22 December 1977: The final episode of Number 96 airs on ATV0, almost four months after it aired in Sydney. This was due to Melbourne reducing the show’s airtime to one episode a week during the year, while Sydney maintained two a week. ATV had also bumped the show to play its final episodes at 10.30pm.
The final episode included a curtain call of many of the show’s past and present cast members
YouTube: SilentNumber96
23 December 1961: Two new regional stations launch in Victoria – GMV6, Shepparton, and BCV8, Bendigo.
23 December 1977: The long-running ABC serial Bellbird comes to an end after more than ten years. The rural-based soap long struggled to gain an audience in the cities but was very popular in country areas. The ABC had tinkered with the show’s timeslot for the last two years. The cancellation of Bellbird enabled ABC the resources to produce a diverse range of shorter series, with the commissioning of Twenty Good Years, the story of a Melbourne family spanning two decades from 1956; All The Green Year, based on the novel by author Don Charlwood; a children’s series, Nargun And The Stars; and The Truckies, starring Michael Aitken, John Wood, Colleen Hewett and Michael Carman.
Source: TV Times
24 December 1990: The Nine Network dropped a bomb on its Queensland regional network QTV by announcing that it was withdrawing from negotiations around an affiliation agreement leading up to aggregation which was to launch a week later.
Nine had instead sealed a deal with WIN Television which owned RTQ Rockhampton and had just completed the purchase of DDQ/SDQ Toowoomba/Southern Downs. Nine had reportedly approached WIN at the last minute as negotations with QTV had seemingly stalled.
QTV was suddenly having to scramble to form an affiliation agreement with the Ten Network and totally re-work its aggregation plans just days before the New Year’s Eve launch statewide.
Would QTV have been left out in the cold had it not formed an affiliation?
It had little choice but to sign up with Ten, and Ten needed an affiliate after just being dumped by WIN. There was hardly any chance that QTV would not have ended up with anyone.
Carols by Candlelight opening 1984 in the new Stereovision.
24 December 1956: Carols By Candlelight is telecast for the first time, as part of GTV9’s test transmissions. But the event is not televised again until…
24 December 1969: Carols By Candlelight is televised by ATV0, hosted by Phil Gibbs, and becomes an annual TV event.
24 December 1974: Carols By Candlelight is telecast in colour for the first time.
24 December 1979: Carols By Candlelight moves to the Nine Network, with Brian Naylor taking over hosting
24 December 1981:
Source: TV Week
27 December 1987: Two Adelaide commercial stations do a switcheroo to align them to their interstate partners. ADS7 becomes ADS10 and joins the Ten Network, while SAS10 becomes SAS7 and joins the Seven Network. At the transmission tower it was literally a case of plugging ADS into the 10 transmitter, and SAS into the 7 transmitter, as both transmitters were on the same tower.
31 December 1990: Aggregation commenced in regional Queensland, with Sunshine (Seven), WIN (Nine) and QTV (Ten) launching across their expanded market.
31 December 1991: Aggregation commenced in northern NSW and the Gold Coast, with Prime (Seven), NBN (Nine) and NRTV (Ten) launching across their expanded market.
31 December 1989: SBS screens the German-produced comedy sketch Dinner For One for the first time, emulating the European tradition where this program airs every New Year’s Eve (or thereabouts). The program was produced in black and white in the early 1960s but became an unlikely new year’s tradition in Germany and later other parts of Europe in the early 1970s.
31 December 1999: ABC is the host Australian broadcaster for the global television event, 2000 Today, covering New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world in real time over 24 hours. The Nine Network, originally intended to participate in the rival Millennium Television Network venture with other international broadcasters, was forced to hurriedly gather its sources at the last moment when MTN collapsed, to produce Millennium Live.
31 December 2003: Southern Cross Ten begins transmission in the Port Pirie and Broken Hill regions as a secondary licence to existing broadcaster Central Television (GTS4/BKN7).
I recall our family got up early to experience multi-channel television again! (We’d moved from Sydney 12 months prior, the two-channel thing was a bit of a culture shock - as was the single radio station that played Country Music at night)
Going by the coverage map, it would appear that QTV’s satellite service included the remote areas of north western Sydney north of Richmond. Understandable given the terrain there
1 January 1988: ABC, SBS, the Nine Network and regional stations across Australia join to present Australia Live, a four-hour snapshot of a day in the life of Australia, to open Australia’s bicentennial year of European settlement.
1 January 1992: Aggregation comes to Victoria with the statewide launch of VIC TV and Southern Cross Network. Prime Television, based in Albury, follows in March.
1 January 1995: Pay TV arrives in Australia with the soft launch of Galaxy in Sydney and Melbourne. The service opens with one channel, Premier Sports Network, operating eight hours a day. Further channels and expansion of Premier Sports to a 24-hour channel comes with Galaxy’s official launch on 26 January.
1 January 2001: Digital television begins with a whimper rather than a bang in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth
Source: Digital Broadcasting Australia
1 January 2004: Tasmanian Digital Television (TDT) begins
1 January 2004: WIN Ten, a supplementary service to WIN in Riverland and Mt Gambier, begins
1 January 2006: Mildura Digital Television (Ten Mildura) begins
Galaxy initially launched with their MMDS microwave service (often referred to “wireless cable”), it took until September for the satellite service to launch (beating Foxtel and Optus to market)
Which severely limited who could actually get it as you needed line-of-sight to the transmitter which was located in the CBD.
Did Seven have a reason for not participating in Australia Live?
It certainly wasn’t a technology suited to an urban environment - CETV (later Austar) had better success with it regionally (and trialed a digital system on the Gold Coast) but the spectrum became more valuable for a burgeoning broadband internet industry.
Back to Galaxy and Premier Sports - I recall one of the first big events they had the rights for was the 1995 Australian cricket tour of the West Indies which caused a bit of a kerfuffle given Nine had previously secured the rights to overseas tours, I vaguely recall they ended up sub-licencing the rights to Channel Ten
I don’t know on what basis Nine participated but Seven and Ten didn’t.
Someone’s posted Australia Live to YouTube
Phillip Adams wrote in The Australian in 1988 about the program and it contains a clue why Nine were involved:
And it was all Peter Faiman’s fault. The formidable producer pitched the idea to Kerry Packer and the Bicentennial Authority – Australia Live , it’d be called, simulcast by Nine, the ABC and SBS. Channel Four in the UK ran it – as did America’s A&E Network
Flemishdog on YT used to have it but he has since exited YouTube. Great to see the show is still on there under another channel holder.
Thanks for that 
Although does News need to keep a 33-year old opinion piece behind a paywall. I’m sure they’re not paying Phillip Adams for clicks!
