One consideration was that the lower channels or frequencies travel further which would be useful for the government station to reach everywhere. It didn’t matter if there was overlap of signals.
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Tokyo had both a national broadcaster and private commercial television service launch in 1953. NHK in January and NTV in August.
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An interesting point about the lower channel assignments. There were exceptions such as commercial stations RVN2 in Wagga Wagga (vs ABMN0) and AMV4 Albury (vs ABAV1).
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Can anyone identify this panel show that aired presumably on the ABC where they are talking about Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen?
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I’m guessing it’s a panel discussion on Four Corners, with host Andrew Olle.
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Agree Four Corners, where they appear to be holding copies of the Fitzgerald Report (red cover) released on 3 July 1989. Chris Masters on the panel did the original 4 Corners Moonlight State report.
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It’s worth noting the original Channel 4 and 5 frequencies were different pre-1962:
Channel 4 was 132-139 MHz, then became 94-101 MHz
Channel 5 was 139-146 MHz, then became 101-108 MHz
Channel 5A was 137-144 MHz, and ABWN-5A Illawarra was the first to use it from 1963 (and only one to use it for a long time). So an older TV with a 1-10 dial could get 5A, but not 4-5 after that time.
Worth noting that the ABCB were looking at broadcasting FM Radio on UHF with the VHF-FM band used by TV stations.
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that would have been a balls up, although what they ended up doing by putting the FM radio band across TV channels 3, 4 and 5 was almost as bad.
there were ads at the time targetting Wollongong residents that if they had an older TV set (for viewing Sydney channels) they may need re-tuning to be able to receive their new local Channels 4/5a.
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that would have been a balls up, although what they ended up doing by putting the FM radio band across TV channels 3, 4 and 5 was almost as bad.
In the mid-1960s the ABCB were also investigating FM radio and UHF-TV being broadcast via Satellite too. Would’ve only worked with circular polarisation and unique-to-Australia radios.
Intriguingly, the Soviets ran a large footprint UHF-TV service on 714 MHz over Siberia from 1976 to 2009 (Ekran system).
I’ve pondered how such a system would’ve gone in Australia (especially for ABC-TV), along with Sirius/XM Satellite radio.
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I remember seeing a pre-1959 TV set with dials going up to Channel 12. Some post-1959 sets not only has channels 0 and 5a, but another channel at the top of the dial marked as * (an asterisk). The only Channel 12 in Australia I knew then was the fictional TV station on The Box.
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A lot of old TV sets had asterisks (or dots) for any spare spots on the dial. (My brother used to call the asterisk channel “Channel Star” because I guess he didn’t know what an asterisk was!) When I was young we had an old 1960ish TV set which dad had rescued from going to the tip and we kept it as a spare TV. The dial just had channels 1 to 10 and three “spare” channels that were just dots on the dial. Channel 1 on the dial was re-tuned to receive Channel 0.
At primary school they also had an old TV set that had the dial go up to 12. It wasn’t until many years later that I realised 12 didn’t exist as a channel number so it must have just been a placeholder for the spare channel on the dial instead of using an asterisk.
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There were some Analogue TV stations on channel 12 too, but all in the latter days of Analogue. i.e. SBS-12 Cobar.
Channel 12 was also listed as a spare 6th analogue channel in several markets too, such as Swan Hill/Goschen - i.e. 2, 10, 12, 44, 47, 50.
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yep. Channels 9A and 12 were late additions.
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Whatever happened to Ten’s Live Eye Unit that used to feature on Good Morning Australia back in the 1980s before it became a mid-morning infomercial spaceship
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Pretty sure it was still being used about 12 years ago. Ten Melbourne had one of these OB units based at Como South Yarra in the 2000s. When broadcasting it would raise its telescopic mast-mounted microwave antenna and aim it at either 101 Collins St or Mt Dandenong for the link.
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Not sure if any microwave link trucks are still in use with any network today. Mostly 5G or the occasional satellite link.
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They still use microwave links where they can.
5G can be risky as telephony takes priority over data. If your news event draws a crowd of people using their phones the news crew can lose their link.
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First world problems.
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True, but in Queensland there aren’t any microwave trucks left. I can’t speak for other parts.
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