31 October 1982: the Nine Network launches a 24-hour direct satellite connection to the US and opens a Los Angeles bureau. The satellite link alone was said to cost $3 million over 5 years. In this day and age that cost would almost seem trivial to Nine, but it was massive then.
Kerry probably got sick of waiting for tapes to arrive from the US each day and wanted direct access to a feed of US programming like Carson, Letterman, Dallas and Dynasty each day.
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Great find. So 1982 saw both Nine and Seven open their first ever Los Angeles bureaus.
Was Paul Marshall the first correspondent for Seven in the US?
Also, and idea when the networks opened London?
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The networks often had reporters based in the US and London before then sharing resources with international broadcasters, they just hadn’t established their own bureaus. Seven had a great US correspondent in John Coghlan before Paul Marshall was sent over later in the '80s. Paul Lyneham was Seven’s correspondent in Europe reporting on the Falklands War from early 1982, also.
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It would be great if we had more information on the history of television news coverage from overseas. So basically reporters were based casually in the US / Europe from the 70s, but it wasn’t until the early 80s that permanent bureaus established?
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IIRC the link was put to use over the non ratings period in 82-83 to give us “fast tracked” episodes of Johnny Carson. But I don’t think Nine bothered with the show much after that. Maybe it didn’t track well in unofficial surveys?
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The article refers to Nine completing a “network centre” in LA at that time. That probably refers to a facility from which their people could send information to and from Australia via satellite instead of shipping tapes back via commercial air services.
Correspondents were usually based on the east coast of the US in those days reporting from Washington or New York at a time when there was concern about the Vietnam War, Watergate, Cold War and the energy crisis. I recall Australian journos reporting on the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1980. Ray Martin was in Washington for the ABC for years before he joined 60 Minutes in 1979. The focus on celebrity news wasn’t as great as it is now so you’d only get reports from LA during awards season. I do recall there came a time when Seven had people based in bureaus in both Los Angeles and Washington in the mid to late 80s. These are just memories off the top of my head…
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So how did they send these reports (1970s) ? Was it all sent by tape that could take 16 hours by air travel to reach Australia?
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According to this AFR article the first Washington correspondent for the ABC was Peter Barnett who went to Washington in 1967.
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They would’ve booked expensive satellite time through third parties with less time sensitive material sent via air freight.
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There were satellite links to Australia but as it appears from that SMH article, networks would have to pick up the phone and book in a timeslot to use the satellite if they had their own reporters filing stories.
There was also a 3rd party news agency (not sure who, Reuters or Visnews or something?) that sent daily news reports to Australia from overseas
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There would have been a daily network feed from the US each day for each network when all reports were sent through in bulk. But if anything happened after the feed was complete, the networks had to wait for the next one potentially in 24 hours.
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31 October 2018 - Ten refreshed at 6:30pm with “ten” becoming “10” with a new logo and new look. It was the first major relaunch of the network in 27 years. Ten Eyewitness News became 10 News First and Ten Sport became 10 Sport as part of the changes
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1 November 1959: BTQ7 opens in Brisbane
1 November 2009: The Seven Network launches 7TWO. The channel was extended to Darwin and Tasmania via Southern Cross, and to Regional Victoria, NSW, ACT via Prime Television, in December
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4 November 1956: TV comes to Melbourne with the launch of HSV7, owned by the Herald and Weekly Times group.
Source: Listener In-TV
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9 November 1990: Seven, Nine and Ten present a simulcast of the the cartoon special Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue. The US-made anti-drug special aired in a similar fashion in the US a few months earlier.
Introducing the Australian airing was Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Mrs Hazel Hawke.
The three networks repeated the simulcast again on Christmas Eve.
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11 November 1971: Darwin’s first commercial station NTD8 is officially opened. The first program was Skippy The Bush Kangaroo.
The new channel opened three months after ABC launched ABD6 in Darwin.
The channel was bought by Kerry Packer in the late 1980s. When Packer regained control of the Nine Network, NTD8 was made part of the Nine Network but continued to also air programming from Seven and Ten.
When Seven Darwin launched in 1998, NTD became a joint Nine/Ten outlet.
NTD8 was rebranded Nine Darwin in 2003, ditching most of its Network Ten content, though it continued to broadcast on VHF Channel 8 until the analogue shut down in 2013.
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19 November 1956: ABC opens its second TV station, ABV2 in Melbourne.
7pm Official Opening ABV2. CW Davidson (Postmaster-General), Charles Moses (General Manager, ABC), Edgar Dawes (vice-chairman, ABC), Dr H Evatt (Leader of the Opposition), Harold Holt (Minister for Labour). Includes interviews with Olympic Games athletes Chris Chataway and Shirley Strickland
7.30 The Frankie Laine Show
8pm Fabian Of Scotland
8.30 Special: This Is The ABC This Is The ABC - YouTube
8.50 Seeing Stars
9.15 War In The Air
9.45 Close
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ABV2 was the forth channel to launch after TCN9, HSV7 and ABN2 yes?
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