Thanks to @TelevisionAU - yes, in Rockhampton and Townsville.
https://televisionau.com/2022/07/tv-at-60-tv-comes-to-regional-queensland.html
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Sadly, Michael Faulkner only just very recently passed away. Vale to a good man!
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In Victoria, Southern Cross TV8 campaigned heavily against aggregation. They wanted multichannel instead.
at one stage they even proposed footing the bill to allow SBS to extend into Bendigo in place of aggregation. That was never going to fly.
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Probably because they knew they had the 10 affilation and crappier programs.
NBN didn’t want it because they had a monopoly in the biggest regional market.
Didn’t WIN put conditions on their support or opposition dependent on staying on channel 4 or moving off channel 4 to UHF?
Ahhhh yes, the slow expansion of SBS into regional areas. We didn’t get it until the 2000s.
I recall NBN proposing to “provide assistance” in getting SBS installed in those parts of it’s viewing that didn’t already have it in lieu of aggregation, in addition to offering a 2nd channel. They didn’t say anything about paying for SBS though.
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both Southern Cross and VIC TV were hopeful of scoring the Nine affiliation, as neither had any established ownership or affiliation partner, but when VIC TV’s owner ENT bought STV8 from Bond Media, they struck an affiliation deal at the same time for the future aggregated market. Southern Cross naturally disappointed as they already had a large chunk of their schedule devoted to Nine Network programming but had no other option but to align with Ten.
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NBN had been chasing a 2nd channel for years. At one stage they wanted to do over the air pay TV like SelecTV did in the US in the 80s - free to air for some parts of the day, and scrambled in others.
Why it took the feds and SBS that long to expand a taxpayer funded channel is beyond me.
Very clever - did ENT own ABS at the time?
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My memory is very patchy but I think ABS was disbanded at that point, with ENT (TVT6) buying GMV6 and BTV6 and then buying STV8 from Alan Bond (who owned Nine at that point).
I am not sure if ENT had any interests in the former ABS radio stations (e.g. 3SR, 3YB, 3UL) or if they had been bought up by someone else.
There’s a bit of a timeline of aquisitions and sales by ENT Ltd in the “The rise and fall of Edmund Rouse” a paper by Stephen Tanner.
ENT Ltd used the $40 million from the sale of TNT9 towards the purchase of Associated Broadcasting Services Ltd in Victoria for $76 million (ENT Ltd 1988, p.2). This purchase gave ENT Ltd two new television stations — BTV6 in Ballarat and GMV6 in the Goulbourn Valley, now known as VIC TV — as well as a 40 per cent interest in Filmpac Holdings Ltd, a distributor of motion picture programs and home videos in Australia, South-East Asia and New Zealand (ENT Ltd 1988). It also acquired two Victorian radio stations — 3SR and 3UL — with the purchase but on-sold those for $9.5 million (ENT Ltd 1988, p.2.).
…
Whilst embarking on a sell-off of non-core assets, the company had also increased its television interests. It purchased STV Mildura for $18 million in 1989, and a 20 per cent stake in Perth’s Sunraysia Television in 1994.
If you haven’t read the full thing before, it’s quite an interesting read about ENT and Rouse.
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In Victoria, Southern Cross TV8 campaigned heavily against aggregation. They wanted multichannel instead.
So did the Six Network/VIC TV. They also wanted multichannel. BTV and GMV put ads in their respective local newspapers preferring multichannel to three-owner aggregation.
most regional stations opposed it. Even the Prime stations at first although I think once aggregation became inevitable they took on a more positive tone.
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Prime were pro-aggregation because they wanted and got the Seven affiliation in 1987.
Wasn’t there a one in three rule, where if one station in an assigned regional market, those stations in opposition in that market had to participate eg allow other players to move to their market.
Theoretically though I assume that if say TNQ7 (as Ten affiliate) could have opted out of the Mackay market. I use this theoretical situation given the early view that Mackay was a smaller market than Townsville/Cairns and Rockhampton in QLD
There was the one-in-three rule, but it dictated that if any one out of the three operators in an approved market (AM) decided to go ahead with aggregation, then the other two were obliged to follow. So your Mackay example would not have worked, as long as any one of the three network operators (e.g. TNQ/FNQ, DDQ/RTQ, STQ) wanted to proceed with aggregation across the whole market, then the other two had to follow. AFAIK they could not pick and choose which sub-markets they entered into with an AM, it was ‘all’ by default.
The regional networks argued that the one-in-three rule was undemocratic and allowed rule by a minority.
I have not heard of this rule before, but it made me wonder what would have happened if all three operators in that market was opposed to it? Would they have all been permitted to go the MCS route instead?
Perhaps it was just fortunate for the ABT that at least one operator in each was in favour of it, and that they wouldn’t have wanted different set ups in different areas.
potentially, yes.
Yes, although MCS was only intended as an interim measure, anyway, as a staged method to introduce aggregation. The end result would probably have been much the same as what we ended up with anyway.
Agree, and would have cost the stations more to implement MCS then aggregation, rather than just go aggregation straight up.
I did not know this, but apparently WIN (TWT) tried to buy some Channel 7 stations back in 1986. It was only in this article that I discovered what TWT stood for (Television Wollongong Transmissions - an odd name at that.. I feel like the acronym is missing an A or an I!).
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Seymour Is In the Shepparton TV licence area, so the ABA would have flatly rejected this proposal.
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