Remember when WIN produced their own telemovie in Wollongong and Toronto, Canada? Guess what I found today.
Last Chance was released in 1986 as a co-production between WIN (as WINFOUR Productions, copyright to WIN TV Enterprises Pty. Ltd.) and a company called Emmeritus Productions (who had a history of producing some craptastic made for TV movies apparently). Aired on CHCH-TV Hamilton (then a major independent station and program distributor, seen in many places via satellite and cable) as well as our friends on Channel 4.
You’d think given Bruce’s involvement with Paramount that he would get them on board somehow.
Forgive me if this has been brought up before. But was there ever any consideration to the idea of the Central Coast getting it’s own TV Station? Or was it decided that because they were sandwitched between Newcastle and Sydney that their TV channel access was adequate?
I know NBN had a UHF relay back in the day on Channel 40 but channel 3 could easily be picked up too. A friend of my Dad’s use to live at Kariong and got Channel 3 like it was local.
… meant that when he was flying around the world selling their programs he would do these little side deals for WIN as well, it’s how I got to meet (on the phone) this Italian bloke who I believe became quite famous in later years, Silvio Berlusconi …
I dunno for sure about “ever”, but one of the main sources of the early thinking on television planning is the 1957 ABCB Report’s provisional channel plan.
Gosford is only mentioned as rural grade coverage from the Newcastle service, and I assume by the time they’d reconsider you already had NBN staking their claim.
Those population figures in 1957 really show a very different time in Australia.
I found it interesting that they had originally split out the Wide Bay and Bundaberg into two separate licence areas. If they had gone ahead with that Bundaberg would have had access to rural grade coverage from Maryborough and had 4 channels from the get go. Instead they amalgamated them into a wider Wide Bay region with 2 channels.
And Geelong was going to have two stations of its own while Hobart and Perth were going to have four each like the other state capitals. In the end, Geelong got none and only got Melbourne repeaters on UHF much later on, while Perth only had 3 until 1988 and Hobart only had two until aggregation.
Yes I did notice that about Hobart. I always forget that Adelaide was bigger than Perth then too.
It was clear that the original plan for Wide Bay was transmission from somewhere other than Mt Goonanamen. That would be the only way to get coverage of both Maryborough and Gympie on the same channel. I assume the Bundaberg one might have been planned for the Hummock, given only rural grade coverage for Childers. Very interesting indeed.
Blue Mountains getting their own TV station…I live in one of the towns listed in the urban coverage, and I suspect the programming would be kind of…well…inbred?
After checking that list and seeing all those channels and transmission power, within my area if that plan went through, you would have signals on Every Channel with the exception of Channel 3. Illawarra on Channels 1, 5 assuming it would be from Knights Hill would obviously be the strongest, Goulburn on 6 and 8 would be good-strong at that power as well as good signals from Channel 4 Katoomba/Western Sydney. Of course you would still have the four Sydney TV Channels. Thank goodness they did not go with this plan otherwise during tropo openings, it would had been a complete mess.
I dunno if you can assume licence areas, but I suppose they look a lot closer to the radio markets rather than the TV ones we eventually got. I guess it might have come more from the issues of trying to pack that all in to the 10 channels they had to work with at the time - lower powered services closer together would really have been the only way to make it work.
Certainly a lot looks like it was done before coverage patterns were well established - Sunbury and Healesville as the core coverage of Melbourne TV, but Geelong and Bacchus Marsh being ‘rural’ grade, suggests they kinda just drew circles, without knowing just how much impact terrain would have.
They also seemingly thought Brisbane would be enough to cover both Gold and Sunshine Coasts - though it’s very weird seeing just ‘Southport’ mentioned - it really is a radically different population distribution now.
Wow, when I think of Laurie Stone I think also of Garry McDonald, 2 brilliant composers for Crawfords such as The Flying Doctors and The Henderson Kids along with TVQ0’s Stand Up Andd Tell 'em in 1986 to name just 3. Their themes always hit the chord perfectly. I listen to them often as they take you back to a time and a place without physically going there! Heard around the world.
