General TV History

Ten Eyewitness Brisbane openers from early 2015.


Can anyone think of a reason why someone in Canberra would want to watch the TV stations from Wagga Wagga?

Did Wagga Wagga have different programming at one time?

I’ve noticed a large antenna opposite Cooleman Court, Weston Creek

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Possibly an antenna that dates back to before aggregation when parts of Canberra might’ve been able to receive RVN-2 from Wagga as well as the local CTC-7?

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and in the 1980s the Canberra Times used to have RVN listings in their daily TV guides.

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Ten’s ‘Neighbours’ webpage from 2010…

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Ten Russia Coverage 1991

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My grandparents had the Band 1 antenna setup to watch RVN2 in Belconnen in the mid 1980s. From memory, they watched RVN2 more than Capital 7 as it had better programming.

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Great to see some surviving installations.

Pre-aggregation, CTC 7 wasn’t a very popular station among locals, they searched for other choices.

Despite the terrain, the Band I, low freq of Mt Ulandra TXs 0 and 2 propagate an adequate signal in hilly sections as well as the flat plains to the west, ensuring maximum coverage in an area starved all over for commercial TV choice at the time.

Masthead amps would have been needed and signal not always watchable for many in Canberra.

Also remember that RFI levels were much lower in the pre-aggregation era, so interference was much less that in its final years.

The Canberra Times published RVN TV listings as they had ambitious plans for circulation well beyond the Canberra city limits as we know them. Of course a newspaper listing doesn’t guarantee reception within a circulation area.

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Interesting that (to me) the installation looks to have been maintained and even updated at some point as that antenna design looks more recent that 1989.

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A cynic might suggest it was CTC’s lack of popularity with our elected representatives spending time in the capital that may have led to (or at least accelerated) the plans for aggregation in the first place

There’s a lot of antennas set up for RVN around that part of the world, both towards Canberra and Griffith where the local offerings were limited at the time. In the latter case this continued for much longer as MTN wasn’t within the aggregated markets, so the locals out west added UHF aerials to the Band I setups they had in order to improve their viewing choices

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I don’t recall seeing many RVN-2 set ups on ACT rooftops on my visits to Canberra over the years…??

But yes, Canberra was otherwise a difficult place in which to get TV reception of other stations from…

If Capital 7 was really not very popular with locals, they would have been one reason of why aggregation was introduced, and also because the politicians didn’t have the TV choices that most of them had in their seats in the mainland state capitals when coming to Canberra for parliamentary sittings. Along with the obvious reason that aggregation would have been a big vote winner in the bush,

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Responding to discussion in the “Classic TV Listings” thread here to avoid going too off topic:

And of course, Stateline was launched in February 1996 (remarkably Wikipedia got the launch date right, although no mention of airing at 6pm for the first five years there) so that the ABC could continue to cover state/territory-based current affairs.

Presumably all* local presenters of The 7.30 Report of the time would’ve taken on the role as the host of Stateline in their respective markets?

*The most notable exception being New South Wales, with The 7.30 Report’s 1990-94 presenter Quentin Dempster becoming the host of our edition of Stateline after the death of Andrew Olle (who presented the NSW version of The 7.30 Report during 1995 AFAIK) in December 1995.

Not sure about that. Mary Delahunty was the Victorian host of The 7.30 Report but I’m pretty sure she didn’t go over to Stateline.

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IIRC Ian Henderson hosted Stateline initially, then Kathy Boland who read the news on weekends after Sue Macintosh was given the boot.

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Concidently, Vietnam is my hometown…

The main reason for aggregation was that, yes, it was a easy vote winner for Labor, it also gave the Country (Nationals) Party a kick in the arse too. Regional TV was seen as a haven for the Country Party - let’s face it, in most cases you had a monopoly, a license to print money as it were, and who’d want to stop a good thing. Some were into the idea of aggregation (Prime Network namely, there were one or two others), and some weren’t (NBN and WIN, unsurprisingly, maybe more). Shame both sides couldn’t even do that right!

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Interesting for our Brisbanites - TV Cynic i’m looking at you! - to note. The building in the end cap looks sooo much to me like the new “Tower of Power” in Brisbane.

28 PM

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all the networks (if you see the small print!) put their name to a brochure, dated about 1986, arguing against aggregation:

and here’s the small print zoomed in:

But Prime did later emerge as a supporter of it.

Southern Cross in Victoria fought it hard based on them being landed Ten affiliation by default as Nine and Seven got signed up by VIC TV and Prime.

I can’t imagine WIN (RTQ7) being very enthusiastic about QLD given that they were to be aligned to Ten, but then did that last minute deal with Nine which changed their outlook no doubt.

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