You would have to think it was due to lack of a link to the rest of Australia for ABC. Mt Isa got ABC TV in December 1970 with a link to Townville., so perhaps that link was eventually extended to Darwin.
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This link suggests thats correct and it didnt reach Darwin until 71 (which was also used to support the Radio Australia station)
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Yep. In 1969, Darwin still only had a population of around 30,000. Alice Springs was around 9000.
It may be worth noting that Darwin did not get commercial radio (8DN) until 1960, Alice Springs (8HA) until 1971. Commercial TV was clearly going to be a long way off in Alice Springs… and didn’t happen there until 1988.
And even when the link connected to Darwin in 1971 it apparently only had capacity to support ABC. The commercial channel NTD8 did not have access to a direct link to the eastern states until 1982.
For years, ABAD7 in Alice Springs could only broadcast programs via week-old videotapes sent up from Adelaide. I don’t know how that affected news programming. I can only guess that the news was also a week old!?
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Would that’ve been the same for ABKD7 Katherine and ABTD9 Tennant Creek?
not sure. Katherine might have been close enough to Darwin to run as a relay from ABD6?
Not sure about Tennant Creek
15 August 2010: Offspring debuts as a two-hour telemovie on Ten, starring Asher Keddie, Kat Stewart, Deborah Mailman and Eddie Perfect. It will go on to have seven seasons and become one of the network’s biggest hits in the past decade and one of the most-discussed Australian dramas in our time.
This is one of the first promos at the time.
According to this tweet, every season of Offspring has been available on US streaming service Hulu.
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Was Perth similar in the early days as well?
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I don’t think there was any direct link to Perth (for TV use, anyway) until the east-west microwave link opened up in 1970 (the link that was eventually extended via the east coast to Mt Isa and Darwin in 1971) although there were some rare adhoc arrangements such as when the moon landing happened there was a once-off link via the Carnarvon OTC earth station and the Intelsat satellite that allowed WA viewers to watch the moon landing live.
https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/A11_TV_Perth.html
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15 August 1999: WIN South Australia is established following the buyout SES-8 Mount Gambier and RTS-5A Loxton by WIN Corporation.
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16/8/2006 Quiz show The Master premieres on Channel Seven, with recent WWTBAM winner Martin Flood cast as the Master and Mark Beretta as host.
After just one episode, the show is yanked from the Wednesday 8:30pm time slot, with the six or so remaining episodes burnt off in the Monday 7:30pm time slot during the 2006-07 summer non-ratings period.
16/8/2015 The first sanctioned AFL women’s match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs is televised on Seven, ahead of the men’s match between the same two clubs.
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16 August 1980: The cover date of the last edition of TV Times before it (and TV Guide) gets merged into TV Week the following week.
There is no mention in the magazine that it is its final edition. Either it was a very last minute decision or they just wanted it to transition unannounced.
TV Times had been a joint venture between ABC and Australian Consolidated Press. ABC decided a few months earlier it was no longer financially sustainable for them as circulation was falling, and sold its share to ACP. ACP then in turn entered into a joint venture with Southdown Press (TV Week) with Southdown publishing TV Week (incorporating TV Times and TV Guide) on behalf of both companies.
The partnership between ACP and Southdown Press (later Pacific Magazines) to own TV Week ended in 2002.
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16 August 1980: Also the cover date of a new magazine, TV Radio Extra. Adopting a similar format and features to TV Guide that was being amalgamated into TV Week.
The national TV Guide, launched in 1979, was an extension of the SA-based magazine of the same name that dated back to the early 1960s.
Many of the local staff from TV Guide in Adelaide went on to TV Radio Extra.
TVRE continued publication until 1988.
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19 August 1961: Four Corners debuts on ABN2, Sydney.
The first program aired the following Saturday night on ABV2, Melbourne
Unsure of the airdates for other states.
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21 August 2010 Australian Federal Election 2010 results in a hung Parliament for the first time postwar. 10 was showing AFL on both Channels 10 and ONE HD that night.
Didn’t remember any updates at halftime
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i missed a couple of days:
16 August 1959: QTQ-9 Brisbane begins transmission.
16 August 1968: BKN-7 Broken Hill opens.
19 August 1986: Treasurer Paul Keating, in his budget speech, announces the amalgamation of the ABC and SBS.
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21 August 1959: The cover date of the first Melbourne edition of TV News-Times. It had been published in Sydney for about a year before as a merger between two magazines, TV News and TV Times.
The title was later shortened to just TV Times and continued publication until amalgamation with TV Week in 1980.
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Television only just starting and already ads to get the sets repaired!
I can recall my parents always had a service contract for their TVs, at least with colour, and there were plenty of times that a repairer would turn up at the house and try to fix the set.
Early TV sets, in particular the picture tubes, were notoriously unreliable from what I gather. Although we used to have a 1960 model that dad had picked up second hand somewhere. It was still going well as a spare set as late as the mid 1980s and probably had many more years left in it before it was disposed of when we moved house 
I don’t recall that we had any service contracts but we had a regular TV repairman who was often called on when our late-70s Pye would cark it occasionally. Apparently European-made TVs didn’t take kindly to Australian summers! The set still lasted about 11 or 12 years before the repairman declared that it could no longer be revived.
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22 August 2005 - Toasted TV premieres on Network Ten as the successor to Cheez TV with hosts Pip Russell and Dan Sweetman.
On 27 February 2012, the show moves to digital channel Eleven (now 10 Peach).
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26/8/2011 Channel Nine Brisbane announces the sackings of reporters Melissa Mallet and Cameron Price, as well as news producer Aaron Wakely, and the departure of news director Lee Anderson, over the infamous Choppergate scandal.
Hugh Cornish suggested that it would take a long time for QTQ-9 to rebuild, but by 2013 they’d overtake Seven News in the south-east Queensland ratings battle.
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