… not exactly … I can’t say too much 'cos even after over thirty years I’d probabaly get sued, but Skase’s asking price was ridiculous and meant a whole lot of debt had to be cobbled together from all over the place to buy it … one small bank pulled their tiny part of the money pile which killed the package and therefore the purchase and consequently killed Skase’s $1bil MGM deal which put him in trouble with the ATO and eventually led to the collapse of Qintex …
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Paul Ramsay’s attempt to buy the Queensland stations was covered in the SMH at the time.
Source: SMH 15 February 1989
Source: SMH 13 October 1989
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… ah yes, I remember those days well … we knew we were in deep trouble when the senior execs pay didn’t deposit on the due date and turned up the following day as a personal cheque from Paul’s own account 
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Going OT, It certainly would have been an interesting time.
Regional stations would have been going for well over their value just so they could be part of a network.
Presumedly Prime had another attempt to buy what was Sunshine Television from Gosford Communications in 1995? Or was the bid from Seven much higher?
For Seven it turned out to be a very smart investment and probably made Nine interested in buying into regional television through NBN years later.
Who’s the dude complaining that ABC and SBS, literally called national broadcasters and funded by taxpayers, are allowed national coverage but the commercial sector wasn’t.
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On Sunrise in 2008 they had Nat and Beretts as the main hosts, with Mel and Kochie presenting news and sport respectively.
Also on Sunrise in 2004, Kochie “grew” some hair and a moustache.
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Was this for the whole show?
Does anyone have any caps?
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Back in the 1960s, HSV7 did a news story about Australia converting to metric time. Because of the new metric time system this was going to lead to the creation of an extra month on the calendar! Just to see who would fall for the gag, Seven helpfully invited people to write in with their suggestions for what to call this new month.
Adelaide’s This Day Tonight ran a similar gag in 1975 and even made some props of what a metric time clock would look like and doctored a photo of the Adelaide town hall to show the building now with a metric clock on it. They also roped in the Deputy Premier to get in on the joke and talk to the reporters about the change. They got inundated with queries including one guy querying how to convert the digital clock he’d just bought 
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One of the worst ever April Fools Day jokes from Australian TV would have to be from 2005 and the East Coast edition of Today Tonight taking their swipes at A Current Affair for copying stories:
“Martin Surley” - no prizes for guessing who they were referring to there! 
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… ABC Adelaide Dialofish …
dunno … along with most of the rest of the early Prime exec group, I’d moved on by '95 … I think one of the suggestions at the time was that between the fall of Skase’s 7 and the resurrection of the new 7 there had been a bit of “warehousing” of assets so it would have gone back into the new 7 hands anyway … by that time Prime’s sights were set elsewhere I suspect as they went on to set up in New Zealand and then Argentina …
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That was a classic in 2004!
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5 April 1965: The launch of Sydney’s new TEN10 includes the musical special TV Spells Magic, telling the story of the building of a new TV station.
YouTube: Tim Prosser
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9 April 1982: The Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal runs all day on HSV7 (interrupted only for news) and portions of the telethon are relayed through regional Victoria. The appeal raised $2,075,869 – the second year in a row that it passed the $2m mark.
10 April 1981: The TV Week Logie Awards are held in Sydney for the first time since 1964. Network Ten is the broadcaster for the first time and, with the change to Ten, Michael Parkinson takes over from Bert Newton as Logies host. Bert wins his 2nd Gold Logie and also wins the Logie for Most Popular Male Personality in Victoria
Source: TV Week
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So glad we stopped using the word “compere”
13 April 1963: Jazz musician Louis Armstrong is featured in a BP Super Show special recorded at the studios of GTV9 towards the end of his national tour. The program, said to cost £7000, is reported to be the costliest hour of TV in Australia to date.
YouTube: Jazz Time With Jarvis X
13 April 1970: Melbourne’s ATV0 debuts its first drama production, a police series called The Long Arm. Going against the trend of having Crawford-made cop shows, this was made in-house by Ansett Television Films. The series was not a success and was gone after a few months.
YouTube: tvaustralia1
13 April 1994: The first episode of Network Ten’s adoption of A Country Practice. Production of the show had now shifted to Victoria with a mostly new cast.
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There was one I forgot, too…
13 April 1987: HSV7 launches its new-look Seven National News, now a one-hour format at the new time of 6.00 and introducing Greg Pearce, replacing Mal Walden. And the Melbourne debut of Terry Willesee Tonight, replacing the local current affairs show Day By Day.
The change at Seven coincided with all Victorian regional stations changing their national news relay from Seven to Nine, retaining a half-hour national news format but would delay Nine’s 6.00 news to 6.30.
Well, we all know how this all went for Seven…
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It would turn out no-one was watching Seven News.
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