TV History - Questions

We mentioned earlier that because of the ownership of stations, there would sometimes be the anomaly of a Seven-produced show being shown on Nine in some markets, and vice versa. I’m not sure if this ever happened in Perth before NEW10 was launched, due to the way they bought in the programs from the Eastern states. Certainly, Ten shows appeared on Seven and Nine in Perth. Anyway, my question is did the channels show these programs intact, with a “for the 7 Network” or “Channel Nine Presentation” caption in the credits, or did they attempt to disguise the anomalies in case viewers got confused as to which channel they were watching?

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I can remember going to Perth circa 1987 and seeing Perfect Match on TVW7 and from memory it went to air as is, even with the Network Ten Australia end tag.

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there was probably no compelling reason to edit out Network Ten logos etc for presentation in Perth as Ten wasn’t a rival to Seven and Nine there until NEW10 began. And technically, TVW7 didn’t formally join the Seven Network (or Australian Television Network as it was) until 1988.

Reminder too that for the 1984 LA Olympics, Ten’s national coverage was split in Perth between both TVW7 (first week) and STW9 (second week), and that would have had Ten logos all over it.

In another scenario, when the Tens used to re-run Mother And Son from ABC in the 80s and 90s they never bothered wiping out the ABC credit at the end. ABC was probably not considered such a rival. But when Ten replayed Hey Dad, which was a Seven series, they did cut out the Seven logo at the end.

One scenario that might be interesting is how the Sevens in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth went about dealing with the “Nine Network” logo at the end of the original Family Feud, which was a Nine program in Sydney and Melbourne but due to legacy arrangements was on Seven in the other cities. I imagine the Sevens conveniently dropped the Nine logo from the end credits :stuck_out_tongue:

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US-style syndication existed in AU ???

Not really but there are examples of shows skipping network boundaries before proper networking began in the late 80s

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hmm…
Seems very syndicationic for me, since it airs on different networks
Regional stations’ metro programming were also syndicationic for me, #myfriend

I had to Google that to check if that’s actually a word…couldn’t find it!

But I know what you are trying to say… and that I think that could be a contender for the “Media Soy Word Of The Year!”.

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Nothing like a good splash of media soy on some steamed dim sims :wink:

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damn

i mean that regional stations pre-aggregation picks metro programming by bought it from the networks, and since it was sold on per-station (or a group of stations like TV8),those programmes was “syndicationic”, #myfriends

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I think the difference is that the programs weren’t made specifically for syndication, as is often the case in the USA.

As for the networks themselves, which stations were officially seen as part of the network? Seven Perth, for example, shared something of an on-screen look with Seven in the Eastern states, but wasn’t seen as part of the Seven Network until the late 80s.

The schedules, even in prime time, varied quite a bit between the five state capitals even though I assume the facility to take a network feed from Sydney or Melbourne was available.

The “National Nine Network” moniker was somewhat misleading as this suggests it had Australia-wide coverage. Only selected Nine programming was carried on affiliates - unlike today, when all three commercial channels are relayed - virtually in their entirety - by a full time affiliate in each market.

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That’s similar to Canada, #myfriends.

Unlike in the United States, however, few Canadian programs were ever created solely for syndication without officially belonging to at least one specific station or network; those that did exist were intended primarily to be syndicated into the American system, and even those were typically distributed in Canada as “network” programs rather than being sold to individual stations.

A question about continuity announcers/presentation announcers.

I’ve seen quite a few examples of station sign ons and sign offs from the 80s where the announcer/VO name-checks himself (such as John Deeks on HSV7) and speaks to the viewer on a more “intimate” level than in the brash, hard-sell promos we hear today. Was this continuity ever live (certain ABC announcements gave that impression, with the CA/VO apologising for technical difficulties etc) or was it all pre-recorded by the 80s?

Also - when did ABC adopt national continuity? I’ve seen sign ons and offs from ABC in the early 80s which appeared local (ABC in WA clocks etc) but by the late 80s they appeared to be networked from Sydney or Melbourne, with “except for viewers in WA” style announcements when promoting the line up. When Perth or WA opted out, did they provide their own announcements/continuity?

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Hi #myfriends, @ourfriends:

I’m just realising a thing that the SBS network of your country :australia: did relay news (not sure if it is English or Vietnamese) from VTV4 of MY COUNTRY! :vietnam:

Actually, does anyone ever remembered that, #myfriends ??? I remembered that SBS got under an ULTRA BIG pressure from the D U C A N G E R S for that! They even done many protests in Sydney ONLY to made SBS pulled the VTV4 news from the schedule…

and sadly, it w o r k e d :((((((((((((( :sob:

does anyone know more about that ??? any information ??? and can we hope SBS to relaying VTV4 news again, #MYFRIENDS ???

:((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

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This usually happens when SBS uses a broadcaster that is deemed to be not be independent. The protests come from viewers who believe the broadcasts are biased or government propaganda.

Here’s a story from 2003:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/sbs-drops-vietnam-news-and-apologises-20031206-gdwvrp.html

And another from 2013:
SBS defends Vietnamese TV news

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Would anybody happen to have any screencaps of digital TV from the very early days of 2001-2003?

I remembering seeing a screenshot of Channel 7 where it had “7 Orange” “7 Red” “7 Blue” etc for the different LCN names.

Also somebody mentioned on another forum that 7 did a non-widescreen digital TV transmission of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Is there much truth to this?

Correct. Was rubbish. 4:3 aspect ratio.

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While we’re talking about the development of digital television in Australia, I wonder how accurate (or otherwise) this sentence is on Wikipedia is:

This intrigued me because while Nine certainly have been on the forefront of new technology in recent years (first network to do 3D trials, the first network with all/mostly HD news, etc.), apparently that wasn’t necessarily the case during the Kerry Packer-era so I’ve been led to believe.

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I can’t confirm nor deny it. I guess it would be too much to expect that someone has put a citation on that claim

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From a quick search, I can tell you that the first digital television field tests were on 3 October 1997. They were a joint effort from FACTS, the collective commercial broadcasting organisation.

One document I could find references that the Channel 9 antenna was used to perform the broadcast of the trial multiplexes, but it doesn’t mean TCN-9 were “leading” the way.

It was a trial to help make the final decision between DVB-T and ATSC, with field strength and interference testing the main goals. It was certainly not Nine broadcasting a test run of their digital service -

The majority of the digital modulation system tests were conducted using measurements of the bit error rate (BER) of pseudo random data. The systems were thus evaluated as data pipes.

http://happy.emu.id.au:8430/lab/rep/rep/9804/9804_001.htm
http://happy.emu.id.au:8430/lab/rep/rep/dtbfield/

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Currently FreeTV Australia, with those ads that haven’t changed in 15 years back-on-air (since last year)!