27 April 2009 - The first episode of Masterchef Australia premiered on CHannel 10 at 7pm. This Masterchef show, replaced Big Brother (where it was axed in July 2008). Masterchef was a Number 1 with more than 1 million metro viewers watching this cooking show.
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29 April 1963: ABC opens its first country station, ABEV1 Bendigo.
29 April 1979: The first test programs from the Special Broadcasting Service begin airing on ABN2 and ABV2 on Sunday mornings.
YouTube: me (recorded via 20/20 Vision, broadcast on SBS in 2000)
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that’s awesome, thank you. I’d not seen TV Week’s article about the test transmissions before.
I only have the Country edition of that issue which understandably doesn’t mention it at all, given it wasn’t airing in country areas
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30 April 1988: The official opening and highlights of the first day of World Expo 88 in Brisbane are televised by Network Ten through host broadcaster TV0, which also has relocated its newsroom to the Expo site for the six-month duration.
30 April 1994: Aggregation comes to Tasmania with Tas TV expanding into northern Tasmania, and Southern Cross Network expanding south. Tas TV is the Nine affiliate while Southern Cross has a joint affiliation with Seven and Ten.
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The TVO bulletin opener from 30 April 1988.
Also included news promo and station ident.
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I never got an answer to my question posted under that video 
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Cheeky advertisement there. 
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1 May 1960: The play Seagulls Over Sorrento is performed live to air from the studios of HSV7, Melbourne. It is Crawford Productions’ first TV drama production. The production is videotaped for later screening in other states.
Source: TV Times
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From the next Monday 2 May 1988 the network morning news was presented from World Expo each morning. The bulletin featured the X logo in supers despite TVQ not having yet changed frequency.
National Nine Morning News opener from the same day
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3 May 1957: HSV7 launches The Late Show with Noel Ferrier. The Friday launch was supposedly to try and steal the thunder from Nine’s competing show In Melbourne Tonight, starting the following Monday with Graham Kennedy
Ferrier only lasted a few months in the role before he left for a theatre commitment, to be replaced by 3XY announcer Bert Newton, who himself resigned on-camera about a year or so later to go to Channel Nine.
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4 May 1964: Melbourne’s ATV0 begins its first daily test transmission of programs ahead of its official launch in August. The channel then gets into trouble when its test program schedule is published in TV Times and The Age, though it claims the schedule was not provided on an official basis. By rules, specific details of test programs were not supposed to be made public other than a broad timeframe of when transmissions would occur.
8am Test Pattern and Music, 12pm Australia And New Zealand, 12.13 The Pitcairn People, 12.40 Sea Road, 12.57 Three In A Million, 1.42 Isle Of The Caribbean, 1.57 Time, music, 4pm Flight Into Yesterday, 4.30 They Chose The Sea, 4.55 Speed The Plough, 5.11 The Power To Fly, 5.31 The Home Made Car, 5.59 Music, 7pm Grand Tour, 7.28 Final Victory, 7.57 Music, 8pm Close
Some of these films that appeared on the test transmissions are now on YouTube.
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5 May 1980: ATV10 has another stab at launching a one-hour Eyewitness News to fill the 6.30 half-hour gap left by the axing of Arcade in February and in the interim had been temporarily filled by sitcom re-runs.
This is ATV’s third go at a one-hour news, after previous attempts in 1975/76 and 1978/79. It had reverted back to half-hour news in November 1979 when it axed newsreaders Bruce Mansfield and Annette Allison. Michael Schildberger and Peter Hanrahan were newsreaders over the summer of 1979/80 before David Johnston and Jana Wendt took over in February.
It was the beginning of a strong decade in news at ATV10 and David Johnston stayed there as chief newsreader until 1995. Jana Wendt left at the end of 1981 to join 60 Minutes.
Source: The Age
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6 May 1957: GTV9 launches its new tonight show, In Melbourne Tonight hosted by Graham Kennedy. We all know how this panned out. The show went for 13 years and clocked up over 3000 episodes and established Kennedy as “the King” and Nine as the home of TV variety for decades to follow.
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7 May 1981: ATV10 screens Prisoner In Concert, a one-hour variety special featuring the cast of Prisoner and filmed at Pentridge Prison.
YouTube: BB AU
The video’s opening comments indicate that the program aired on 15 March 1981 but I can’t find that as the airdate in either Sydney or Melbourne at least.
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National Nine News Melbourne from exactly 15 years ago (May 7, 2006), covering the death of reporter Richard Carleton.
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Sadly he passed away while covering the Beaconsfield Mine disaster.
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I remember that news bulletin well.
60 Minutes also paid tribute to Richard Carleton today.
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