I remember Hey Hey It’s Saturday doing a similar thing on air. Something along the lines of “For those viewers in Tasmania who are getting us again, here’s what you’ve missed in the last 18 months” or however long it was. Then it was just a highlights package shown in fast forward type editing to make it over quickly and quite pointless.
The Today Show disappeared in Canberra in 1987 when CTC was bought by Ten. It was replaced by Good Morning Australia, much to the horror of many Canberrans. This is WIN having a field day in March 1989.
2 Likes
Make the Switch to Sunrise circa 2003 and the last On-Air Presentation to feature the 7 Ribbon Logo 1.0.
The current logo was launched in September 2003
1 Like
Yep, pretty much. This doesn’t seem to happen as often these days (at least on SCTV) because they rarely work off a dirty metro feed with commercials and all.
TDT(9) however still regularly has these types problems (much like when previously affiliated with Ten) as it’s basically a relay from Melbourne which works off the metro feed with watermarks and all.
Yeah, I think you’re right about Home and Away and Neighbours. Local viewers were very fortunate that SC had pretty much caught up by time they dropped it from their afternoon schedule (Neighbours obviously). IIRC, didn’t SC usually fall a week behind with H&A when Big Brother was airing on there in the early to mid 2000s? I think this was because they had to move H&A to 6.30pm (with the dropping of Today Tonight during BBs three month season run) as Ten had BB at 7pm and couldn’t obviously air episodes before Seven.
2 Likes
I’d forgotten about that one but that did happen, they also never had breaks over Summer to catch up when they were behind too.
EDIT: Just thinking about it too, I reckon everything would have finally caught up around 2006 onwards as by then Southern Cross were ditching more of their Ten content and the big one, Daylight Savings was now in sync across the states oserving it. No more of Tasmania being an hour ahead of everyone else in the month of October which used to always cause chaos with the mainland TV and radio timings, although did allow for early screenings of Blue Heelers and the like some years whenh we were up to date.
1 Like
Yes, I remember hearing about the DST issues. So in October SCTV would have been seeing the networked content an hour “early”? There was never a delayed feed, like the Gold Coast now gets when VIC/NSW are in DST?
Was there ever an issue with M rated content being shown before 8.30pm? I presume SCTV could have recorded a programme off the Melbourne feed to play an hour later?
I can’t remember the specifics of DST in Tassie, but was there a similar issue in March when the networked programmes would appear an hour late?
No because we were an hour ahead so it was the opposite of the Queensland situation. So a show at 8:30pm Tas time would only be 7:30 Melbourne time. Obviously the other states wouldn’t change their scheduling to match a state theythemselves didn’t broadcast in so it was up to southern cross and win to do what they could. Sometimes they were able to have shows early and shown before the mainland got them, others just went on delay for a day or a week and others got replaced. Eg today tonight would be shown at midnight instead because it would be stupid having it at 7:30 prime time.
When TDT came along they just simply ran everything an hour late. Some years they told us that other years there was no mention.
2 Likes
Southern Cross in Tassie played H&A over the summer non ratings season to catch up.
1 Like
Extraordinary.
The network guy (Phil Davis) just could not even disguise the arrogance in the interview.
Fairfax has not changed at all. Did to HSV what it’s now done to The Age.
Fairfax in part bought The Age for the supplements - The Age had been doing them for years before Sydney (intro’d to Sydney 15-20 years after Melbourne had them, e.g. The Guide/Green Guide), then proceeded to destroy the paper. I remember their first combined effort was Good Weekend. The Age had a better Saturday mag so refused to take it on Saturday. Good Weekend was issued a day before (Fridays) in Melbourne in its early years. Of course, Fairfax got its way ultimately…
2 Likes
Southern Cross in VIC (BCV8/GLV8) aired Neighbours a day after ATV10, as did VIC TV.
VIC TV dropped A Country Practice at the beginning of 1991 and was replaced by The Simpsons, this did not go down too well with the Ballarat, Western Victoria and Shepparton locals and was dumped after only eight episodes to be replaced not with A Country Practice, but with Murphy Brown.
Southern Cross VIC aired A Country Practice until the end of the 1991 season.
It was when VIC TV started to slowly become Nine, apart from the Footy, Neighbours and a handful of other shows L.A Law, Twin Peaks etc it was mostly Nine programming. In some ways I wish VIC was never taken over by WIN as they were proud to be part of the Nine Network.
