It was usually 2 hours on television with a delayed telecast in the host city (usually 9:30pm).
The game was 7:30pm in the non host metro with regionals generally screening anywhere from a 7:30pm broadcast time through to as late as 10pm.
That would sound about right.
Kick off would have been within 5-10 minutes of the broadcast starting… None of this 1 hour plus pre game nonsense we get these days!
Of course, there’s a lot more money in the TV rights these days.
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Also we didnt have ready internet access for live sports results. Delayed telecasts in the host city were more common as well as partial coverage for some events (eg cricket)
Today’s TV: Wednesday, May 27, 2014 - Perth, WA
Source: The West Australian, TODAY liftout
State of Origin in Perth but was bumped to GEM with the main channel airing repeats of TBBT and The Footy Show
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7 always did delayed telecasts on AFL unless the match was interstate. This was for Melbourne, although regionals could take it live. On Saturday afternoons, regional Victoria could air matches live unlike Melbourne, did the regionals get Around The Grounds along with whatever was the live match that day.
A post was merged into an existing topic: On This Day
Following on from this post, I’ve found TV Guides for the historic first ever Origin match (8 May 1980) for how Sydney/Newcastle and surrounds saw it.
(both items below are from 'The Newcastle Herald).
Only Sydney got any coverage, late night replay at 10.40!
Fast forward to Game 1 of 1986 (May 27) and there was an improvement, live in Sydney, delayed telecast for Taree (8) and a late night replay for Newcastle.
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I am astounded by that. You would think that in a Rugby League mad town like Newcastle it would be on live. The earliest memory i have of watching State of Origin was in around 1987 and pretty sure that was live. I was at my grandparents place and watched it on a small tv set they had in their bedroom.
To be honest, NBN were never great at covering league matches. Sydney games were always late night replays until the year before aggregation. No wonder there were so many tall Sydney TV antennas back in the day.
My dad was one of those, he got Sydney TV installed where we lived because he got sick of waiting until 10.30 or later for the replays, even though our suburb at the time was one of the worst for Sydney TV reception.
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Channel 45? The number looks a little lopsided.
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Yes I saw that! A printing or scanning error. But some of their programming did make me tilt my head like that sometimes.
UHF 45 was the SBS analogue frequency here in Newcastle.
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But if you look at pre 1992, when Ten had the then NSWRL rights, Ten aired a delayed telecast at 6pm or 6:30pm Sunday, the midweek competition was delayed til 9:30pm for most of its run with only Monday Night Football/Friday Night Football being live into Sydney. Many of th regional stations that took the midweek competition didnt take Monday Night Football/Friday Night Football.
I remember that RVN was one of the very few (regional) stations that took preliminary round game live on Sundays.
Although Ten did make some effort, i think the NSWFL took much the same approach of the then ACB (now Cricket Australia) regarding alerted coverage arrangements in the host city to try to attract greater crowd attendance at games.
Yes they were, I think they were the only ones that did…
But NBN were about the only ones (along with CTC) that didn’t air it in prime time (or live).. I know NEN/ECN, NRN, WIN, MTN all did. Not sure about CBN/CWN, but they probably did as well.
Back in the early 80s you were lucky to find any NRL on TV in Queensland. I had put up a Band III antenna and that was the only way to get even the grand final in some years. Later, TVQ at least showed the final live.
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CBN/CWN did in the late 1980s (an edited 1 hour version of the 6pm Ten package) at 6:30pm. Disney was shafted to either 5pm Sunday or 6:30pm Saturday (1989 in place of Young Talent Time).
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To be fair, the Origin concept was originally seen as a gimmick by the NSW RL establishment - they thought the match would be a fizzer.
The NSWRL? Considering QLD didn’t have a team in the competition until 1988, that shouldn’t have been too surprising… they’d have been far more likely to cover the local BRL.
Channel Nine Brisbane and some if not all the regionals screened a double header on Sundays. The first at 1pm and second a 3:15pm with a half hour filler program between game (like Nine used to with the cricket coverages before The Cricket Show).
DDQ was one regional station which took the Brisbane competition
Something wrong with the Tas TV schedule from 22:50. A 90-minute movie running for 70 minutes then Mexican GP coverage for an hour compared to Southern Cross Network’s two hours yet Tas TV closes at the same time.
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Possibly, or maybe they aired a different version of both?. But yes, hard to see how you can show a movie accurately in 70 minutes!
My recollection was NBN didn’t show Channel 10 games until around 10:30pm. Though they did make an exception when the Knights played.
I have a vivid memory of watching a Knights vs Penrith Friday night game in 1991 and NBN had it on the same time as Channel 10 showed it. Watched it my Dad and Pop