Yes, Prime and Southern Cross were rather tardy in ordering equipment. Main suppliers for transmitters were NEC (Japan/Australia) and Harris (USA). And RF Industries were flat out constructing antenna arrays IIRC.
Plus there was all the microwave links and playout infrastructure required. This was in the days of large LMS arrays and Betacam SP and D2 tape machines. HDD Video servers were about 10 years away from widespread adoption…
Discovered this YouTube channel which has recently uploaded quite a few clips from the Saturday Morning Fun Show. (Southern Cross Launceston 89-93)
A bit of nostalgia from for an 80s kid who grew up on the north west coast. This clip highlights the main regular segments: Ballmania, Birthday Book, No Knowledge Required, Joke of the Week and credits with the full theme.
YouTube: @funshowguy
Looks quite professional and a good show. What a pity rural stations don’t produce their own content any more.
Prior to the formulation of television aggregation, plans for a 2nd independent commercial TV station in Newcastle were being canvassed in March 1984.
Not mentioned in the article, but I do recall hearing that VHF 0 would be used for it if it were to eventuate.
(from the ‘Newcastle Herald’)
Since there is no specific RTS 5a pres thread…
check out this alternate RTS 5a logo - with “Riverland Television” in the box.
source: https://archive.org/details/clipsal-baseball-partial-sign-off-rts-5a-07-02-88
A look back at RVN-2 Wagga’s news production from 1964.
Another look back at RVN2, this time from Museum Riverina on YouTube:
A look back at the NBN3 newsroom circa 1971! Big hair, typewriters, ashtrays, film cameras, rotary dial phones… and Murray Finlay 
In 1971, NBN’s news was a 35-minute bulletin starting at 6:25pm – hence the countdown clock on one of the monitors showing “6:25” before the opening shot of the news.
YouTube: David Threlfo
I read recently that their 1 hour bulletin only started in 1972, so I had been meaning to make a trip to the local library to see what existed before that, but looks like you’ve beaten me to it!
A question about the regional TV stations prior to aggregation: did they purchase UK and US imports independently of the metro networks? I’ve noticed that stations like WIN-4 and NBN-3 often showed episodes of Dallas and Dynasty, for example, before they were shown in Sydney or Melbourne.
They did - they had a company called Australian Television Facilities (later Regional Television Australia) that purchased rights to shows on behalf of their member stations. It was based in Marrickville just up the road from where I used to work.
Some of them did buy shows independetly of ATF and the networks, but I don’t think it was a regular thing. Don’t know about those shows you mentioned.
Yep! Tas TV made the bold claim that they had gone out and bought Allo Allo for screening in Tasmania before any of the metropolitan or mainland networks had touched it. Finger on the pulse, Tas TV!
The US talk show Donahue was picked up by WIN4 for screening in the early 1980s before it ended up getting picked up by the Seven Network. WIN was apparently the first station outside of the US or Canada to buy the show.
I seem to recall that the sci fi series Buck Rogers In The 25th Century was bought/screened on regional stations before it began on Nine in the cities. That may have been an ATF purchase?
'Allo 'Allo Tassie! Tas TV…says 'Allo!
Who thought Donahue was a good buy for WIN4? Did Bruce have good relations with Multimedia at the time? We know Bruce wasn’t permitted to deal directly with his Paramount bosses for shows from them (conflict of interest).
Sounds like it. Sci fi isn’t a huge thing on Australian TV, and ATF may have gotten it on the cheap?
WIN kept screening Star Trek at random times.
Also I did hear an early claim that Married With Children was screening on DDQ0/SDQ4 (on air as Vision TV) and NRN11/RTN8 before the metros in 1989. I wasn’t sure how true the claim was given that TVQ10 was at that point under common ownership with DDQ0/SDQ4.
When I was on holiday in the Gold Coast in the summer of 1985/86 I remember seeing some US shows that I hadn’t seen in Melbourne.
One of them was pretty out there. It featured a woman doctor who always seemed to start performing operations, like one after the other. I only ever saw that once.
Was that show called Kay O’Brien?
And IIRC 1987-88 US drama series The Bronx Zoo was airing on NBN3 Newcastle a full year before 10 picked it up during their “10 TV Australia” phase in mid-late 1989.
It appears that Ten actually bought the show in 1987 but sat on it for two years before getting around to showing it. If NBN had it in 1988 they might have picked it up from Ten but put it to air before Ten did.
Sydney Morning Herald: The Sydney Morning Herald - Google News Archive Search
NBN were showing Not The Nine O’Clock News in the early 80s
It was on HSV7 Melbourne in 1981 and 1982.
