He went on to read the news at ABC in Adelaide and was also signed to replace David Johnston at Ten News in Melbourne at the end of 1995 but his appointment got quashed by management when news director Carmel Travers was shown the door. He went overseas and, it looks like, it all worked out well
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Hi, I just found this group. I have a few things to add so I’ll start off with long distance TV.
In January 1979 we went to Lakes Entrance for a holiday. On the TV at the motel where we stayed, we could pick up Channel 9 from Melbourne reliably overnight and early in the morning. The picture was snowy but would be in colour whenever there was advertising (overnight movies were black and white but the advertising was colour). That would continue until TNT9 Launceston came on the air. Sometimes we could see TNT9 quite well, better than GTV( Melbourne, and in colour, but most times it was unwatchable, presumably because GTV9 and TNT9 interfered with each other.
I also picked up a station on Channel 0 and a few other low channel numbers that had a test pattern and said something like Channel 1, 2, 3 etc. That didn’t make sense as it was on Channel 0, but I didn’t realise that it was probably TVNZ! The thing was, the signal was steady, i.e. it wasn’t fading on or out, though it may have been in black’n’white, not sure, and I can’t remember if there was any sound. Also it wasn’t there all the time but it was there on many occasions.
On the afternoon of the Thursday or Friday, January 18 or 19, at one point I picked up a station on every VHF channel position, either a local channel (which was 4 & 10), or an adjacent channel with bleed-through (or whatever you call it) from the local channel, or a distant channel.
On the other hand, on the first night we were there, GLV10 faded out occasionally.
One thing you should know about Lakes Entrance. In those days, there were no local translators. The motel received TV from ABLV4 & GLV10 Latrobe Valley, presumably at Mt Tassie - some 138 Km away to the west! The picture was very good, like a local channel, except for the first night.
On January 20 1980, exactly a year after we went back home from our holiday, GLV10 would move to GLV8 to allow ATV0 Melbourne to move to channel 10, and at some point, either then or later, Lakes Entrance got its own translator on Channel 11. A few days beforehand, I tuned our TV in Melbourne to channel 10 in anticipation of Channel 0 moving there, and picked up GLV10 though it was very weak. This was with a rooftop antenna.
Here in Melbourne I picked up TVNZ & BTQ0 on Channel 0 on certain summer days after ATV0 moved to channel 10. They would fade in and out, be mostly black and white although there would be occasional flashes of colour, but would be just as good on a TV with an indoor telescopic antenna as a TV connected to the rooftop antenna which faced East.
Post aggregation I also picked up RTQ0 from Darling Downs and ABMN0 from Wagga Wagga, also ASQ1 from Southern Downs and ABC 1 either from Bendigo, Albury or Orange. This was on an rooftop antenna but with poor reception on all channels, but especially on ABC2.
There were also a few occasions when I’d see CCI on GTV9. I assumed that it was coming from TNT9.
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As a capital city person, one of the best memories I have of regional TV before aggregation was going to the Gold Coast for holidays. There, the apartment where we stayed picked up all 5 Brisbane channels (ABC, SBS, 7, 9 and 0), as well as NRTV via RTN8 Richmond/Tweed from Mount Nardi. I believe that many people in the Gold Coast would do likewise, especially since there were local UHF translators for all of these.
In those days, NRTV had almost completely different programming from the capital city commercial stations. Not only that, but NSW was on daylight saving time and Queensland was not, so you’d see some good programs an hour earlier than you otherwise would. Not only that, but they didn’t seem to follow the silly season tradition of putting on second rate programs over the summer holidays, so there were some pretty good programs on there, including some that I hadn’t seen in Melbourne.
Fun fact: Although the Gold Coast had UHF translators for all 5 Brisbane stations + RTN8, the apartment carried all the channels on their main transmitter frequency on their in-building cabling (e.g. 0, 2, 9), except SBS which was on channel 7, and they put Channel 7 on channel 3 for some reason. I can’t remember if they put RTN8 on channel 8 or 11.
EDIT: RTN8 was on channel 3 and BTQ7 was on channel 4.
In January 1990, when I watched NRTV for the last time before aggregation, they were dead set against aggregation. They ran some aggressively anti-aggregation commercials, but they also put on some better than average movies to prove it. I always wondered if this had something to do with why Lismore residents switched to Optus in the Telstra vs Optus ballot around 1993 way more than anywhere else in Australia (prior to that, Telstra had a monopoly on long distance calls).
