It was Bruce McAvaney who hosted Sportswatch, not Sandy Roberts.
The show had a similar format to Soccer Saturday in the UK.
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Melbourne viewers saw the finale months before Sydney viewers.
Strange that GTV9 left an axed soap like The Young Doctors at 6pm until the final episode. Perhaps they needed to meet the drama quota or it had remained popular enough in Melbourne not to warrant moving it.
TCN9 had shifted it to 5pm weekdays in August 1982 because it was damaging Hendo’s news ratings. The announcement that it had been axed came a couple of months later when the network announced a major investment in new drama with Waterloo Station and Taurus Rising. The last day of production at Willoughby was October 29, 1982 but it was said they had dozens of episodes completed and it would continue to air into 1983.
The Young Doctors was moved to Saturdays at 6.30pm as one hour episodes on TCN over the non ratings period of 1982-83. When the football season started in March it was relegated to 5pm Saturdays after Wide World of Sports. I can find evidence of it in that timeslot until October 1, 1983 before listings denoted with “repeat” kick in. It seems to have gone out with a whimper in Sydney.
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Thanks for the clarification. I had no idea the last episodes were so delayed airing in Sydney. Not sure why GTV kept it going at 6.00 right to the end. GTV then replaced it at 6.00 with Happy Days but that was only for a few days before launching the replacement series Starting Out the following week.
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Got my failed Nine dramas mixed up there. Starting Out and Waterloo Station were the big drama investments announced and Taurus Rising had started in mid 1982.
Interesting that Nine left a dud drama limp along for months by airing 2x30min eps a week together in Sydney when the inclination in recent times would be to burn it off ASAP in an insignificant timeslot.
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Easy enough to do, there were enough of them! 
Although I was never a fan of The Young Doctors, I did like Starting Out. Also because the building of the local GP we used to go to was used for exterior shots of the doctor clinic depicted in the series. They just changed the sign at the front to be the fictional one. Our local area had very few claims to TV fame so it was a novelty to see a local building, and one we used to go to, be seen on TV.
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They were all flops. It was the start of an era of drama flops from Nine: Kings, Possession.
After the success of shows like Division 4, The Young Doctors and The Sullivans, it was quite a while before they had a major success. Maybe The Flying Doctors in 1986?
I was a big fan if The Young Doctors. We had a TV in our kitchen in those days and we watched at dinner time. I didn’t really like Starting Out as much.
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Pretty much, although even after that there were still flops to come… All The Way, Prime Time, Family & Friends, Paradise Beach. Staggering that a network like Nine that was so successful with pretty much anything else could never get a serial off the ground, even with the resources of production companies like Grundy and Crawfords.
Chances, which came from a new player (Beyond International) but crafted by experienced personnel, somehow managed to get two years
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I thought Willing and Abel had potential and was different enough from the young love, cops and doctors shows that were constantly doing the rounds.
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The Late Show on the ABC got a lot of mileage out of Paradise Beach.
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Warner Brothers Movie World!
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Champagne Comedy!
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31 March 1989: The first stage of the Australian Government’s equalisation scheme launches with the aggregation of the Southern NSW markets of WIN, Capital and Prime Television.
At 12.00am WIN launches into Canberra, and Capital Television launches in Illawarra. Prime Television debuts in both markets. The expansion of WIN and Capital into the Prime market is postponed due to delays in infrastructure.
This was the sales brochure from Prime Television at the time of opening for advertising in Canberra and Wollongong
Capital’s flyer to promote launch in Illawarra
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Capital would only have the ‘X’ logo for a few months before changing to 10 TV Australia.
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Did Capital take the full “10 TV Australia” branding like the metros or show a Capital variant?
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interesting stop press about prime in queensland
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yes, seems a premature announcement for something that didn’t happen 
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yep … having been one of the Prime due-diligence team that went to Maroochydore to make the assessment of the proposed Queensland deal, I can stake a claim to having played a small part in the downfall of Christopher Skase 
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This is interesting. So Prime had an opportunity to buy into Queensland at one point?
Was it poor projected revenues which poured cold water on the suggestion?
Prime would have kept live local news in Mackay and Maryborough too based on what they did in NSW?
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Being April Fools Day today
What have been some of the best April Fools on TV?
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