General TV History

Was just going back through a bit of Nine branding over the years now that it looks like it’s going to be coming to Tasmania after years of WIN blocks and found this old classic from TasTV again. This was from 1994 which was the year they went to the North again with aggregation in April and then ceased to exist after becoming WIN Tasmania on October 16th 1994.

I find it interesting in both videos there was a lot of local content in with the Nine production. In the “Still the One” video they have both Tom Payne and John Remess in there and sticking caps on kids in the newsroom (interesting they are Nine caps though and not Tas TV!) and in the Whos Who of News it is all the local media ones as well as the national ones. Tom, Remo, Alistair, Wendy, Colin etc… were all local readers and morning show hosts and then they have Liz and Steve for breakfast on Today and ACA etc…

Plus apparently TasTV had a helicopter! Although I wonder if this was just like the now branded Westpac Rescue Helicopter which I think also has a WIN logo on it now.

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Continuity. It would be awkward to either have the hats be Nine hats all of a sudden and costly to reshoot for one market.

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But they could afford a helicopter! They could pay for anything at TasTV! They had a morning show and everything!

But just because you can… Doesn’t mean you should. It would have been poor business sense to rejig a commercial that people are likely to ignore anyway.

TV station helicopters were as regular as fleet cars in the old days :stuck_out_tongue:

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Never forget one of the biggest flops four years ago

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There are TasTV logos on the screens in the background… Also the chopper is registered VH-RTV which is also the same helicopter used in the WIN TV versions from the mainland at the time. White chopper with some big stickers look rather convincing from a distance…

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RTV was the short lived call letters when the licences of BTV and GMV were merged, as was permissible in the lead up to Aggregation. It was also potentially going to be the station name before they settled on Vic TV when bought by ENT, and then changed the call letters again to VTV, and has remained that since. The chopper was originally branded as 6 Network Victoria, before being painted up as Vic TV. If it’s been seen as Tas TV, I don’t know how rhey did that, perhaps magnetic signs. It then lived a short life under WIN, mainly ferrying management around instead of news duties, before being disposed of.

I’ve always wondered about that - what if the various markets didn’t conveniently merge themselves into 3 stations per region?

If GLV/BCV, RVN/CBN/CWN, TNQ/FNQ etc, all just stayed as distinct stations - how would they have aggregated markets? Would they just not renew particular station’s licenses until the numbers got low enough? Would you have a bunch more cases like ITQ and MTN?

Technically RTQ and DDQ were under separate owners in the lead up to aggregation in QLD though both were branded Star TV and ready to align with Ten. Then Bruce Gordon (WIN) who owned RTQ bought out DDQ and rebranded both stations into WIN and signed them over to 9 affiliation once Nine fell out with QTV.

From memory as Star TV, RTQ was to cover Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton, and DDQ which was being run out of NRN in northern NSW was to cover Maryborough and Darling Downs.

The buyout of DDQ by WIN saw it then operated out of Rockhampton.

BCV and GLV never merged licences, as far as I know. They designate GLV as Eastern Victoria, i.e. Gippsland and The North East (the Albury sub market). In theory, SCA could sell the Eastern Victoria licence to another party, if, for some reason, they didn’t want it. WIN’s Victorian licence is all of the regional Victorian market, (excluding Mildura) so it would have to be sold in its entirety. AFAIK, Prime Wagga is still a seperate licence to the Canberra/Orange/Dubbo licence, as Prime never merged those, so likewise could be sold off.

RVN Wagga Wagga was merged into CBN (Orange, Canberra, etc) many years ago.

I’m not sure what the legislative position is on selling off sub markets I wouldn’t have thought it would be allowed. Would open a can of worms I think if it was to happen.

too bad Prime and WIN didn’t use Eastern Victoria and Western Victoria as separate markets like SCA did, otherwise we would have had:

Eastern Victoria: AMV, GMV, GLV
Western Victoria PTV*, BTV, BCV

    • a new callsign, as AMV was the only Prime station in Victoria pre-aggregation.

How was AFL coverage in the early 90s. i know that Saturdays weren’t allowed to be shown but did they hjave Sundays and Fruday nghts back then?

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Came across this on YouTube


Actually remember this! Wish they’d still do “Weather in a flash”

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They went to air before the 6pm bulletin. That must’ve been a Melbourne thing (judging by the short clip of music).

Sydney I know did a similar thing with a weather update directly before the news, but I don’t think they ever used Weather in a Flash branding or even had a titlecard.

I’m pretty sure that Sydney did do “Weather In A Flash” back in 2006…

The intro is longer than the actual Weather Flash! haha

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