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. The commencement date was designed so as to provide coverage of the Olympic Games in Melbourne. It has now grown to be a nationwide system that includes a broad range of public, commercial, community, subscription, narrowcast, and amateur stations.
Colour television in the PAL 625-line format was introduced in 1967 and went to a full-time basis on 1 March 1975 while subscription television, on the Galaxy platform, began in January 1995. Digital terrestrial television was introduced on 1 January 2001 in Australia's five largest capital cities.
As early as 1929, two Melbourne commercial radio stations, 3UZ and 3DB were conducting experimental mechanical television broadcasts these were conducted in the early hours of the morning, after the stations had officially closed down. In 1934, Dr Val McDowall at amateur station 4CM Brisbane conducted experiments in electronic television.

Public television

Australia has three national public broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, and, as more recently, [|National Indigenous Television].

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, established in 1956. ABC TV, ABC Family, ABC Entertains and ABC News are available nationally, in to ABC Australia, focused at the Asia Pacific region.
ABC TV carries a variety of local and national news, current affairs, and sports coverage, as well as Australian arts and comedy programming. It is well known for broadcasting British programming, primarily from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4.
ABC Family, established as a second digital-only channel called ABC2 on 7 March 2005. 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. It was announced by the ABC that, from 4 December 2017, ABC2 was to be replaced by ABC Comedy, ending the channel's 12-year run.
ABC Entertains, a third digital-only kids channel began on 4 December 2009.
ABC News, a digital news channel began on 22 July 2010.
ABC Kids, a digital shared channel began on 2 May 2011.

Special Broadcasting Service

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 its free-to-air channels, SBS also has an interest in the World Movies Channel which has since been revived on free-to-air TV as SBS World Movies and it relaunched on the 1st of July 2019.
SBS shows many non-English language films with English subtitles, and each morning shows news bulletins in foreign languages from around the world in its WorldWatch timeslot. 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. In addition to news and current affairs programming such as SBS World News and Dateline, the network also commissions locally produced documentaries, movies and comedy programs. Less-popular mainstream sports such as soccer, cycling and athletics are also shown.
SBS currently broadcasts six channels: SBS, known as 'SBS One' between 2009 and 2015, SBS Viceland, known as SBS Two between 2009 and 2016, SBS World Movies, SBS Food, known as Food Network Australia between 2015 and 2018, NITV, also known as National Indigenous Television, and SBS WorldWatch launched on the 23rd of May of 2022.

National Indigenous Television

, funded by the Commonwealth of Australia, is produced in Sydney and broadcast via Imparja Television's existing satellite capacity.
The idea for a national, indigenous television service was initially conceived by the National Indigenous Radio Service, which initially lobbied the government to start a new, nationwide indigenous television network. 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. 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.
On 12 December 2012 NITV was launched on free to air on which was the 4th digital channel of SBS, making this channel available to all Australians wherever SBS digital television is broadcast.

Commercial television

In order to allow for commercial licensing, the country was divided into a number of licence areas. When these were drawn up in the 1950s, each major city or regional area – about 50 in all – was considered its own market region. In each of the five major capitals, three commercial licences were granted, while smaller cities or regions were granted a single licence.
The process of aggregation began in 1989. Regional markets were merged and three licences were granted in the new, aggregated areas, with the exception of Tasmania and Remote Central & Eastern Australia, which were granted two licences. As some markets were formed by the merger of up to six different individual markets, this meant that some stations had to merge or form partnerships in order to remain competitive. Around the same time, many remote market regions were replaced with two satellite market regions – one for regional Western Australia, and one for Remote Central & Eastern Australia – although each of these regions was only granted two licences.
Some television markets remained non-aggregated. These were granted a second licence, sometimes to the same company that owned the existing licence. Markets with two broadcasters were later granted a third licence, to a joint venture company formed as a partnership of the two existing broadcasters; markets with one broadcaster in South Australia and Griffith, NSW were also granted a third licence to the same company that owned the existing two licences.

Metropolitan

There are three commercial metropolitan networks, the Seven Network, Nine Network and Network 10. Originally, the networks operated within metropolitan areas, but have expanded into regional areas through the acquisition of local affiliate broadcasters.
Seven Network
Nine Network
  • Headquarters & Main studio: North Sydney
  • National play-out centre: Frenchs Forest, Sydney
Network 10
  • Headquarters, Main studio & National play-out centre: Pyrmont, Sydney

    Regional and remote

The population of Australians living outside of metropolitan areas are served by a number of regional television networks that are affiliated with a metropolitan counterpart. Before the 1980s, regional stations were mostly independent with some forming loose partnerships and others merging into local networks. 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. Consequently, the regional stations and networks continued to merge and expand, and became affiliated with one of the three metropolitan networks. Further equalisation later occurred in the 2000s – with the advent of digital television – to areas that escaped initial aggregation.
Today, WIN Television and Imparja Television notably remain independent, whereas broadcasters like Prime Television, the Golden West Network, Sunshine Television, NBN Television and Southern Cross Television have been absorbed by the metropolitan networks over the years.
As with some of the metropolitan stations, local content is present only in the form of local news bulletin or local advertising. The amount of local news provided varies from two-minute updates to full-hour, seven nights a week news bulletins.

Current ownership

Commercial stations in metropolitan markets, in addition to many regional markets, are owned and operated by their respective network. In some regional and remote markets, the stations are owned by an affiliate broadcaster.
Some regional and remote markets have one operator holding a monopoly over all three networks, with two stations of the three operating under supplementary licences. Other regional markets have only two operators — each owned by or affiliated with a respective network — who have formed a joint venture station to operate under a supplementary licence and broadcast the remaining third network.

Community broadcasting

In 1993 the Australian Broadcasting Authority allocated licences for a sixth television channel for non-profit community and educational use on a trial basis. The groundwork for community television was laid in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, which defined a new service category, community television, for the first time.
Prospective community television providers were invited to apply for transmitter licences, which were
granted to groups in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Lismore. 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.
Licences were also granted in 1996 to Hobart Access Community Television Inc in Hobart and Bendigo Community Television Inc in Bendigo however these were not renewed. Similarly, a licence for BushVision in Mount Gambier was granted in 2005, but it later lapsed. Permanent licences for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth were allocated in 2004, while trial licences remain in effect in Adelaide and Lismore.
The Australian Community Television Alliance, established in March 2008 is the national representative organisation for community television. The CEO of TVS Sydney, Laurie Patton, is the Secretary and represents ACTA on the Federal Government's Digital Switchover Taskforce Industry Advisory Group. In addition to these, a number of community groups produce programming in regional areas, including Queanbeyan Canberra Television in Canberra, Hunter Community Television in Newcastle, Illawarra Community Television in Wollongong and WARP Television in Bathurst.
Groups in a number of areas including Ballarat and Victor Harbor have unsuccessfully applied for licences. Aurora Community Television, Australian Multicultural Television, Ballarat Community Cable Television, Channel Vision and Satellite Community TV, although not licensed as community stations, provide similar services.
Community Television stations went digital in 2010. However, in September 2014 Australian federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that licensing for community television stations would end in December 2015. In September 2015, Turnbull, now Prime Minister, announced an extension of the deadline to 31 December 2016. The deadline was further extended incrementally by communications minister Mitch Fifield until June 2021, however by 2015 Sydney's Television Sydney had ceased broadcasting, as had Brisbane's 31 Digital, switching to a short-live online streaming service. As of January 2021, the only remaining community television stations in Australia still broadcasting are Melbourne's C31 and Adelaide's Channel 44.