I seem to recall Ten airing movies or shows like Monk during the 2000s / early 2010s in Sydney and Brisbane during the AFL season on Saturday nights (I’d imagine this was when AFL was shown late at night because the Swans and Lions weren’t playing)
Not necessarily, they also aired Monk prior to the 7:30 delayed telecast for a home game with Before The Game airing about 1am (or sometimes not at all).
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Ah, yes. And the afternoon AFL , national 5pm weekend news, Sports Tonight and Simpsons before that?
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In Melbourne, they wouldn’t get that, as afternoon AFL was usually delayed. Instead, Adelaide’s George Donikian (but based at ATV Como) would present a special local 6pm bulletin, followed by BTG at 6:30pm and live AFL at 7 or 7:30pm, with The Fifth Quarter at 10:30 or 11pm and then a late movie.
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In Brisbane we were getting Saturday night AFL on Ten every week live or near live from the mid 00’s. Sydney was quite a few years later, but defs had it before 10 lost the rights.
Edit: From the Wayback machine. Rd 2, 2007
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I know this is an old post, but I remember being at the Fox Footy studios in Southbank around 2005 and I was sitting in the promo suite while they were cutting their promos and remember watching them cut 6 different promos for each state + 1 generic feed
Their version of the master control room was also interesting, with 6 TV’s showing the 6 different feeds - some of them were only mere seconds apart (which was highly confusing)
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Was that when it was on One HD? I think I recall they started showing Saturday night AFL games live on One in Sydney.
Nah on Ten, predating One. It happened in Brisbane years before Sydney given the success and popularity of the Lions in the early 2000’s.
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That’s pretty much how i remembered it. Brisbane has always been more accepting of AFL than Sydney, and that’s even more true in 2025. I also remember growing up on the Gold Coast, where AFL and NRL are pretty much a 50-50 split, I would get a lot of games live on 10, but i think it was southern cross 10 at the time? But if i went up to Brissie, it wouldn’t be on at all. Actually, now that I remember it (and looking at the above schedule) I always found it odd as a child that Gold Coast would get a lot of games live, while Brisbane always had some sort of delay.
It helped that the Brisbane Lions won three consecutive flags between 2001-03, which boosted the popularity of the sport in the sunshine capital. The on-field resurgence we have come to enjoy in the last six-or-so years (culminating in last year’s flag) has unsurprisingly revived the popularity of the code up north in that period, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get rewarded with Gather Round hosting rights in 2027.
On the flipside, a 2005 match between St Kilda and the Sydney Swans proved a turn-off in the local Sydney ratings (IIRC the match was on a half-hour delay on Ten); it is well documented that the Swans played so badly in that match after which Robert Walls wrote them off as premiership contenders (this is also documented in the four-part doco Shaking Down the Thunder).
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