On This Day

TV History
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1 January 1972: The third episode of Nine’s experimental pop music series Fly, Wrinklys, Fly which ended up being its last.

1 January 1988: Australia Live, a combined effort between ABC, SBS, Nine and regional stations, goes to air simultaneously. A four-hour look at Australia and its people, broadcast live in prime time.

1 January 1992: Aggregation arrives in regional Victoria with local commercial networks Prime*, VICTV and Southern Cross Network. (* Prime’s rollout across the expanded market is delayed to March)

1 January 1995: Pay TV commences in Australia with Galaxy launching its first channel, Premier Sports Network, in Sydney and Melbourne.

1 January 1999: Foxtel and Austar launch Australia’s first 24-hour weather channel, Weather 21 (channel 21). It was later re-branded The Weather Channel and then Sky News Weather.

1 January 2001: Metropolitan TV stations commence full-scale digital transmission and simulcast with existing analogue transmissions.

1 January 2004: Tasmania’s third commercial station Tasmanian Digital Television (TDT) begins transmission in Hobart as Australia’s first digital-only commercial TV station — and WIN Ten begins transmission in the Riverland and Mt Gambier regions as a secondary licence to existing broadcaster WIN (RTS5A/SES8).

1 January 2006: Mildura Digital Television, a joint venture between local broadcasters Prime and WIN, commences transmission as Ten Mildura — providing the region with a dedicated Network Ten signal for the first time, broadcasting in digital.

1 January 2007: Grundy Television and Crackerjack Productions are merged into their parent company Fremantle Media.

1 January 2014: Foxtel replaces ‘greatest hits’ channel TV1 with TVH!TS and sci-fi channel SF with SyFy.

1 January 2021: ABC Comedy re-brands as ABC TV Plus.

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3350

The 5 colour bar launched at 12:14am just after Midnight on 1 January 2000

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1 January 2013 Foxtel rebranded its movie channels as Foxtel Movies which are in their current format as of today.

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At this point it was just Austar with Weather 21; Foxtel started taking it a few years later (not long before Foxtel Digital started), supposedly when it shifted into the XYZ set of networks in 2003; I seem to recall it being late in that year.

Foxtel at the time had an automated weather channel provided by News Corp’s then “Weathernews” division - pretty sure Optus Vision had similar - but certainly Weather 21 was the first pay TV weather service to use actual live presenters, which made it stand out quite a bit to me when I saw it for the first time.

They did also have an early version of the service that became Weather Active… more general forecasts were available on demand on the red button, but your local ones were instead fed over the top of the local forecast blocks… basically same as the American TWC “local on the 8s” headend concept, except your own box was being the headend rather than one at a cable network. When Foxtel Digital (or even digital terrestrial TV) was still some time away it felt surprisingly advanced for the time, if only for that.

Eventually it just became The Weather Channel in a year or two when Austar moved it to channel 31 (IIRC).

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3353

Seven’s evening schedule that day saw different programs shown in each state. Only Goofy Movie at 6:30 pm was shown National with Western Australia Viewers getting Cobbers at 8:10 pm followed by Clive James at 8:40 pm (Shown 8:10 pm in Victoria). Viewers in Queensland got a double feature movie (Getting even with dad) at 8:10 pm followed by Men Behaving badly at 10:25 pm (Also shown 10:25 pm in Victoria).

Does anyone have Seven’s evening schedules for South Australia and New South Wales for January 1 2000?

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Blame TV Week for the misinformation?

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That’s fair, I wasn’t intending to sound like I was blaming you :slight_smile:

Given the relatively short time (out of its almost 25 year life now) that it was on Austar only, it’s probably an easy mistake for them to make!

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here the sa one 31 Dec 1999 - The Guide - Trove (nla.gov.au)

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2 January 1995 (NZ): A group of Māori protesters, led by veteran activist Ken Mair, interrupted TVNZ’s main evening news as they forcefully entered the Auckland studios of TVNZ minutes before it was due to go to air at 6pm. Their reason for disruption stemmed from the absence of the Māori news programme, Te Karere, which was off air over the Christmas and New Year holiday period. Police were called and the protesters were eventually escorted from the TVNZ studios, causing a delay of about 10 minutes for the bulletin to start. Ken Mair expressed the group’s belief that both Māori and Pākehā news should receive equal treatment.

Video courtesy: TVNZ

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3358

I can see that Seven’s evening Schedule for South Australia that day was a little the same as Queensland at 8:10 pm with the Double feature movie but Men Behaving Badly also aired at 10:25 pm just like Victoria and Queensland.

While Seven and Ten had regular programming airing national all throughout the day until 6:00 pm (Ten until 5:00 pm), ABC and Nine were both airing continuing coverage of 2000 Today and Millennium Live respectively until 10:30 pm but both networks respective Daily evening News Bulletins aired at the regular times.

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2 January 1988: Imparja Television, the remote commercial television service (RCTS) covering outback regions in NT and SA, begins transmission through the AUSSAT satellites.

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10’s evening Schedule for January 1 2000 following 5pm News/Sports Tonight (Not sure if this was for all states/territories?):

6:00 pm Ocean Girl
6:30 pm Vet’s School
7:00 pm Zoo
7:30 pm In The Wild: Asian Elephants With Goldie Hawn
8.30 pm Tales Of The South Seas
10:30 pm 10 Late News.

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The 5 colour bar launched in 1999 with The One To Watch slogan.

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While this was Seven’s logo right throughout the 1990s, the motto of “The One to Watch” was launched March or April of 1999. The Motto was continued on January 1 2000 (The day of the Network Relaunch of logos which occurred at 12:15 am) and lasted until June or July of 2003 a few months before the current plain red logo was made permanent.

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I remember this. It made the news in Australia that night too.

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4 January 1971: The acclaimed US children’s program Sesame Street debuts on ABC.

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7 January 1974: The Seven Network launches a new half-hour variety show, JC At 8.30, hosted by TV producer John Collins. The new show, hoping to break the success of Number 96 on the 0-10 Network, was axed after two weeks.

7 January 1996: The premiere of SBS series, Passion, presenting six short plays by Australian women. The first episode features Love Seen In Laundromat, starring Carole Skinner, and The Night Of The Missing Bridegroom, starring Jean Kittson.

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8 January 1979: The 0-10 Network‘s afternoon variety show The Steve Raymond Show returns for a new year, hoping to gain some viewers in the off-season before it’s main opponent, The Mike Walsh Show, returns on Nine.

8 January 1979: Former Seven newsreader Brian Naylor begins as chief newsreader at National Nine News in Melbourne, starting a 20-year reign in the role.

8 January 1992: Marcia Hines, Simon Gallaher and Tina Arena are among 25 performers at the Australian AIDS Benefit Concert, screening on ABC, introduced by Ita Buttrose and hosted by Jean Kittson (The Big Gig).

8 January 1998: ABC debuts a four-week series, The Loud Hour, featuring a range of documentaries and short films of drama, animation and experimental work produced by filmmakers aged between 14 and 25.

8 January 2005: The three commercial networks join forces to present Australia Unites: Reach Out To Asia, a telethon to raise funds for the World Vision tsunami relief appeal, after a catastrophic tsunami hit southern Asia, claiming hundreds and thousands of lives and displacing millions

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How long did that last?

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It was axed in August 1979. The studio space was needed to accommodate the upcoming series Arcade.

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