4 March 1985: ABC launches its $25million revamped news format, The National, combining national news with current affairs into a one-hour program. Richard Morecroft and Geraldine Doogue fronted the edition covering NSW, VIC, ACT and NT, while other states had their own editions but still largely derived their content and current affairs coverage from the Sydney-based program.
The National was a huge flop. It alienated ABC’s traditional audience and failed to attract new viewers. It was quietly wound up later in the year with return to state-based ABC News and the launch of The 7.30 Report to follow.
4 March 1985: HSV7 catches up to its interstate partners and begins News Overnight, the overnight relay of news programs from NBC and CNN.
5 March 2001: Channel 31 in Melbourne launches Renaissance TV, a weekday eight-hour block of programs specifically targetted to the over-55s. It was a venture of Primelife retirement villages in the guise of being a channel sponsor.
I recall this was (slightly?) controversial at the time - but that may have been because the austvlogos discussion group at the time had quite a number of members involved in community tv.
I have vague recollections that this was investigated by the regulator at the time - is that true or am I losing my marbles?
I think it triggered an investigation as RTV was sort of a commercial entity buying out eight hour slabs of airtime under the guise of “sponsor” and sort of being a defacto commercial channel. I imagine the commercial networks would not have looked kindly on it.
The outcome was limits on taking out large slabs of airtime which sort of made RTV redundant. And IIRC Primelife itself went into financial strife years later.
EDIT: Crikey did a story on Primelife’s attempt to create a defacto commercial network by hijacking community TV channels for a measly sum
7 March 2005: ABC launches ABC2, its first multi-channel since the demise of Fly TV/ABC Kids.
We never knew if there was any formal welcome to ABC2 on-air, it appears that someone forgot to flick a switch and the channel started by bumping into a replay of Landline already in progress. The first words being “… premature babies”
13 March 1972: The night “Australian television lost its virginity” when Number 96 debuts on Channel Ten in Sydney in a 90-minute episode. The Australian Broadcasting Control Board didn’t like certain scenes from the opening episode and demanded that any further screenings of the debut episode after Sydney’s be edited accordingly.
In Melbourne, the series debuted the following night, 14 March. In Brisbane, 20 March. Adelaide, 10 April. Canberra’s CTC7 followed in June, and Perth’s TVW7 not until 1973.
17 March 1962: CBN8, serving Orange and the Central Tablelands region, is officially opened. It later expanded to include a relay station, CWN6, and in the 1980s with RVN2 in Wagga Wagga formed the basis for what became Prime Television in Southern NSW.
18 March 1985: Neighbours makes its debut on Seven. It was a hit with audiences in Melbourne and Brisbane but the network axes the soup four months later because it under performs in Sydney.
I remember reading somewhere that in the very early days, WIN4 had problems trying to source programming due to the Sydney stations kicking up a huge stink given the significant overlap in coverage.
I don’t know if this is true but the story then goes that Rupert responded to this by buying up anything that wasn’t nailed down so that the Sydney channels then had to come to him for sourcing shows.
