And again in the early 90s when Sophie Lee hosted a 30 minute version at 5pm on Nine. Rated well for a while too.
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Possibly due to Sophie Lee’s questionable outfits, which reportedly brought in a disproportionately large number of adult male viewers
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Didn’t they extend The Bugs Bunny Show with Sophie Lee to 1 hour for a brief period too?
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Speaking of The Bugs Bunny Show, I found this
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_bmGu9lSBG/
Doesn’t look like the Anne-Marie Cooksley version lasted long. Can’t find any infomation about it, even on Wikipedia
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Something i miss is when classic TV shows getting used as filler content.
Remember in 1992 Channel 7 showed episodes of Kingswood Country at 3pm. Would start just as i got home from School. Then fast forward 2 years they got another run at 10:30 in the morning.
Also in the late 90s early 2000s Channel 9 put episodes of All Together Now at 5:30 in the morning before Today started.
Dare say these were more things that are now taken up by infomercials
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The weird thing is that Nine doesn’t put any of the older programs on Nine main channel except Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. Similarly, Seven for a while showed Sons And Daughters (the iconic 1980s series not to be confused with any other program of a similar name).
There is a lot of Australian content that could be shown still, and I think if networks are worried about shows using insulting and derogatory language, all they have to do is put a warning up that it may offend some viewers like they do with nudity and foul language.
If the had warnings at the front of these older shows, it would open up a whole library of shows that could be used early morning on secondary channels- this would allow comedies such a Mind Your Language, Love Thy Neighbour and even It Ain’t Half Hot Mum to get another airing.
But back the the idea of classic programs being used as fillers, the following shows I remember being used by regionals (and sometimes metros)
MAS*H
Happy Days
Get Smart
Barney Miller
Good Times
Diff’rent Strokes
Sanford And Son
WRKP In Cincinnati
Hogans Heroes
McHales Navy
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In
Bewitched
I Dream of Jeannie
Dukes Of Hazzard
BJ And The Bear
Fantasy Island
Bonanza
High Chapparrel
Im sure others can think of more
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Gilligan’s Island
The Brady Bunch
It’s About Time
Petticoat Junction
Green Acres
Here’s Lucy
My Three Sons
The Beverly Hillbillies
That Girl
The Andy Griffith Show
Gomer Pyle
F Troop
Family Affair
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Leave it to Beaver
Gidget
The Flying Nun
The Addams Family
The Munsters
I could go on. 
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The only one there I don’t recognise is It’s About Time
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It was a short-lived comedy from the same people who made Gilligan’s Island. It got a few runs between repeats of that show. It was a very silly premise.
Astronauts travelled back to a prehistoric time and lived with a cave-dwelling family. Somehow they spoke English. 
When that wasn’t working, they brought the family back to the 1960s for the second half of the season. 
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A clip from the launch of community TV station LINC TV Lismore.
YouTube: John Curtis
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There have been so many smaller Community TV channels that have come and gone over the years.
LINC TV Lismore, CTV 41 Bendigo, BushVision Mt. Gambier, LocalVision, Bendigo IPTV, ACE TV Adelaide.
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Even in Sydney, with TVS another casualty.
You can mostly blame the ‘digital dividend’ for that, whereby they were pretty much forced off air as the government didn’t have enough spectrum to go around post 2014 restack.
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LINC TV came and went so many times over its 18 years.
CTV 41 Bendigo had its license cancelled in June 1999 after failing to broadcast regular programming.
Bushvision shut down in 2007 after its license expired.
LocalVision closed sometime in 1998.
Information is scarce on Bendigo IPTV.
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There was enough spectrum, the government just played bully to get community TV taken off the air. Instead of fighting, TVS just packed up and shutdown. 31 Digital Brisbane tried to go to an online model, essentially what the government wanted them to do, but it failed.
Perth had Access 31 then WTV which has since gone dark.
Melbourne and Adelaide persisted and fought and are still going, for now, based on a flimsy commitment from the current government.
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Bendigo IPTV was essentially an online community TV station run by a group of local businesspeople from outside the media sector, relying primarily on Telstra’s BigPond service for carriage. The service operated mainly out of the old BCV-8 studios, with most programming recorded there.
Some owners also served as presenters, and to my knowledge, the station rarely aired live content.
According to Bendigo IPTV’s YouTube channel, their last upload was on November 3, 2016, which suggests that the company likely ceased operations shortly after that date.
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LocalVision was a group of community tv channels that ran on Optus Vision and served Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney.
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I remember the time when Seven outbid Nine for the FTA rights to televise the 2013 (and later 2017) Rugby League World Cup.
This came after Nine televised the 2008 tournament, and were therefore able to use their commentary team (Rabs, Peter Sterling and Phil Gould to name a few).
IIRC, for Seven’s coverage they used a world feed which included Andrew Voss (ex-Nine caller) and Mark Braybrook, among others. Ryan Phelan would be the studio host.
https://x.com/asiapacificrl/status/1330776102382432258?s=46&t=pH8Nbt9ccJOMPCwK9J4Wtg
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And they still didn’t show any cartoons!
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what did they show?
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That’s a joke in response to the remark about Sophie Lee usually wearing “Something for the dads” on GTV-9’s The Bugs Bunny Show.
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