I didn’t mean ownership in a single market as such, I probably should have said reach eg. Where WIN acquired DDQ, SDQ, RTQ, BTV, GMV, STV etc
… yep, that’s exactly what the original two-station rule was all about … it allowed one entity to only own two television stations anywhere in Australia … but Keating abolished it which allowed people like Skase and Bond to flourish and killed the local television industry …
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Thanks Keating! 
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To a greater or lesser extent I think some level of TV networking, ownership consolidation and unfortunately, reduction in local content was eventually going to happen no matter whether aggregation or the alternative “multichannel” proposal happened.
Sure, it would be great if there were more locally owned/operated media organisations than there are now - I’m not disputing that. But was the broadcast media ownership structure of the 1980s necessarily the way things should’ve remained into the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and the present day? This is something I’m not so sure about, especially since free to air terrestrial TV was eventually going to have to deal with gradually declining audiences after the arrival of Pay TV and the internet.
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… no question … if not as a result of business then as a result of technology … the big difference is that MCS would have allowed this to happen in a more gradual and ordered fashion … keeping more aspects of localism alive … and without the ridiculous prices paid and consequent debt that sent everyone broke along the way …
Yep, I’m sure I’ve said it here many times before but you only need to look at what has happened to regional radio to see what would have happened with TV under the ‘multichannel’ model - regional media conglomerates, gross centralisation and broadcasting exactly the same content/playlist into multiple markets with only the bare minimum of legally-required localism.
The two station rule is interesting though, although I suspect even without its abolition you would have seen program sharing ‘agreements’ and the like, along with sustained industry pressure to see its abolition (and let’s be honest, if Hawke/Keating hadn’t done it Howard certainly would have).
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… not necessarily … and not because of any altruism on the part of the Liberals … it’s the National Party who initially held Keating’s wish for 75% ownership down to 60% in the Senate … it was also the Nats who reversed some of the cuts made by Howard to the ABC’s budget - with the condition that it be tied to regional spending … and it’s the Nats that have ensured that the “legally-required localism” exists at all … why? , because they want to be able to drop into their local radio and TV station for a “chat” to tell their constituents how wonderful they are … so no, Hawke/Keating did what they did to keep the big end of town on their side … the Liberals didn’t need to do the same and would have bee blocked from doing so by the Nats … “program sharing agreements” already existed in regional television prior to Hawke sticking his nose in and yes they would have continued … nothing wrong with that … but in the end, yes you’re spot on, it would have happened anyway, but like I said “without the ridiculous prices paid and consequent debt that sent everyone broke along the way” …
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Is this the same Hawke/Keating duo who wanted to merge ABC and SBS?
yep … but I think everyone on both sides of politics has had a go at that one and failed …
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Something that is hard to find, videos of the Mike Hammond era of Good Morning Australia, definitely different to what was on TODAY on Channel 9 at the time with Steve and Liz.
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Good find. Also has The Morning Show with Bert Newton, later became GMA.
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Weird how they played music videos on the show but it certainly was something different.
Clearly they were trying for a more modern contemporary format compared to the traditional Today Show format.
Way ahead of its time, feel like something along those lines would work nowadays because it differs from the standard format that we’ve always seen on Today, Sunrise, Breakfast and Wake Up.
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*Liz Hayes. Tracy didn’t join Steve on the show until Late 1996, when Liz moved onto 60 Minutes.
Nonetheless, that incarnation of Good Morning Australia was certainly a lot zippier and modern than Today seemed to be around the same time period. That clip also proves that Tim Bailey is far better on breakfast TV than as a forecaster on an early evening Sydney news bulletin!
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Don’t know if this has been posted, but a bit of a history of AMV4 Albury from the local historical society:
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Pages 5 and 6 from said newsletter is literally just a copy and paste from my site - but they didn’t see the need to acknowledge that, but ironically included the sources that I had referenced! 
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The facebook page “Disappearing Albury-Wodonga Region” has lots of clips of AMV4 dating back to the early 1980s.
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Thanks for the heads-up! Found the RVN-AMV closedown, complete with pages from 7Text!
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Media Watch reporting on the first Keating/Hawke challenge in July 1991.
Courtesy of Malcolm Farnsworth.
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