MTN is a television station licensed to serve Griffith and the surrounding Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (M.I.A.).
The broadcast region covers approximately 39,700 square kilometres, encompassing 20 urban centres which include Leeton, Narrandera, Hay, Hillston and Lake Cargelligo.
[5] At its launch, MTN was owned by Murrumbidgee Television Limited, a publicly listed company, whose shareholders at the time included local radio station 2RG.
to be too small a market for aggregation, and as a result, MTN was abandoned by Prime Television in 1989 and remained independently owned.
[13] The Australian Broadcasting Authority relaxed the rules regarding station ownership in solus markets in the mid-1990s.
[14] MTN applied for a Section 38A licence in 1995, and after being refused once, challenged the Authority, and was successful on appeal – ultimately being granted the second license on 18 July 1996.
[citation needed] It was a direct feed of Prime Television Orange, with the exception of its local news, which AMN replaced with alternative programming.
][citation needed] WIN Corporation brought MTN and AMN from then-owner Associated Media Investments on 6 July 1998.
[8] In 2000, the government introduced changes to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 which allowed for two-station markets such as the M.I.A.
[16] To assist solus markets such as the M.I.A., the government allowed networks to multichannel the digital broadcasts, whereby the two stations are transmitted on the one channel or frequency.
[24] In May 2011, WIN announced that it would broadcast the multichannels of the Nine, Seven and Ten networks, including high-definition channels, by December 2011.
[19][better source needed] At first, interference from the analogue signals caused issues with some channels, mainly Network Ten channels, which meant a duplicate service of Ten and WIN was provided (on LCN 51 and 81 respectively) and ceased on the day of the switch over.
[citation needed] As part of Australia's digital transition, MTN and AMN ceased broadcasting in analogue on 5 June 2012.
But as a consequence, 9Life ceased to be available in the region, and Extra was replaced with Network Ten datacasting channel TVSN.