Almost six years after television made its official debut in Sydney and Melbourne, television came to Canberra on 2 June 1962 with the official launch of CTC7.
The channel had been five years in the making – starting in 1957 when The Canberra Times and radio station 2CA agreed to sponsor an application for a commercial television licence in the national capital.
In 1958, Canberra Television Limited was incorporated with a capital of £300,000.
The company was granted the licence for Canberra’s first, and then only, commercial television channel in November 1960. The new channel – CTC7 – was to broadcast from studios located on Black Mountain. Construction of the studio premises and transmission tower was completed in little over six months at a cost of just under £78,000. The studios were equipped with two state-of-the-art Image Orthicon cameras worth £8000 each.
Test programs were being broadcast from April 1962 with the official opening by Postmaster-General Mr C. W. Davidson on Saturday, 2 June 1962 at 7.00pm.
| CTC7: Saturday 2 June, 1962 6pm Program Preview 6.30 Documentary: Establishment Of CTC7 7pm Official Opening CTC7 7.20 Preview: Future Programs and “On Camera” Personalities 7.40 Queen’s Birthday Procession at Duntroon 8pm The BP Super Show 9pm Michael Shayne 10pm Official Opening CTC7 (Rpt) 10.20 Sunday Program Announcements, Epilogue, Close Source: The Canberra Times, 2 June 1962. |
The new channel launched with a schedule of around 30 hours of programming each week.
CTC7 has had a number of different owners over the years, including Fairfax, Kerry Stokes and Charles Curran. In 1994 it was bought by Southern Cross Broadcasting – now Southern Cross Austereo.
Just as it had a number of owners, CTC has also had many different identities on-air – including CTCTV, Super 7, Capital 7, Capital Television, Capital 10 TV Australia, Ten Capital and now Southern Cross Ten. Some of the presenters to have appeared from CTC over the years have included Karen Barlin, Frank Jones, Laurie Wilson, John Bok, Geoff Hiscock, Christine Kininmonth, Mal Grieve, Greg Robson, Sonja Allitt, Peter Chapman, Rosemary Church and Mike Larkan.
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The arrival of aggregation in March 1989 saw Capital align to the Ten Network for programming and expand its signal into the Wollongong/Illawarra and central western regions of NSW, while the Prime and WIN networks from those areas expanded into the Canberra market to represent the Seven and Nine networks.
Capital continued to produce a nightly local and national news bulletin for the Canberra market until owners Southern Cross Broadcasting axed a number of local news services across its wider network at the end of 2001. The actions of Southern Cross and rival network Prime, which had also axed a number of regional news services at around the same time, led to the then Australian Broadcasting Authority set up an investigation into the adequacy of local news coverage in regional areas. The outcome was the adoption of a points-based system which obliged regional operators to meet a required quota of local news in individual markets – although networks like Southern Cross and Prime are meeting their obligations in most markets with a scattering of two-minute local news updates throughout the day in individual markets, mostly produced from centralised facilities.
The Canberra studios of Southern Cross Ten, based in the suburb of Watson since the 1970s, now serve as the master control for much of the wider Southern Cross Austereo television network – including Southern Cross Ten in Queensland, New South Wales/ACT, Victoria and South Australia, and Southern Cross Television in Tasmania, Darwin and central Australia – and the regional co-ordination of the networks’ digital multi-channels.
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Next week, just days after the 50th anniversary of the launch of CTC7, all local analogue transmissions in Canberra and the Southern NSW market will be switched off.
Source: The Canberra Times, 2 June 1962.
Another half-century celebration for regional television this week with Launceston-based TNT9 having commenced official transmission on Saturday, 26 May 1962 for viewers across north and north-western Tasmania. It was Tasmania’s second commercial television station, two years after 
TNT9 was officially opened by Governor Lord Rowallan (pictured) on the night of Saturday, 26 May 1962, accompanied by his wife Lady Rowallan, station general manager Arthur Evans and Edmund Rouse, the managing director of W. R. Rolph and Sons.
