A sample of the brochures handed out by Prime and VIC TV at the Royal Melbourne Show in 1991, plus a flyer from Southern Cross Network:
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I wish I kept the flyers and stuff we had. I remember at the 1993 Devonport Show that Tas TV were there and handing out showbags to the kids and stickers with things like “I’m a Cartoon Company Kid - TasTV”. This would have been about 6 months before aggregation started in Tassie in 1994.
Just found this as well, a program rundown from Southern Cross Network for the first week of November in 1992.
Most of it is Network Ten programming as expected but there are local variations weeknights between 5.00-7.00pm with Neighbours showing at 5.30, Southern Cross local news at 6pm in Bendigo/Gippsland, Southern Cross Eyewitness News (Bendigo/Gippsland/Ballarat/Shepparton) at 6.30pm, and the relay of Ten Eyewitness News (from Sydney) in Albury. (My recollection is that the weekend 6.00pm news bulletins were Ten Eyewitness News from Melbourne)
Plus there was the locally-produced kids cartoon show Surprise Surprise, which (IIRC) was co-hosted by Darryl Cotton who had previously co-hosted The Early Bird Show on Channel 10.
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I’m pretty sure Jo also fronted Coast To Coast after Graham Kennedy left, with (I think) Gretel Killeen and John Mangos (or was it Terry?)
Spotted Jo doing news/business reports in the UK recently
EDIT: according to Wikipedia, In 1990, Terry Willesee, John Mangos and Killeen hosted Coast to Coast for the Nine Network after the departure of Graham Kennedy from the program. The program in the new format was short-lived.
I’m pretty sure Jo Pearson filled in though…
it was Terry Willesee, John Mangos and Gretel Killeen. Although Gretel had enough sense to jump the sinking ship after only a couple of weeks, before the whole show went under.
Yes I remember that schedule, I remember Shepparton and Ballarat taking the 6.00pm metro Ten programme before SC Eyewitness News. SC10 Shepparton was for most of the time a relay of SC10 Albury apart from the 6pm breakaways and maybe a few other programmes, as I used to see a lot of Albury/North East commercials in Shepparton and vice versa (which meant lots of Lazy Harry singing nauseating jingles for Yarrawonga Housing and Albury-Wodonga Tuckerbag both of which are firmly implanted in my brain to this day!). It pissed me off because in the days before aggregation Albury had a far superior in my opinion local station (AMV-4, now Prime TV) than Shepp’s no-frills hick yokel quality GMV-6/VIC TV. And also I remember the Shepparton transmitter used to break down often, one minute you see the Simpsons the next minute you see static on the screen like an unused channel! It infuriated me for the first few years of their existence as I was a big fan of the Simpsons and other Channel 10 shows! Southern Cross did not care about Shepp’s transmitter problems back then because they knew most people in Shepp watch SC10 via BCV-8 Bendigo and continued to do so until the analogue switch off…
Southern Cross 10 Ballarat reception announcement from 1992 courtesy of Youtube uploader RocFMradio
In one of the comments of this video it said that the Ballarat Lookout Hill transmitter had the same problems that Shepparton had.
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I do recall the early days of Southern Cross in Shepparton where as you say the transmitter would just go off at random times. Sometimes it was only off for a couple of seconds but incredibly annoying. Their switching between regional feeds was also very rough. You’d be watching a commercial and then suddenly half-way through be switched through to another ad presumably from another region. Or you’d get to the end of a commercial break and then cut into the last 1 or 2 seconds of an ad from Bendigo.
I don’t about about the BCV8 signal being clear into Shepparton? I suppose people with those huge mast antennas got a good signal from Bendigo but where I used to watch from with just a standard rooftop antenna we only got a patchy reception of BCV8 (and ABEV1) from Bendigo although it was often watchable. Aggregation brought Southern Cross in on a local signal, Channel 46, which was much better even just with a portable TV with just the rabbit ears antenna. We never went back to watching Channel 8 from then.
Also once digital TV came in the power of BCV8’s signal was apparently reduced to avoid interference with Nine’s digital signal in Melbourne, which was also on Channel 8, with a UHF translator opened up for BCV from Mt Alexander.
I think the Ballarat problem came about because Southern Cross (Channel 39) was on Band 5 while the other UHF stations in the region (SBS 30 and Prime 33) were on Band 4 and if people didn’t have a combined Band 4/5 antenna they wouldn’t get Southern Cross as well.
For some reason Channels 36, 37 and 38 were not used in Australia. They did later become available for TV use.
These were used for VCR RF modualtors. When DTV rolled out, ABA/ACA decided that enough people were probably using composite connections to watch signals from their VCR and opened them up for DTV use. Of course, many weren’t (our family was one of them) which resulted in the ‘retuning your VCR’ info sheet that floated around the internet for many years.
Ah, of course, forget about those. Our VCR, and even my old Commodore computer, used to output on VHF Channel 0 or 1, but I do recall now other units did output on UHF channels. Reminds me that I think it was a similar scenario in the UK when Channel 5 began in the late 1990s and it was to use UHF channels previously assigned for VCR outputs so VCRs had to be re-tuned to avoid any interference.
They were also for a period used for analogue TV, but again I think only in the digital age. When Channel 6 Ballarat was turned off to accommodate Nine Digital in Melbourne it moved to UHF 36.
I still have an adaptor for our old Playstation that put out a signal on UHF 36, which I recall thinking would have been an issue if you were using it in Ballarat. We may have also had an old VCR that used that channel too, though from memory our main VCR had the options of using VHF 3 or 4, which were conveniently located in the FM band free from TV signal interference
As posted in the 9 News topic, lots of historical footage in the 9 Gold Coast News special
http://forums.mediaspy.org/t/nine-news-content-and-appearance/67/488?u=tv.cynic
Found this by chance
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The South Australian TV ads from your past
As the title says.
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The very first episode of Sale of the Century!
Uploader: Classic Australian Television.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_me0kEZs_U
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Story on Tony Barber and the Great Temptation.
This is what the Seoul Olympics looked like on Ten in 1988
I am a bit concerned with Olympic copyright but hope posting just the openers will be OK. The first part of the video is the “official” opener that all broadcasters could use. Following is the opener used by Ten and some of the in-studio shots with some recognisable faces. Day 1 night and Day 2 daytime openings are shown.
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I don’t remember NBC ever using the “official” opener that all broadcasters could use-they have had their own opening for years.
I wouldn’t know about NBC but I wouldn’t have expected them to use it. But i think that sort of clip is made available each Olympics by the host broadcaster. With bigger broadcasters they might only show it once or twice as Ten did in association with the opening and closing ceremonies and go with their own titles the rest of the time. You can see it in use on NBC at about 3:43
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