Most regional stations started with a news service as it was no doubt part of their licence submissions to the broadcasting control board (as it was then) and because a lot of those early licencees had ties to the local town newspaper and/or radio station. Only some of the really small regional stations were not in a position to start off with a news service (RTS5A for instance, and I think Imparja might have been similar).
AFAIK, TVQ0 in Brisbane was the only metro channel not to start with a news service. In their case they didn’t launch a regular news service until 1974, almost 10 years after going to air.