In contrast to Capital airing a few Nine programs on the eve of aggregation, it seems that WIN showed a mostly Nine-based schedule with very few, if any shows from other networks on March 30, 1989 if the guides in The Sydney Morning Herald (via Google News Archive) and The Canberra Times (via Trove’s archives) are anything to go by.
Judging by the info I can gather, WIN Wollongong/Illawarra was running the same late night schedule as WIN Canberra (from the MTV special onwards) in the early hours of 31/3/1989 and it’s probably safe to presume that Prime in the Wollongong/Illawarra market started at midnight with Canberra, but I wonder when Capital Wollongong/Illawarra would’ve started transmission knowing that Capital Canberra was airing an all night movie marathon after The Academy Awards (from Nine!). 6am on March 31?
I seem to remember NewsWeary saying on the old forums that WIN-4 carried Seven’s news until expanding to an hour long format around the mid-1980s. Presumably, WIN carried Nine’s half hour Sydney bulletin (likely on a half hour delay at 6.30pm following the local news) after that but I’m not 100% sure…
Not sure of the years, but when Ten had the rugby league rights WIN showed Ten’s Sunday night news then the rugby league. Also at some point WIN south coast was showing live AFL on Friday night iirc, but not on WIN4.
Is it possible that the WIN4 transmission closed sometime during Mid-Late 1990? The reason behind my conclusion is that the recording I posted above was recorded in Early 1990 and the “4” in the top-left hand corner was used to warn viewers that the VHF transmission was closing down. Either way, I think we can all agree that the closure occurred sometime during 1990. Who knows, perhaps the Ident I posted above was recorded only a few days/weeks before the closure?
Personally though, I believe it is highly unlikely that the VHF station was still broadcasting at the start of 1991…
I put a post in the WIN Television post in answer to a question “What sort of education and promotion was around during aggregation?” and also was going to put something that wasn’t directly related, so I’ll post it here instead.
In Canberra it was very odd that Capital retained the VHF-7 frequency after aggregation even though they were a Network Ten affiliate at the time. It would have confused the heck of those people who had the old dial knobs to change the channel (there were a lot of them back then), and the ABC stayed on Channel 3 (whose sound is heard on 91.75 MHz on FM radios) for many years after, why didn’t they both go to UHF when aggregation happened? I know that ABC could not use channel 2 there because RVN-2 Wagga was receivable in Canberra, and Channel 10 was used for three nearby translators of Capital.
I remember local radio and newspapers talked about it coming soon everyone knew about it. Even the Tv Week had a story about what new shows we would get plus everyone was getting uhf antenna’s put on there roof. Most people were ready way in advanced to when it arrived.
I recall the regional networks put a lot of publicity into aggregation. Especially in markets where they were entering. In Victoria, Southern Cross Network did a lot of publicity by sending Channel 10 personalities around the state to make guest appearances at country show days and race days and that sort of thing. VIC TV I remember did lots of newspaper and radio advertising. They did do radio ads in their ‘home’ markets like Shepparton that basically said ‘don’t be confused about what’s happening in TV. Because VIC TV still has all the top shows, dramas, movies, sports, etc etc. In fact, VIC TV aren’t changing a thing’, but I believe in their other markets where they were the newcomer they were promoting themselves with big ticket sports events like cricket and the Winter Olympics.
Prime Television and VIC TV both had stands at the Royal Melbourne Show in 1991 to promote aggregation, given the high number of country people that would come to Melbourne for the show.
Southern Cross also ran plenty of radio ads promoting the fact that they had started broadcasting a test pattern in Shepparton, and talking up their ‘exclusive Network Ten’ programming. Southern Cross also promoted big sporting events like the Australian Open tennis (which they picked up the finals in the absence of Prime across the state for the first few months) and golf tournaments.
