For community ‘television’. Most people aren’t going to know to seek out the kind of programming that fills community TV channels - but might watch it when flipping around their TV or looking at a schedule.
To me, an argument against community TV is equally applied against TV as a whole - you either think there’s a place for dedicating spectrum to linear broadcasts or there isn’t.
When all the other TV networks are running national schedules - with local news, and a sports panel show or two, about the only genuine ‘local’ content; and almost nothing produced outside of Sydney and Melbourne - I think there’s a vital importance to spectrum being allocated for local broadcasting.
Maybe it’s a thing for another topic, but I’d like to see community TV in the same style as the local TV operations that started in the UK - where they can be commercially operated, but have to fulfil minimum requirements of local content for the community they are targeting. Allowing some strictly regulated commercial players could allow for better financed local broadcasting - rather than the slow decline into public domain movies and networked content.
Either way, huge consolidation of terrestrial media voices, especially outside Sydney/Melbourne mean that I think community TV is still playing a vital role, and should expand.
Yes perhaps for a different group but unfortunately the slow decline into public domain movies and networked content is exactly what happened in the UK with many “Local TV” stations or you just end up with a mess like what happened with That’s TV with repeated day old local news.
Even STV (the ITV affiliate in Scotland) attempt at running a local TV service was unsuccessful - its Glasgow and Edinburgh channels was replaced by a networked STV2 channel in 2017 (which itself closed only a few weeks ago)
Free-to-air 24/7 broadcasting High Definition on Channel 350 and Standard Definition on Channel 351.
Snowy Mountains Television has been broadcasting for over 20 years to the Jindabyne Valley.
Originally the station was known as SMTV Channel 5 Jindabyne when it was broadcasting on the analogue spectrum.
Would anyone know what analogue channel SMTV used? Given that 102.7 MHz has been occupied by the TAB for over 10 years at least, I doubt whether they used VHF5 (101-108). 5A, perhaps? Hotlink this to the TV History thread if you wish.
Cheers for that. I thought it used UHF; it would have been silly to waste VHF spectrum on such a flea-powered service. Perhaps it appeared on Channel 5 on TV sets in certain accommodation in the town?
It might have been just an arbitrary number. Adelaide’s original community TV station used to be called ACE Channel 6 or something like that, I think literally just because it was the 6th channel but it was on UHF 31. Maybe SMTV was the fifth channel in the Snowy Mountains?
I doubt it was there before SBS, though it could still be the ‘fifth’ channel if Channel 0 was used. Probably arbitrary as you say.
It’s an interesting example of a non- subscription narrowcast television service- essentially the visual equivalent of an LPON radio station. The only other licences of this type that I know of are the indigenous (ex BRACS) tv services in northern Australia.
On a related note, does anyone know what happened to LINC TV in Lismore? It used UHF 69 and broadcast some of its programming online when this was in its infancy.
Northern Access Television, one of the member groups of what is now C31 in Melbourne, is turning 30 next year.
I remember watching a very sketchy test broadcast sometime in the early 1990s. Their signal only covered a handful of suburbs around the Preston area and I was outside that area and probably on the wrong side of a hill which affected my reception.
in 2006, LINC TV (UHF-68) made an inquiry into the possibility of a regional network carrying their broadcasts on digital television in an attempt to stay on air. Sadly, they never renewed their contract for digital broadcasting or could find a regional network to carry them. it closed in 2012.