Sunrise’s opener to its coverage of the Obama inauguration. Note the theme from Air Force One played at the start of the coverage was also used during Trump’s victory speech last month.
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Hard to believe now it was 25 years ago since witnessing the launch of aggregation in Victoria as I was in the Goulburn Valley region and watched as Southern Cross Network debuted a few seconds before midnight.
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Today marks exactly 25 years since aggregation has occurred in Northern NSW.
More about it here: http://televisionau.com/2011/12/aggregation-anniversaries-nnsw-and-vic.html
It’s interesting that Prime had a delayed launch into the Coffs Harbour & Lismore/Gold Coast markets, whilst the same had occurred for NRTV (now Ten Northern NSW) into the Tamworth & Taree markets. Likewise, Prime had a delayed launch into the rest of Regional VIC (ie. outside of Albury/Wodonga).
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This was the Melbourne TV guide for 31 December 1991.
In the case of Southern Cross Network they started in Goulburn Valley at 11.59pm for the midnight countdown and then continued with Ten’s programming. (Southern Cross Network in Gippsland/Bendigo had been mirroring Ten’s schedule from the start of the day)
VIC TV showed their adaptation of the Nine Network promo “That’s The Way I Like It” at midnight. I seem to recall that VIC TV had a separate program starting at midnight rather than relaying the Channel 9 movie Camelot from 11.30pm. But I can not confirm that as I don’t have a local TV listing. The country edition of TV Week I had for that week was misplaced and I only got the Melbourne edition via Ebay many years later.
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“Camelot” was also the first Nine Network movie that NBN showed.
I think it was from that point on that they stopped showing any 7 or 10 programs and were in sync in Nine (mostly),
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I can still recall Richard Wilkins Welcoming Regional Victoria to channel Nine on Vic Tv , I only thought about the twenty five year anniversary the other day when we started receiving Southern Cross here!
Printing the barcodes just for one particular brand of VCR seems like overkill, even if it is just for certain programs only - and I wonder how long they persisted in having those barcodes available in the first place. I’m guessing this was some kind of automated VCR programming system that existed prior to the G-Code system prevalent in the mid-late 90s.
I forgot about G code
That’s an advertisement for Panasonic hence the barcodes for their machines.
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I know my grandmother had a VCR with G-Code functionality, but I could never understand how it worked. Did anyone here ever use it?
Yes, I did. It didn’t last overly long though as I soon figured out that whatever was recorded would more ofen than not get cut short. How many people seriously used it?
Geez, imagine using the G-Code feature these days! You’d be lucky to get 5 or so minutes of the intended recorded program. 
A lot of TV Guides listed the Panasonic G-Code for each program.
It was usually a 5 or 6 digit number (I think) and all you had to do to get your VCR to record that program was to press the G Code button on your VCR remote and type the code in.
The other thing you had to do was make sure that your VCR channels lined up eg. that ABC was set to Channel 2 on your VCR (regardless of where you were).
Perhaps VIC TV followed Nine’s schedule but seems a bit odd to have had new regions coming in at midnight to a movie that’s already in progress. Maybe that’s what happened, though.
At least with Southern Cross doing it with Video Hits that’s the sort of show you could easily have come in halfway through and nobody would notice.
There were times during Seven’s first AFL deal, where sometimes, Melbourne would come into a game from Subiaco having just started, or just about to start.
I know rite :s
Anywhere from 1 to 9 digits IIRC. I recall ABC News used to have a 1 or 2 digit number.
When we got a Toshiba DVD recorder in 2004, it had G-Code functionality.
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and Southern Cross had quite a few problems with its UHF-46 transmitter at Mount Major in the first few years of aggregation, often the signal cut mid-programme and not returning for several hours after, which meant after January 1 at times Goulburn Valley viewers still had the choice of just ABC and Vic TV. Not that it mattered to most Shepparton viewers who after being fed up with the unreliability of UHF-46 that they continued to watch Southern Cross via BCV 8 Bendigo (and continued to do so until analogue switch off a few years ago). And the quality of the picture on UHF-46 was not good either, when there was yellow on the screen you would see waves across it (particularly with the heads on the Simpsons). This problem was cured when SC commenced digital transmission in the Goulburn Valley in 2005.
They weren’t the only ones with teething problems.
When NRTV first started here in Newcastle, at times there would be no sound at all, but the picture was perfectly fine.
Another one off fault (can’t remember exactly what) saw both Prime Newcastle and NBN Tamworth off the air for a few hours one evening.
Prime were due to screen a Jimmy Barnes concert that night.
Due to popular demand, Prime aired that concert for Newcastle viewers only the following Monday.
I certainly remember watching over the first few weeks and yeah occasionally the signal would just go off abruptly but in most cases it might have only been a few seconds or maybe minutes.
We could have tried watching Channel 8 from Bendigo but with just a rabbit ears antenna the reception ranged from none to poor so wasn’t really much of an option.
most homes in Shepparton had 2 or 3 antennas up in the pre-aggregation era, one local, the others up high to receive BCV8 Bendigo as well as Band II horizontal to receive AMV4 Albury (the latter came in handy from January-March 1992 to watch the Australian Open tennis, Australian Masters Golf, AFL pre-season cup and Seven programming before Prime had a local signal, also in the pre-aggregation days AMV had in my opinion the best selection programmes and movie lineup out of the three stations).