Well they rather air paid programming wouldn’t they? It’s a shit service.
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UPDATE 29/5:
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The forced move is due to the 7-day COVID lockdown in Victoria which began today.
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I wonder if Melbourne City Council will stump up the funds to replace the transmitter if they want it extended another 3 years?
The transmitter is well past end of life, the guys up Mt Dandenong struggle to keep it on air, I don’t think they can get spare parts for it any more either, it’s an old piece of crap Harris transmitter.
It certainly wasn’t a happy day (transmitter operations & maintenance wise), when the licence was extended last time, so I doubt it would be this time, especially extending it by 3 years.
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Almost as if a long-term licence extension might have broader economic benefits to the community 
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Just out of interest, what is the usual lifespan of a transmitter? This one would be only about 10-12 years old, since Channel 31 switched on digital?
A year ago C31 said:
What have they done in the past 12 months to achieve this goal?
He said Channel 31 already had a YouTube channel that averaged a million views a month, but it only received about $150 in ad revenue for it.
He said the station would be part of a national community TV streaming service being launched in the next week.
“[But], if that’s all we are come July 1, well that will cost us more money than it will make in any sponsorship and, so, it’s not sustainable long-term, and it will likely mean that we’ll be unable to continue,” he said.
Generally speaking 10 - 12 years is the lifespan of a transmitter, if they’re half decent to start with, you can push them out to 15 years +.
Harris/Gates Air make it hard to get spares at about 8 - 10 years.
Nautel support their transmitters until they literally die & will supply spares if it’s possible to do so (if they don’t have stock, they will manufacture if they can be). There’s likely some Nautel AM/FM transmitters around Australia that are over 30 years old & still operational.
NEC only stopped supporting & supplying spares for the DTV transmitters a couple of years ago, which are now around 20 years old & still in operation in parts of Australia, & I think you can still get limited parts for some of the NEC FM transmitters that are about 30 years old & again still in operation in parts of Australia.
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It’s not worth wasting their time - anyone who could go online for community TV doesn’t need to go via C31 as an aggregator.
The platform of broadcast television is the only reason for C31’s existence. As we’ve seen by the instant and total failure of all other attempts to ‘move online’.
Maybe keep any studio space and some equipment as a kind of ‘maker space’, so they can help make community programming, but the channel dies the moment the switch is turned off.
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Asked Channel 31’s General Manager Shane Dunlop about this tonight (approx 3:56 mark):
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Why couldn’t they have just been given a slot on the ABC or SBS spectrum, but remain independently operated, an external program schedule supplier for the spectrum owner?
But there’s only two? of them left, the horse has bolted?
That question probably should’ve been asked back in 2010 when community TV was converting to digital and the public broadcasters were running fewer services on their DVB-T multiplexes than they are today.
Not sure if CTV groups would agree, but I personally think community TV would be in a reasonable position if operated in a similar way to NITV via SBS: Retaining independent local programming, but with the might of a public broadcaster helping to secure them a future on the transmission & funding side of things.
Yeah, I agree.
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Surely this must be the only realistic alternative to switching to online only then shutting down? Some kind partnership or full merge between the Melbourne CTV Consortium (owners of C31) and the ownership of C44 to run a new “national” CTV channel. Maybe they could rope in contributions from First Nations Broadcasting in Darwin who run a handful of different channels which would surely have general interest content on their secondary channels.
The interesting part would be that it’s unlikely that the ABC or SBS would “give” this new group channel space for free, they would probably have to pay for access or be fully absorbed into either broadcaster.
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Unless the government forced it to happen, if it was government policy to ensure community tv stayed on the air.
Does the government have that authority?
The federal government could just change the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 and force SBS to make space available for community television, like they forced NITV to merge into SBS. But the government has no interest in community television, so it probably won’t ever happen.
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I dispute Shane Dunlop’s claim that the television channels the community stations are using can’t be used for any other purpose until the next re-stack. The commercial stations have used spare channels to do test broadcasts in previous years, and I think the government would probably allow them to do DVB-T2 test broadcasts if it was in preparation for a transition from DVB-T.
Sure, but there’s also the spare sixth-channel allocation (VHF 10 in most capitals).
I find the situation bewildering given rural communities in WA and NT can have HPON services with multi-channels (and even HD services) but a single, SD channel in a metro market must be shut down for… reasons?
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