1988 looked like this:
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The rebrand sadly didn’t work out and they reverted to the Seven Network in 1991.
and the original… back in 1964…
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That map of Australia looks all wrong.
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Pre-climate change map.
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Was the “Australian Television Network” branding used alongside the “stripey” 7 logo from 1989? I seem to remember both being used simultaneously but for different things.
Wasn’t there an “atn” logo (in lower case, from memory) used around this time too?
Seven was known as the Australian Television Network between 1987 & 1991.
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The ‘ATN’ branding was used alongside the ‘Rainbow 7’ logo and the ‘Split 7’ logo.
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Opener for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics using the same Olympic fanfare that Ten had used in 1984 for Los Angeles coverage.
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Another Olympic clip. This 1984 telethon was to raise money for the Olympic team.
This was when regional (an even metro) stations had individual identities.
Includes separate crosses to 10’s metro stations plus FNQ9, TNQ7, ITQ8, DDQ10/SDQ4, NEN9/ECN8, NRN11/RTN8 plus channel 9 in Perth. (Mt Isa a highlight).
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Channel 7 in Sydney was know as ATN 7 as Nine was known as TCN 9 in Sydney AND Ten was known as TEN 10 in Sydney.
The name ATN came from the license holders name Amalgamated Television and the N was based on the state the network was licenced to serve - which is why HSV 7 in Melbourne has a V at the end and BTQ 7 has a Q at the end in Queensland
The name Australian Television Network was a play on the Sydney station initials
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I think it was just a coincidence that ATN7 and Australian Television Network have the same initials.
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I think it was a case of take advantage of whats there. Its like WIN television standing for Wollongong Illawarra New South Wales, it could very easily been Wollongong Independent Network or World International Network
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probably had to change the shape of the country to match the font 
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I often wondered if there was any thought amongst executives running the station at the time to rebadging the entire network as “ATN” and dispensing with the channel number. The Seven brand was totally trashed in Melbourne during 1987 thanks to Fairfax and the new management (under new owner Skase) may have thought of it as a way to reinvent and revitalise the asset. WIN had gone back to the letter callsign following a few years when they were primarily badged as “4” and the NBN brand has always been very strong. The obvious criticisms to such a move would be that the callsign ATN is too closely associated with the Sydney station and it would’ve been perceived as being very American.
I have also wondered if the split Seven logo introduced in 1989 was also intended to be used to represent ATN (Australian Television Network) given the letter “A” can be seen if you rotate that logo a little. I actually remember seeing the logo printed that way in SMH advertisements for positions at Seven during the early 1990s.
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Aggregation was approaching at that time so it probably made sense to want to get rid of the channel number IDs with regional stations coming into the network, but it just never took off. They probably figured everyone would just continue to call them Seven or Nine or Ten anyway so why bother. I mean, even now, people still refer to “Channel 2” when it’s been ABC forever.
Bob Shanks apparently wanted to take the “10” out of the “10 TV Australia” name but he never stayed around long enough for that to happen, and that plan hit a snag anyway when another company claiming ownership of the name “TV Australia” took Ten to court
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I am thinking that they may have been using the Sydney initials but changing it to Australian to say we are unified. By using the word Australian instead of Amalgamated and Network instead of New south wales - trying to differentiate from specific station origins. Government legislation dictated that the state the network was based is where the last letter of their initials had to be - which is why stations in NSW, VIC, QLD, TAS, WA and SA had different network letters at the end.
I agree with @NewsWeary, people probably viewed it as too American, possibly moreso given the Seven networks long standing association with NBC in America. And the continuous streaming of US programs to fill program schedules rather than Australia programs.
One example of a US series replacing an Australian series was the short-lived police drama, Skirts was moved to a Thursday night slot and replaced with Father Dowling Mysteries in 1990
Skirts obviously cost Seven a bit to make and it was no doubt getting thrashed by 60 Minutes so it probably made sense to replace it with something much cheaper like a US import and shift Skirts to another night where it could pick up some ratings
But replacing a poorly performing Australian show with an American one is hardly endemic to Seven. I remember when Nine ditched The Mike Walsh Show back in the mid 1980s it got replaced with Miami Vice. Probably just because it had been bought and suddenly a timeslot appeared for it to go into. I imagine it is something that happened a lot then (and even now) when a local show is axed and suddenly something is need to replace it at a moment’s notice.
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