After that when I visited the Gold Coast, NRTV was joined by NBN and NEN and they just became clones of the capital city stations, carrying mostly the same programs at mostly the same time. The Gold Coast translators even adjusted for no daylight saving time and had Queensland news bulletins, etc. Sometimes they’d show different programs or different episodes of the same programs.
People in Northern NSW got two extra commercial channels and more choice, but people in the Gold Coast lost some choice.
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Another thing that I forgot to mention in my earlier post: My mum grew up on a farm near Cressy (between Ballarat & Colac) so naturally during her childhood they only had ABC & BTV6. What was interesting was that their neighbours were able to afford to install I believe a taller antenna which allowed them to pick up ATV0. Mum’s family always enjoyed going to visit as they could watch other programs that the 2 local stations didn’t offer. My 21st century equivalent to this is visiting my sister who has Netflix. To this day, Mum still insists that there were more good programs worth watching on their 2 channels in the 60’s and 70’s than there are now on our 20 or so channels.
As for dad, his family grew up near Warrnambool. Prior to the local translator being set up, they needed a tall antenna to get BTV6 from Lookout Hill.
We often like to watch Ballarat channels when we can from Geelong. There’s something about regional ads that just seems refreshing. I guess for my parents it’s nostalgic to see advertisements for tractors and what not, it also reminds me of spending time at my grandparent’s farm (who still live near Cressy).
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Mt Tamborine carried NRTV (with Gold Coast commercials and some local programming) from 1983 so there was no need to rebroadcast from Mt Nardi, although many Southern GC homes and accommodation probably did point towards Nardi until they saw their own translator at Currumbin in the early 90s.
Also Daylight Savings trials in Queensland in the early 90s made the programming the same time as NSW/VIC.
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A lot of high rise MATV systems could only carry VHF signals. They would receive the signal off air and retransmit it through the cabling. That continued even when NBN and NEN came along. They were also transmitted through the cabling. Sometimes there was tourist TV on a channel as well. It wasn’t an ideal solution because older TV struggled with adjacent channels. However people in the area were used to having channels on 6, 7, 8 and 9 with varying degrees of reception quality depending on location and antenna set up.
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Correction: RTN8 was on channel 3, BTQ7 was on channel 4 and SBS28 was on 7.
I was there in 1985 and 1986 and saw on the land side of the highway from the airport to Surfers Paradise a lot of houses with high (and I mean really high) antenna masts on the roof or next to the house on a tower. I wondered whether it’s because Brisbane was a long way away (and Mt Nardi) or because of the high rise apartment buildings closer to the coast. Many places may have still used the main VHF transmitters at that time.
Given the unusually good audio quality of the QTQ9 news theme on the TV in the apartment where I stayed, even when compared to the same model TV in Melbourne (with GTV9 news theme), I assumed that the apartment building we were staying at was receiving the signal from Brisbane, where the QTQ9 TV studio was near the transmitter at Mt. Coot-Tha, unlike Melbourne which I assumed involved a 30 Km microwave link from Richmond (inner Melbourne) to Mt. Dandenong.
You mean no need to receive from Mt. Nardi. Mt. Nardi is still in use for residents south of the border.
Good point.
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I presume the Mt Tamborine translator for RTN8 (pre-aggregation) ran as a direct translator, meaning it was on the same timezone as Mt Nardi (i.e. NSW daylight saving time)? That would have been different to QLD which only had daylight saving for three summers from late 1989 to early 1992.
I know it’s been discussed here before but NBN (I think) tried the practice later on of broadcasting on NSW time from Mt Tamborine until the ABA pulled them up about broadcasting M-rated programming at 7:30pm local time, after which the practice stopped. That might have been early 2000s or so?
And yes, there are still some legacy aerials around the older parts of the Gold Coast with the VHF antennas pointing both to Brisbane and to Lismore. I doubt any would have been used for some time now, though even into the 2000s I knew people who would brag about getting NSW TV on the coast so they could watch their shows an hour early (or catch them on delay locally if they missed them).
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It was Prime that got pulled up by the ABA for airing “Pulp Fiction” at 7.30pm QLD time. That was in late 1997 I think. It was the catalyst for the legal requirement for Nth NSW stations to start delaying DST programming into QLD.
NBN had started their DST delays in 1996, but only because Channel 9 complained that it was costing them viewers.
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By a quirk of fortuitous reception, Parkes NSW could receive RVN2 whereas neighbouring towns couldn’t. In the 70s and 80s most residents had a vertical antenna to pick up CBN8 and ABCN1 and a horizontal antenna to pick up RVN2. The two commercial stations ran 7 National News at the same time but had a lot of different programming so it gave us a bit more choice until the mid 80s when they formed the nucleus of the Prime Network and adopted essentially the same programming. We had to wait until 1990 to get WIN and Capital, a year after Canberra and Wollongong got the additional stations.