During the 1970s local programs included the 
The 1980s were a turbulent time in Tasmanian television, with TNT9’s parent company ENT Limited (formed in the 1960s with the merger of Northern Television Limited and Examiner Newspaper Pty Ltd) successfully taking over Hobart’s TVT6. The takeover eventually led to TNT9 and TVT6 adopting a single on-air brand – TAS TV – and a uniform program schedule across the state.
Nevertheless, ENT complied with the government’s aggregation policy and sold TNT9 to Tricom Corporation for $40 million in 1988 while retaining TVT6 (TAS TV), thus forming the basis for two statewide television networks, one based in Hobart and one in Launceston. 
In April 1994 aggregation was implemented in Tasmania with Southern Cross Network (TNT) and TAS TV (TVT) now broadcasting in competition with each other across the whole of Tasmania. TAS TV (now a branch of the WIN network) had an affiliation with the Nine Network for the supply of programs, while Southern Cross formed ties with both the Seven and Ten networks for its program schedule – and since 1998 Southern Cross has dominated the ratings across the Tasmanian market.
Southern Cross Television in Tasmania has since expanded into the multi-channel environment with the network relaying the Seven Network’s digital channels 
Source: The Mercury, 26 May 1962. The Examiner, 26 May 1987. 
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy has announced 27 November 2012 as the date for the switch-off of analogue television services in the Northern NSW coverage area (pictured).
In preparation for the analogue switch-off, broadcasters are establishing seven new transmission sites to improve areas of poor digital reception, but viewers within the coverage area that are unable to receive an adequate digital signal by 27 May may be eligible for transition to the satellite-based VAST system which will provide access to all free-to-air networks and their digital multi-channels.
It’s another nail in the coffin of regional television production with news that Prime7 plans to shift production of Prime7 News’ Tamworth and Taree bulletins to Canberra.
The move out of the Tamworth studios located in Goonoo Goonoo Road will mark the end of almost fifty years of production from the site. The station opened in April 1965 as local channel NEN9. The channel later partnered up with Taree station ECN8.
It is twenty years since the final stages of the aggregation of regional markets were launched in the eastern states – finally bringing viewers in those areas the same amount of choice of commercial television as their capital city cousins.
The change saw NBN Television (NBN3 Newcastle) align to the Nine Network for program supply, Prime (NEN9 Tamworth, ECN8 Taree) to the Seven Network, and NRTV (NRN11 Coffs Harbour, RTN8 Lismore) to the Ten Network, as they expanded their coverage into each others’ markets.
And from 1 January 1992 came the first stage in the aggregation of regional Victorian markets Ballarat, Bendigo/Central Victoria, Shepparton/Goulburn Valley, Albury/Upper Murray and Gippsland – with VIC TV (BTV6 Ballarat, 
With aggregation then completed in the major regional markets of New South Wales (including ACT), Queensland and Victoria the next step was to consider options for additional choice of commercial television in other regional markets and smaller capital cities. Aggregation was then introduced into Tasmania in April 1994, with Hobart-based TAS TV (
Saturday, 23 December, 1961 – fifty years ago today – brought an early Christmas present to residents in the Goulburn Valley and central Victorian regions with the respective areas receiving their first TV stations.
Like many commercial channels in that era, BCV presented a line-up heavy in imported – particularly American – material but the channel in its first year did pick up a number of popular Australian programs from the capital cities, including Bandstand, The Mobil-Limb Show, The Channel Nine Show, Pick-A-Box and Sunnyside Up.
Bendigo was the site of ABC’s first regional television station, ABEV1, launching in 1963 – and ABC stations were soon to spring up around Victoria in Shepparton (ABGV3), Ballarat (ABRV3), Albury (ABAV1), Gippsland (ABLV4), Mildura (ABMV4) and Swan Hill (ABSV2) with their own network of translator stations in smaller towns.
By 1973, BCV8 had partnered with GLV10 (later GLV8) to form a network presenting a common program schedule and offering national advertisers the advantage of offering a larger regional audience with a single buy of airtime. They were later joined by Mildura channel STV8.
