As well as the efforts made by Seven & Ten to move away from channel number branding around the Late '80s, didn’t Nine also think about doing something similar (which obviously never happened of course)? I know that for their regional affiliates at aggregation, Nine seemed to want station names which only had three letters.
I agree that the idea probably didn’t take off because Seven, Nine and (to a lesser extent) Ten were already established brands for the networks.
Of course, the fact that ABC SD is on LCN-2 probably contributes to people continuing to refer to ABC as “Channel 2”!
Not disputing it has happened for decades… BUT at the end of the day, we all have our favourite shows, be it American, Australian, British or some other country AND not everyone like what the networks serve up - but for a while, people complained about all of the American shows being screened - but if you look at classic TV guides - how many American programs have aired in prime time slots for decades AND IT WILL CONTINUE TO HAPPEN as the stations need program fillers where they don’t have a solid programs to fill a timeslot. This is more the case with multi-channel platforms. Usually after 8:30pm its been a US series - be it comedy or drama… Rarely do we hear complaints as we are now used to it from stations like Seven and Ten, so its no surprise when Nine do it.
The moral of the story - despite viewer resentment - its an Aussie show doesn’t rate, there may be a US program waiting in the background to replace it
When it comes to callsigns, I notice that some remore stations such as IMP and CDT do not follow the state rule - CDT could be mistaken for a station in Tasmania. I can understand the use of D for Darwin in the Northern Territory instead of N (as that is NSW’s code) but why C for Canberra instead of A for the ACT? Is this because the latter two examples are territories and not states?
Does no-one else remember the ‘’atn” or possibly “atn7” lower-case logo from the late 80s? I’m sure I remember seeing it on the end of Home and Away.
I do remember it… at the end of Hey Dad! at end of each episode one of the cast said … This is a Gary Reilly Production for the Australian Television Network
Rules are often made to be broken. IMP probably got away with it because even though it was based in the Northern Territory its coverage area also included much of South Australia, and then later expanded to Queensland and remote areas of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania where terrestrial TV doesn’t get to.
AMV, though based in Albury, NSW, was licenced with a “V” call-sign. Possibly because much of its licenced coverage area was to be within north east Victoria.
Radio also has a few examples where normal rules seem to not apply. AM radio stations 2WEB and 4TAB seem to ignore the general protocol for AM stations to have one-number + two-letter callsigns.
I wonder if anyone can tell me about which commercial stations have ever been used clock and when it was in use.
Please written as:
Station callsign (year of use).
As do the RPH services in the capital cities, and the AM repeater stations for Red FM (6GGG)/Spirit Radio (6SAT), although these have/are converting to FM. Hot100 (8HOT) on 765kHz Katherine would be another instance of this.
4EB is one example (possibly the only?) of an FM station with a one-number + two-letter callsign
Funny you should mention 2WS in the TV History thread, it seems that they wanted to establish a TV station for Western Sydney back in the 1980s:
It’d be rather interesting to hear more about this proposal.
Presumably the idea of a Western Sydney TV station didn’t get off the ground (at least until TVS, if you can count the former UWS-based community broadcaster as one) because among other reasons, Sydney already had three commercial TV stations in 1984 and there probably wasn’t enough room in the marketplace for a fourth?
