Television broadcasting in Australia
Television broadcasting in Australia began officially on 16 September 1956, with the opening of TCN-9, quickly followed by national and commercial stations in Sydney and Melbourne, all these being in 625-line black and white.
It has now grown to be a nationwide system that includes a broad range of public, commercial, community, subscription, narrowcast, and amateur stations.
In 1934, Dr Val McDowall[1] at amateur station 4CM Brisbane[2] conducted experiments in electronic television.
ABC TV carries a variety of local and national news, current affairs, and sports coverage, as well as Australian arts and comedy programming.
Originally aimed at providing 'more choice, more often', the channel mainly provided repeats of popular ABC productions, such as Australian Story and Stateline, and was prohibited by law from carrying programmes from a number of genres; however, after the removal of these restrictions the channel's content was broadened considerably.
SBS Television is a division of the Special Broadcasting Service, founded to provide for the estimated 20% of Australians that speak a language other than English in the home, aiming to complement the ABC.
In recent years SBS TV has begun to target a broader cross-section of the Australian community, in part because of the emergence of specialty subscription television channels aimed at such minorities.
In addition to this, a great deal of programming from the PBS, Arte, BBC and CBC, and even Comedy Central are shown.
Acquired entertainment programs include the US animated series South Park, Queer as Folk and Inspector Rex.
Although no major political party championed this cause, commercial broadcaster Imparja Television stated in 2004 that it would run such a network, at least within its own licence area.
[5] In 2005 the federal Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts considered funding such a station, and conducted a review process.
On 13 July 2007 NITV launched, replacing Indigenous Community Television on the Optus Aurora remote satellite service.
Two-broadcaster areas were later granted a third licence, to a joint venture company formed as a partnership of the two existing broadcasters.
However, the Hawke Labor government introduced a system known as aggregation – regional television equalisation – which would provide viewers with the same viewing choices as those in the metropolitan cities.
In 1993 the Australian Broadcasting Authority allocated licences for a sixth television channel for non-profit community and educational use on a trial basis.
[12] Prospective community television providers were invited to apply for transmitter licences, which were granted to groups in Sydney,[13] Melbourne,[13] Brisbane,[14] Adelaide[15] and Lismore.
[15] In February, 1995, the West Australian Community Broadcasting Association was appointed to manage access to the sixth channel in Perth and Mandurah on behalf of groups based in the two cities.
The CEO of TVS Sydney, Laurie Patton, is the Secretary and represents ACTA on the Federal Government's Digital Switchover Taskforce Industry Advisory Group.
However, in September 2014 Australian federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that licensing for community television stations would end in December 2015.
As of January 2021, the only remaining community television stations in Australia still broadcasting are Melbourne's C31 and Adelaide's Channel 44.
Optus Television operates only in the small parts of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide where it has laid cable.
[22] SelecTV was available throughout Australia via satellite and focused on providing content in comparatively low priced packages to a number of specialised market segments; including Spanish, Greek, and Italian.
There are two small region-based subscription television providers; TransTV Digital which is available in Canberra; and Neighbourhood Cable based in Ballarat, and also available in Geelong & Mildura.
Aboriginal Television, GTV and Ngarda TV are local Indigenous-owned services that broadcast only to their home market.
Television Gladesville (VK2TVG) in Sydney conducts three test transmissions per week on Channel 16, including a three-hour live to air program on Wednesday nights.
In October that year, amateur television history was made when broadcasters VK4BOB and VK4XRL transmitted video to Sydney's ATV clubs which was relayed by the AUSSAT satellite.
