How sad…
I Remember Channel 31 gave us Live Harness Racing from Moonee Valley in Saturday Nights between 1994 and 2000 way before Sky Racing became more Widely Available.
At least they’re planning to go out with a bang.
TVS here in Sydney very much went out with a whimper at the end of last year.
It will be a sad day when C31 and the other community TV stations are forced off air by the government. Yes their online platforms will hopefully mean that the programs which are currently shown + new programs will still have a destination where they can be found and promoted. I fear though that over time, the amount of programs created and offered will diminish since there won’t be the audience they can currently get/attract being on FTA TV no matter what Turnbull (the minister who was responsible for making the decision) and the government might argue otherwise.
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With Community TV giving up it’s Spectrum for Online, shall we see more HD Channels?
I doubt it.
What happens to that spectrum then?
the community channels had their own multiplex, there are no immediate plans to sell it. The coalition just wanted to kill the sector off.
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they were operating on spectrum outside of the normal “blocks” allocated to their cities (e.g. in Melbourne ABC, Seven, Nine, Ten and SBS were on a VHF block, C31 was on a separate UHF channel).
They could easily have been assigned the existing 6th channel that has been set aside in each market, and C31 in Melbourne has said that as far as it knows there are no immediate plans for the “borrowed” spectrum they were using to be re-allocated. So there is literally nothing to be gained by shutting it off except, as TVHead says, the government just wants to knock it off.
That’s the stupidest thing I have possibly ever read.
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Do enlighten us then…
I mean in the sense of the government just wanting to knock c31 off 
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I would love to see community stations band together to offer a single FreeView like application with access to IPTV via Google’s Android TV Live Channels app and Apple TVs inbuilt offerings. Probably won’t happen without some sort of investment though.
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they have no plans for the spectrum, why kick CTV off the air then?
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That’s exactly why I said it’d the stupidest thing I have read.
Exactly what every single person involved with Community TV has been saying since this was first announced.
Anyone know when the episode of Vasill’s Garden aired when he visited the house of the accused killer??
ACA saying it was aired a couple of weeks ago even tho footage looks like it was from 1990s???
Quoting Malcolm Turnbull:
[quote]We are also keen to encourage commercial and national broadcasters to commence their transition to MPEG-4 only broadcasting, with the aim that every service would move to an MPEG-4 standard. The Government expects that a transition such as this would be industry managed.
MPEG-4 uses spectrum much more efficiently and would allow broadcasters to use their existing spectrum to deliver more channels and content including in relatively bandwidth hungry formats such as high definition if they choose to do so.
In the short term, to allow for this transition to MPEG-4, the Government intends to free up the spectrum known as the sixth channel to assist in the testing and migration to this more efficient technology.
…
The spectrum review will now consider whether the sixth channel spectrum will be replanned for alternative non-broadcasting uses, perhaps as the basis for a second digital dividend.
Finally, following a move to an MPEG-4 standard, in order to continue our drive to achieve maximum spectrum efficiency the Government will encourage spectrum sharing between television broadcasters. We expect the national broadcasters to lead the way in this regard, with the commercials to follow. [/quote]
i.e. They want to move all the channels to MPEG-4, resulting in less bandwidth used and fewer RF channels and thus allowing for a second restack, culminating in a sell off even more TV spectrum to the telcos. Basically, community is going away so the government can earn some more $$$ from the telcos.
Community TV wasn’t actually using the “sixth channel” so if that’s his reasoning then they could use the sixth channel for MPEG4 and leave Community TV alone.
Also TV networks seem to be using MPEG4 well enough across both SD and HD channels without needing to “test” via an extra channel.
C31 Melbourne have just sent out a tweet advising that community TV has been given a 6 month extension to their broadcasting licence.
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