It would have been interesting to see the community stations band together in a corporation of some sort (based on the ACTA) to form their own television network that would occupy the fourth channel in metropolitan regions.
I personally don’t know how viable such a venture would have been, but a Community 4 Network could potentially have saved metropolitan community television as it would have expanded the potential audience for each station beyond their respective city to go interstate, increasing awareness for this form of media.
4 - reserved for a low-power video program guide or promo loop?
40 - reserved for a minor regional station
41 - reserved for Canberra
42 - TVS Sydney [now closed]
43 - C31 Melbourne
44 - 31 Brisbane
45 - C44 Adelaide
46 - WTV Perth
47 - reserved for Hobart
48 - reserved for Darwin
49 - BushVision [now closed]
The number allocations are based on the call sign numbers allocated to each state for radio broadcasts (these numbers were later used as a basis for the postcode system).
As some regional cities previously had their own stations, LCN 40 could have be reserved for those with each regional city showing their own station. This could potentially have encouraged more regional community stations.
BushVision had plans on launching nationally (Mt Gambier was a testing ground) and could have been put on LCN 49.
This was attempted, however the meetings that the sector from my understanding had asked the PM for to discuss this, were promised but never eventuated.
Also a lot of the stations in other states (outside Melbourne) weren’t interested in merging as an entity only until a few months ago - I.E - too late.
Sadly, TVS is pretty much dead and buried now despite the earlier promises it would continue as an online service.
Wasn’t there a proposal at some stage (pre-Food Network, possibly even before NITV became part of SBS and the launch of SBS Radio 3) for SBS to give the community stations some bandwidth? Obviously that one never eventuated and I doubt it will now especially since the multiplexes of the ABC and SBS are just about as full as those of the commercial networks these days.
It will certainly be interesting to see what eventually comes out of the frequencies community TV is currently using once the stations sign off for good, that’s for sure.
I could see the community stations on the SBS multiplex if SBS agreed to take them on. SBS has sort-of become the “other” network that generally broadcasts what no one else does/wants to (that could change with the Viceland arrangement), and a deal with the community stations would be an interesting addition to their lineup as they already have the Indigenous-orientated NITV.
It would also be interesting to see the community stations on the ABC multiplex (though it seems less likely that ABC would take them on versus SBS). They already have ABC and ABC2 for general content, ABC Me and ABC Kids for children, and ABC News for news and current affairs, so an allocation for community media could slide in nicely with their content-based multichannels.
Sadly, it seems too little, too late for such a deal with SBS or ABC.
I didn’t expect TVS to come back. Their website and everything was closed down soon after they ceased broadcasting.
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.
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.
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.