So basically then all other areas get 4 channels but Bendigo would get 2?
Bendigo would have 3: ABC, Southern Cross, SBS. Possibly Gippsland as the other SCN market would have followed this model, too. But it seems to have only been a wish-list from SCN and hoping that aggregation would fall over, and if it did, who knows what would have happened elsewhere.
Well at least Bendigo got aggregated like the other markets and not left out. They wouldn’t be able to relay SBS when the other markets got aggregated as SBS launched in Regional VIC when aggregation started.
Though you could take “aggregation using only two stations instead of three” to mean doing Tasmania style aggregation of combining two markets to make smaller but more viable station groupings.
It would have advantaged SCN a lot given in Victoria that would have been a VTV/BCV market and a AMV/GLV one - though in that circumstance maybe they’d have to have been a Seven/Ten in the West and a Nine/Ten affiliate in the East of the state, given Vic and Prime already had deals.
My other reading from “networking with the established stations in other areas” would be similar, but that they’d control the out of area market station - so say if SCN wanted to be a Nine/Ten affiliate, they could ‘aggregate’ with AMV and network a feed of that in to their market but control/split the advertising? Something vaguely similar happened with MTN’s AMN service, which was “networked” from Prime, but under their control.
If they only needed to find one additional frequency, that might have made more VHF possible than the three channel plans as well.
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I remember in early 1990 seeing on NRTV a fairly aggressive anti-aggregation ad campaign. After aggregation, when phone competition arrived and Australians had to choose between Telstra and Optus for their default long distance carrier, the Lismore aera had the highest result for Optus.
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I wonder if NRTV used a variation of this ad that aired on BTV6. I can imagine various stations just put in their own presenter inserts around the generic footage/jingle?
Source: Australian Television Archive
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Just a few selected at random…
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After GLV moved from 10 to 8.
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Whose logo was the 8-10 one?
It looks like it should be a New Zealand one!
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No, the NRTV one I saw was negative, not feel-good like this one.
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GLV10 and BCV8
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What always got me about this logo is that it should have been 8 on top and 11 on bottom to reflect RTN8 was the northern transmitter and NRN11 was the southern transmitter.
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Yes and no, I always thought 11-8 rolled off the tongue better than 8-11, and the latter sounded a bit too close to the name of a convenience store.
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TNQ-7 and FNQ-10 at one point used this logo.
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FNQ … frequently heard south of the border during State Of Origin times…
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You are right, 11-8 rolls off the tongue better.
I was going to ask if anyone had heard of the name of that convenience store back when the 11-8 name was in use. Very shocked to see the 7-11 brand was in use in Australia in 1977. I recall it from American TV and cinema but don’t think I saw one of those stores pop up near me until the 1990s.
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I just guessed that 11 came first because it was possibly the larger of the two markets so potentially the bigger of the 2 companies that merged to form 11-8.
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9-8 Television, a merge of NEN-9 Tamworth and ECN-8 Taree. This would be ECN’s second attempt after its short-lived merge with NRN-11 ended in 1969.
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