As for frequencies in use. In almost all cases the former incumbent (e.g. CTC7) would usually keep their existing frequency regardless of their network affiliation, while new competitors would use UHF, and progressively some ABC stations would migrate to UHF to different VHF frequencies. Wollongong I think was the only major broadcast area that had all of its channels on UHF, with WIN4 and ABWN5A both going to UHF given their positions on VHF Band 2 which was being cleared. (NBN in Newcastle resisted the shift to UHF and stayed on Channel 3 right up until the day analogue was switched off)
The Department of Communications also embarked on promoting UHF awareness in regional areas given the influx of new channels that were coming into many regional areas, and the conversion of some existing VHF channels to UHF. I have a leaflet somewhere that came from Hills Antennas promoting the type of antennas that people may need to access the new channels, complete with a table of station frequencies for the local area.
With the Canberra experience Prime and WIN apparently had some concerns that being stuck away on UHF was doing them no favours while Capital and ABC were still on VHF. And for a long time Capital had ratings in Canberra much higher than what Ten was getting in the capital cities. Likewise WIN was still getting strong ratings in Wollongong despite the arrival of Prime and Capital. But that sort of channel loyalty faded eventually.
In regional Victoria the loyalty to the former incumbent was fairly short lived in the case of Bendigo and Gippsland, where Southern Cross lost its #1 status to VIC TV in the space of one survey. In the first ratings survey of 1992, VICTV overall across the aggregated market rated higher than both Prime and Southern Cross combined – although it was noted that Prime was not on the air across the state for the whole survey period.
I remember a similar leaflet for Tasmania from Hills also which included all the Tasmanian translator sites and all the new channel numbers and promoting UHF.
Being in my infant years around that time I don’t recall seeing those brochures, but I do remember seeing some pamphlets sent around when GLV8 Gippsland was converting to UHF in the late-90s/early-00s to accommodate DTV in Melbourne. They basically just warned that Channel 8 was being turned off and you’d need to retune to UHF (37 from memory) to keep watching Ten Victoria (as it was back then). I presume there would have been similar ones in areas like Ballarat and Albury when 6 and 4 were switched up the dial.
Of course, by this time the task was made much easier, as most households already had well-established UHF reception to get the aggregated channels some years earlier
I have that brochure somewhere. The Gippsland/Ten Victoria one had Karen O’Brien (previously the SCN newsreader) on the front, while the WIN TV version (for the Ballarat change) had Denis Walter on the front.
Btw the Albury AMV change from Channel 4 happened almost a decade earlier in the early 1990s as part of the clearance of VHF Band 2. AMV moved to Channel 11.
I noticed that in the pamphlet distributed in 1992 it mentions all channels including SBS. But SBS was not on air in the Goulburn Valley region until at least 2001! In 1992 my parents (and many other Sheppartonians) had to get a third antenna to receive SBS from Mount Alexander and the picture was snowy most of the time, but was clearer either when there is a clear sky or if it heavily rained. SBS was available in Gippsland, Swan Hill and Mildura before 1992, Bendigo and Ballarat in mid-1992, and Albury not long after, which meant the Goulburn Valley missed out, not sure the reason why but I presume that the Government at the time deemed that it was not a big enough population (it is roughly the same as the Riverland region or Mildura (the latter which actually got SBS)) to warrant a service. Some translator sites in other parts of Victoria also missed out on SBS. This was the reason Prime TV broadcast the World Cup Soccer tournament in 1994. This video courtesy of Youtube uploader WAMoore:
And with Mildura missing out on aggregation, from 1992-97 VIC TV was still the only commercial network in that region. I recall from seeing programme guides in the papers they had mainly a Channel 9 schedule with a few differences, they showed:
all AFL games from Channel 7
the Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games from 7
the Victoria, Canada 1994 Commonwealth Games from 10
all Bathurst 1000 races from 7 and later 10
Beyond 2000 was shown instead of the controversial “Chances” and “Sex”
Different movies to those on VIC TV in aggregated areas: often VIC TV/WIN TV Mildura showed movies that 7 and 10 had the rights to.
and I’m sure a few others as well.
Here is a promo for WIN TV Mildura’s football coverage from Youtube uploader “Regional TV Australia”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBg4RAcKx7w