1 Like
VIC TV still had heaps of Seven and Ten programmes right up until 11.59pm on December 31, 1991. They had football, motor racing, all the blockbuster movies that Seven and Ten premiered that year, Now You See It (a Seven kids show), Double Dare, Wombat, Full House, Wheel of Fortune, Hey Dad, Disney programmes (but not Saturday Disney), Beyond 2000, Fast Forward, The Equalizer, and I’m sure there’s more. Nine shows VIC TV did not air before aggregation include MTV, The Bugs Bunny Show, and Nine’s overnight movies. VIC TV still had their local morning shows and news bulletins, and Mildura had a Sunday morning sports show. After aggregation occurred in 1992 Mildura continued to carry some Seven and Ten programming so that viewers there did not miss out. A problem that happened after aggregation is that Prime TV, VIC TV and Southern Cross often aired different movies to their metropolitan counterparts, I think this was done because of Prime’s delayed start in Regional Victoria, and ratings periods for regional areas were on different dates to those in metro areas.
1 Like
I don’t quite see the connection. The changeover from VIC TV to WIN was fairly seamless in programming terms essentially as both were just relay of the same network.
2 Likes
I’ve always said VICTV was a better name than WIN TV.
I think there was only a couple of years when SCTV in Tassie was a full time Seven affiliate before DST was synchronised between the states. I know this has been mentioned in part, but I’m sure at least one year (Oct 2005 and/or 2006?) they scheduled most of Seven’s programming at the same time as the mainland. So in order for it to air ‘on time’ they would have had to show it an hour before VIC/NSW. I can’t imagine HSV would have played everything out to VIC/NSW on a one-hour delay just so an affiliate in Tassie could get their programmes ‘live’ and on time. (They already had the additional task of delaying the feed into QLD by an hour in summer). Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly, or maybe SCTV got copies of the programmes to play out locally.
On a side note - CTC Canberra, when it was a Ten affiliate, retained its 6pm weekday news (after a disastrous experiment with First at Five), so Canberra got Neighbours at 5.30 from March 1992-2001 (I think October). While CTC was owned by Curran (who also owned NEW and ADS) Canberra got Neighbours first in Australia. Sometime after Southern Cross got their clutches on CTC, Canberra became a day behind as they had to record each episode from the network feed and play it a a day later. In 2001 CTC’s local news was axed, so an ‘hour special’ of Neighbours was shown to catch up.
2 Likes
I’ve tried going back thorugh a few threads on places like the DTV Forums (back when they used to be popular around that era) and I honestly can’t remember specifics. I do think though that they either showed it ahead of the mainland or did something to delay us, even if it was by 1 day.
Some other interesting things I found from the DTV threads: (mainly from my posts back then!)
- SBS was simply shown on an hour delay.
- ABC HD would revert to SD as the only HD encoder was for NSW and the national feed. This was then delayed for the other markets but couldn’t be run in advance to cater for Tassie.
- 7:30 Report was shown at the correct time in Tassie and delayed to the mainland or had a specific Tasmanian edition. I know AM on the Radio had a Tasmanian specific edition and I think 7:30 may have done too some times.
- TDT in 2004 (their first year of this problem) slapped a little sticker of an alarm clock on every promo saying it would be an hour later in Tasmania. In 2005, they edited all promos with the correct times (but still ran an hour behind - so it was in sync with the mainland) and in 2006 onwards they just simply ran some ads saying things were on a delay and didn’t edit any of the promos at all.
4 Likes
Speaking of daylight saving, in 1982 even NSW and Victoria couldn’t agree on a standard calendar for daylight saving and it was causing havoc with TV production between the two cities:
Source: TV Week
5 Likes
Yep. They did the same thing with Neighbours too as they were months behind Ten.
@ando9185
Yep, during DST it did vary quite a bit depending on which program Southern Cross and WIN could get to air at the “correct time” for Tasmanian viewers.
I think most of the non-live content Seven and Nine had at that time like the local dramas in Blue Heelers and McLeod’s Daughters was actually shown into the state at the “correct time”, which meant we got to watch it before the rest of the country oddly enough. Obviously live morning breakfast TV in Today and Sunrise, as with the realities (Big Brother, Australian Idol etc.) had to be aired on the 1-hour “delay” from the mainland back then though as they were ‘live broadcasts’.
As you said, SC couldn’t get to air Today Tonight at the normal 6.30pm slot in the evening so they just aired it on delay later in the evening (usually around 10.30pm I think?).
WIN had the same issue with A Current Affair too, so they just aired US sitcoms instead and aired ACA at a later time.
As for TDT, apart from the children’s 4pm slot where they aired their own content instead, they had all of Ten’s content on the “delay” for the duration of time differences (Ten’s News at 5pm at 6pm local time anyone?! 
) . As you also mentioned, they either didn’t bother at all or just edited the times on the promos with just a simple clock graphic warning.
2 Likes