Long before Sky News Australia and a proposed pay-TV news channel by the ABC and Fairfax, there was a news channel broadcast to hotels and businesses known as Newsvision -
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I remember reading about something like this in the early 90’s. Was it a single channel or a multi channel pay TV service?
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It was a microwave-transmission based single channel run by Steve Cosser of Broadcom
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Does anyone remember Primac Tele-Auctions in the 1980s? I found some rare footage of it
And also this
And this article
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An interesting article on the negotiations between the Nth NSW stations over agreed TV ratings survey dates ahead of the very first survey for Nth NSW aggregation in 1992.
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The first TV ratings survey after the debut of Prime Local News in Newcastle in 1993.
Suffice to say, Prime didn’t make much impact here. But what stood out to me here is the “Other” figure (which would be mostly Sydney/Brisbane overlap plus SBS).
For the Newcastle market, the combined Sydney impact is probably really far all that far short of Prime/NRTV’s totals! Not listed in this article, but I recall another article that showed during 1992, the split of the Sydney share was 14% for ATN-7, 6% for TCN-9 and 3% for TEN-10. Not sure how SBS rated back then.
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NBN News had a 30 year head start so Prime were behind the 8 ball from the get go. Probably why NRTV didn’t really bother and their news bulletins still focused on the Coffs Harbour and the far north region.
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Agree, and NBN had the big advantage of being on VHF, compared to the harder to receive UHF signal.
Probably little wonder why NBN took the ABT to court to fight to stay on VHF-3 (and won) when the ABT tried to clear VHF 3-5 to make room for FM radio expansion from the late 70s to early 90s.
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The high “Other” ratings for Northern NSW would surely include the Brisbane channels from Mt Tambourine in the Gold Coast portion of that market?
I was always found it odd they got 8 channels after aggregation. Waste of RF spectrum IMHO.
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It would’ve been interesting to see a comparison between the numbers watching the ABC on ABHN-5a vs. its UHF simulcast.
I’m frankly amazed they kept it going until 2013 given it was only mono audio and prone to RF noise.
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It was the same on the Central Coast too, with all three Sydney stationa being relayed alongside Prime and NBN. Only Wyong also got NRTV though.
As for ABC 5A in Newcastle, I think the ABC said they would keep that for as long as NBN was on 3. The UHF transmitter was probably installed on an assumption NBN was going to have to move to UHF, which of course never happened in the analogue era
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Forgive me for asking as a non-Novocastrian, but was there that a considerable difference in reception for Channel 3 vs the UHFs? I know Newcastle is quite hilly which upsets UHF a bit more, but was it that pronounced a difference? Clearly NBN thought so
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In some areas - Yes. But mostly dealt with in-fill low powered translators.
Tasmania managed to turn off ABNT-3 after simulcasting for just a few years.
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I found that, the further you were from the Sugarloaf TX site, the harder it was to get a decent UHF picture. It wasn’t just hills that killed it, trees hindered reception too.
As for the ABC, UHF had a better picture / image quality as long as you had line of sight. 5A always looked washed out for some reason, even with no snow or ghosting. NBN-3 didn’t have that issue.
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I think NBN installed a new Channel 3 transmitter and refurbished their VHF array around 2000 iirc.
I guess the ABC didn’t bother and soldiered on with their 1976 unit. Reflections off adjacent TV towers and hills can create issues with washout too.
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The washed out look was evident even in the late 80s and no hills impacting on reception.
I wonder if the 5A TX was just a poor quality one?
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Channel 3 went just about everywhere. If you lived in a ditch (plenty of those around Newcastle), NBN3 was rock solid. You’d get ghosting but a strong signal. 5A was not as good but still very watchable. UHF? Forget it. You’d be watching shows in a blizzard. It’s easy to see why NBN didn’t want to go to UHF. Even now, there are a few translators around suburban Newcastle because of the hills issue.
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Speaking of 5A, did RTS have trouble with that frequency?
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Yes, with digital, there are now 5 translators in the Lower Hunter whereas analogue only had 2 translators since digital is “all or nothing” compared to analogue being “snowy/ghosty but somewhat watchable”.
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