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How do the NNSW networks delay their feed into the GC during DST? I presume they actually delay the feed via recording/playback software, or work (mainly) off the Brisbane feeds with local ads? They would also have to air a filler and drop a show at the start and end of DST (though schedules tend to allow for that as it’s done for Brisbane/RQLD).
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When i was up there in the late 90s, Prime and Ten took the Brisbane feeds as they were in sync.
NBN used a tape delay however and they ran different programs to QTQ to accommodate for live sports eg “The Wackiest Ship In The Army” at 5pm QLD time at the end of the cricket. I think NBN ran separate promos for live sport with the QLD time too, rather than just add on the AEDST text that Prime did.
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Here are some coverage maps I have generated of the pre-aggregation VHF Win 4, NBN3, and Newcastle and Wollongong 5A.
The first coverage map is WiN 4, 200KW from Knights Hill.
Look how extensive the coverage was across Sydney, with most areas other than the Northern Beaches having Suburban or Rural Grade coverage. No wonder Rupert Murdoch was considering the option of targeting Sydney viewers. If you had the right setup in Sydney back in the time WIN4 would have been very easy to receive.
NBN3 Newcastle 100KW from Mt Sugarloaf
Was pretty much restricted to the Northern Beaches, but the community radio stations on 88.1-92.1 made it almost impossible to receive the picture and sound together. Audio was the community radio stations. The left audio channel on fm 91.75 was receivable in Sydney in normal condition, but the right audio channel on fm 92.0 was only receivable with tropo.
ABC 5A Newcastle and Wollongong
Like WIN4 ABC5A Wollongong was receivable across most of Sydney with ABC5A Newcastle and Wollongong most likely co-channeling around Hornsby Heights and the Hills districts in normal conditions.
I remember the old co-channel interference with the horizontal lines across the screen particularly bad with tropo in Summer and Spring.
You would have thought ABA / ACMA would have learned about co-channel interference issue between Newcastle and Wollongong back in the analogue pre-aggregation days??
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How did you manage to do the 5A coverage? Whenever I tried to do it in the Nautel tool, it wouldnt let me. Something about invalid frequency.
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As it would not accept 5A I just did channel 5 which is 104.5, I assume there would not be a lot of difference in the coverage between 5 and 5A.
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These are really interesting! Thanks Ant.
I wonder how accurate the fringe areas are? Based on these maps, it would be interesting to see what reception you could get in Lithgow. I still think it’s fascinating that Hampton can get better Wollongong reception that what it can from the central west.
I do remember that there was reports of WiN4 reception into Lithgow but assuming it would have been tropo. In the higher locations around Clarence and Hampton it would have been permanent. Hampton has excellent LOS to the south, Sydney and the Illawarra fm stations come in very well there.
@Mechsta said the antennas for both WIN 4 and ABC 5A were directional at Knights Hill so I wonder if they were setup in a similar way to they are now, Win 4 at 200kW north / South and 100KW East / West. ABC 5A 100KW North / South and 50KW East / West???
The current Illawarra Digital TV UHF are 250KW North / South, and 125KW East / West
The coverage maps I generated for WIN4 and ABC5A Wollongong are omnidirectional so the coverage will be greater then what it was, not knowing the full specs.
Newcastle both being omnidirectional should be pretty close to what is was.
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The only regional ABC TV studios I am aware of were Rockhampton and Townsville in the late 60’s. Being they were established with local continuity before the PMG TV bearer from ABC Brisbane reached those areas a few years later. And when the bearer arrived, TV production continued in those centres with the local 6.55pm Regional News weeknights and some local current affairs programming when they would breakaway from ABC Brisbane. That was cut in the mid 80’s when the ABC went to state based Aussat transmission to regional areas moving off the costly Telecom TV bearers. The ABC Rockhampton TV studio is long gone, with the ABC Townsville TV having been mothballed for many years, but still used as a designated cyclone shelter for ABC Townsville staff.
ABC TV Launceston may have been another long established studio mostly for 2 ways, but not production of stand alone programming.
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Didn’t they separate when RVN started aggregation before AMV still carried a limited mix of 9, 10, but mostly 7 when they aggregated some time later?
How did Rocky and Townsville receive their programming before the TV bearer from Brisbane was set up? And what exactly is a “TV bearer”?
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