricki Lake?
Ten still airing General Hospital too this point (albeit at 5am).
Ten began screening repeat episodes of the Simpsons in late 1993 after Jeopardy which occupied the 6pm slot got axed. This continued into 1994. Ten was a very low rating network in those days, and new Simpsons on Ten in 1993 trailed behind Seven and Nine in the ratings. It wasn’t a network priority, by mid-1994 Ten poached “The Wonderful World of Disney” away from Seven and began airing these episodes on Sunday evenings, this became the network’s flagship animation show. They also had repeats of British sitcoms of the seventies (all of which previously aired on Seven) on Friday and Saturday nights. Ten was a very cheap network. They didn’t bother with new Simpsons in 1994, the repeat programmes were rating higher than had they put a new episode on. I even wrote a letter to the Age Green Guide complaining about them not airing new Simpsons. Places like a well known cult bookshop in Melbourne screened these (yet to be aired on Ten) episodes (via tapes from friends in New Zealand) on TVs in their shop, people were standing around watching them in the same way people were watching the moon landing in shop windows in 1969!
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Today’s TV: 23.2.1969 Melbourne
Source: The Age Green Guide
- World Championship Wrestling, some boxing, Epic Theatre and B.A.Santamaria’s Point of View takes up Sunday afternoons on GTV9
- Carasello, a Melbourne produced Italian variety series originally aired on ATVO, appears on HSV7 for its second season.
- ATV0 had five hours of cycling hosted by Phil Gibbs.
- Only five minutes of evening news on ATV0 compared to 30 minutes on GTV9 and HSV7.
- ATV0 called their Sunday night movie “Starlight Theatre”
- Lots of familiar names on the ABC: Dr Who, Mr Squiggle, The Magic Roundabout, Sow What, Weekend Magazine, Four Corners, Divine Service - all long running programmes.
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Amazing! And very interesting.
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Ten might’ve been trying to program for an older (or at least, more broader) demographic in 1994?
Along with the British sitcoms on Friday/Saturday nights and The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, that may also explain why Ten poached A Country Practice and Beyond 2000 from Seven…
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Actually A Country Practice was axed by Channel 7
“After the series was cancelled by the Seven Network in 1993 a reworked version of the series ran briefly on Network Ten in 1994. A Country Practice was the longest running Australian drama upon its demise, At its height the show attracted 8–10 million viewers weekly, when the population of the time was a mere 15 million, and was eventually sold to 48 countries.”
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I believe Ten only aired 30 episodes before giving it the axe.
Today’s TV: 26.2.1972, Tasmania
Source: TV Week
- Not much to speak of about Saturday night TV in Tasmania!
- Both TVT6 and TNT9 not on the air until late afternoon, and running movies across most of the night
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Not much on Saturday night? Beach Girl Quest.