At the same time a lot of the local programming these days (at least the Brisbane shows) are almost time buys from tourism outlets, so the fears of locality being destroyed came true. That said aggregation was a real killer for local TV in the purest sense despite claims to the contrary that Governments always like to spin but that was another story.
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This 7 Brisbane promo comes to mind
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A few years ago when 3DB successor Mix 101.1 dropped its involvement with the appeal 3AW took over as the radio partner. And HWT (via the Herald Sun, and before 1987 the now-defunct racing paper The Sporting Globe) is still a partner today.
An off-air recording of Cabaret from the night Channel 0/28 opened.
Youtuber: Conniptions886.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN9Umw2pFBY
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Cabaret wasn’t scheduled to debut on opening night. I think from memory it first went to air in around mid-November, a few weeks after the channel opened. It was originally conceived as a talent quest but Bruce Gyngell made a last-minute change to instead make it a regular variety show. It was reported that he went cold on the idea of introducing a competitive element between different cultures. (Had he not seen the Eurovision Song Contest before?)
Interesting too to see Graham on Channel 0 after he famously declared that he would “never appear on 0 again” two years earlier. Of course, that comment was in the context of ATV Channel 0 after its poor overall performance affected his own Blankety Blanks, and he had a very public falling out with the channel. And SBS of course just happened to take up that channel later.
And seeing that Cabaret shiny logo spinning around does remind me a lot of this:
YouTube: Gary86
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Television AU would know something about this, why was Shepparton offered a commercial television licence on its own in the first place? Remember in 1959 Shepparton’s population was only 9,000 and cities that could have got a licence such as Albury and Geelong missed out in the first round that year. In my opinion Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley would have been better served by a Border North East station based in Albury, we could have got a translator of the slick and professional AMV4 but instead we got yokel quality, looks like it was made in someone’s basement GMV6 instead. Shepparton getting its own station would be like Horsham, Hamilton and Warrnambool all getting their own TV stations instead of being lumped with translators of BTV6 Ballarat. And Geelong could have got a station of its own (frequencies were allocated, I’m sure local media and businessmen would have put in a bid) but I’m sure the Melbourne stations would have wanted none of that.
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To be honest I don’t know on what grounds Shepparton was selected for a commercial licence ahead of Albury. Its closer proximity to Melbourne compared to Albury might have also been a factor, given that the ABCB was also planning the national ABC rollout to roughly coincide with the expansion of commercial television. Would have been easier and cheaper to start up in Shepparton and then extend the link to Albury later. (Similar to what happened with Mildura a few years later where it was piggybacked onto the ABC’s link that terminated at Swan Hill)
Also the population of the greater Goulburn Valley region may have been higher than the Albury-Murray region to therefore justify granting a licence.
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Perhaps it was just geographical. Where were the best places to put transmitters to cover the state and what was the closest town.
It’s odd that Shepparton and Albury are considered by SC9 to be one market and thus get a shared bulletin, as when it was SC10, only Shepparton got a program called “Weeknights” at 6.30pm which aired from 2011 to 2015. I think Albury still got “Neighbours” at the time?
“Neighbours” had already moved to Eleven by that point anyway, as the channel had already been on-air when “Weeknights” was launched on SC10 Shepparton. After “George Negus Tonight” was axed at the end of October 2011, it aired at 6pm weeknights, which meant that when the current incarnation of Family Feud first premiered in July 2014, it was only seen on One & Eleven in that region until “Weeknights” was axed in mid 2015.
Today, in areas where WIN has a full local news bulletin at 6pm, Family Feud is aired on Eleven.
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My point wasn’t really about “Neighbours”, it was more about “Weeknights” being a Shepparton only program 
Really? I would say half the local production in Australia (as of today) is currently split between both cities.
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But Graham appeared on ATV 10 on its opening day on 10 filmed on the rooftop of the Nunawading studios saying something like “Switch to 10 - you’ll love the view” with Mt Dandenong transmitters in the background. ATV 10 was simulcast on 0 for the first couple of weeks or so after opening.
I also remember Graham doing radio ads for SBS 0-28 at the time of its opening promoting it.
Yes. I believe a generous pay cheque was enough for him to bury any grievances, and the opportunity to be part of what was then a significant event in television. He also changed his tune with Rupert Murdoch taking over ATV from Ansett.
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Really interesting discussing going on over at TV Forum about the earliest URLs/websites featured on TV.
Was wondering if anyone knew any early examples of a TV website here in Aus? When did shows and networks first start to really pay attention to the web?
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One of the weird facts I recall (and can be confirmed over on archive.org) is that Ten’s domain was originally owned / operated by Telecasters Australia and was a page featuring information on the affiliates rather than the network itself… and I don’t believe this changed until 1998 or 1999.
I’d pinpoint it at around 1997 when Seven and Nine started paying attention to online, although I’d say Nine was first to the punch in actually taking advantage of the internet rather then just putting up a website for the sake of it - Nine’s joint venture with Microsoft (Ninemsn) started in 1997, only about 6 months after MSN created a website for the Australian market. Not long after Ninemsn was established, Seven proceeded to spend years trying to play catch up when portals were the hot new thing on the internet (First with i7, then AOL 7, etc).
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Apparently, Cheez TV on Ten was the first show in Australia (in 1995) to have an internet address. Can’t find it on archive.org. Was it cheeztv.com.au?
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That’s right, I remember that. Those sites can still be accessed via www.archive.org. A good trip back in time.
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I think ABC launched its first website around 1995 and they had a show called http which had its own website.
Channel 9 also had a website for its cop drama Good Guys Bad Guys around 1997.
One of the first fan sites i remember was one for ill-fated Channel 10 soap Echo Point. I think they were campaigning for some repreive from the show getting the axe.
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I remember Channel 9 with their NineMSN joint venture were also also included with the deployment of Internet Explorer 4 and a feature that program had called Active Channels. I’m pretty sure Channel Nine were the only ones featured although it’s possible 7 may have been as I think I have a vague memory of the split ring logo at that time too. It was with IE4 that Ninemsn became the default homepage for IE in Australia which also gave them a huge advantage. Yahoo and 7 didn’t team up until the early-mid 2000’s I believe and that was after a few failed attempts at websites from 7 including i7, AOL7 and seven.com.au.
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