In 1986, BCV8 won a 
With three regional television stations opening within two weeks of each other in 1961, Victoria was leading the way in the roll-out of regional television – but there was to be an raft of new stations open during 1962 in parts of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania and in Canberra. 
It is 50 years today since Australia’s first regional television station was officially opened.
GLV10’s opening night’s programs started at 5.45pm with a 15-minute film, Touring Gippsland, to be followed by an introduction to the station by radio 3TR announcer Don Ewart (pictured). Unfortunately, Ewart’s opening words were never heard by anyone outside the studio as his microphone was not switched on.
Later in the evening GLV10 crossed to Melbourne’s ABV2 for a one-hour live coverage of the day’s Federal Election results before presenting a 15-minute local news bulletin and then signing off for the night.
By the mid-1970s GLV10 had partnered with Bendigo channel BCV8 with both channels providing a common schedule across their respective areas. Mildura channel 
And like many regional television stations GLV provided a training ground for some that went on to careers in the wider media industry. Journalist 
Showbiz veteran 
From 1992, the aggregation of regional markets in Victoria saw the Southern Cross Network of GLV and BCV expand its signal into the regions of Ballarat, Shepparton and Albury, while the incumbents from these regions in turn expanded into the areas covered by GLV and BCV.
Some changes in the news format and presentation followed but the change to Ten Victoria in May 1994 saw all local production ceased and the network essentially becoming a straight relay of Network Ten’s schedule.
From its modest beginnings with two regional channels in Victoria, Southern Cross Ten as it is now covers regional markets from Portland in western Victoria right up to Cairns in the far north of Queensland and across to Broken Hill and the Spencer Gulf region in South Australia. Much of its on-air presentation is co-ordinated from centralised facilities in Canberra.
And in Gippsland, as with the rest of regional Victoria, it was the end of an era in May this year with the 
At around 9.00am (EST) today, analogue television transmissions in the Regional Queensland aggregated market will be switched off.
RTQ7 Rockhampton followed in 1963, then WBQ8 Maryborough/Wide Bay (1965), FNQ10 Cairns (1966), SDQ4 Southern Downs (1966), MVQ6 Mackay (1968) and ITQ8 Mount Isa (1971).
In 1986 the ABC began broadcasting radio and television services to remote and outback regions via the new domestic satellite AUSSAT. This was joined by commercial station QSTV, operated by Telecasters North Queensland (TNQ7/FNQ10), in 1988.
Aggregation
Viewers in the remote market covered by analogue terrestrial transmissions of Imparja and Southern Cross Television will still have access to analogue until 2013. Today’s switch-off only affects the regional Queensland aggregated market. Brisbane and the Gold Coast will continue to receive analogue television until 2013.
For details on the digital conversion, assistance options or access to VAST, refer to the 
Although television started in Sydney and Melbourne in 1956 it wasn’t too much longer before other capital cities joined in – Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in 1959, Hobart in 1960, Canberra in 1962 – but for people in Australia’s smallest and most isolated capital city it was a much longer wait.
But in the years to follow the city of Darwin was re-built as was NTD8. The channel also undertook a $2 million redevelopment of its studios in the early 1980s, although transmission hours by 1982 were still largely limited to the evenings, with daytime broadcasting only on Sundays and Wednesdays. The channel was also limited in communication infrastructure to the major cities, as the only inbound microwave link available to Darwin was leased full-time to ABC – leaving NTD with little means of timely access to national news stories or program material from interstate. The channel did, however, maintain local programming including local sports coverage and discussion and a current affairs program, Spectrum.
When Packer regained control of the Nine Network in 1990, NTD8 was brought into the network. Despite ownership by Nine, NTD8 as the sole commercial broadcaster in Darwin continued with the Channel 8 branding, providing a composite schedule of programming from all three commercial networks. 
The launch of Seven Darwin (now Southern Cross Television) then saw NTD8’s schedule change to a mix of Nine and Ten network programs until New Year’s Day, 2003, when the channel was re-branded as Nine Darwin, even though it was still broadcasting on Channel 8. The change saw the loss of most Network Ten programming and local access to a full-scale Ten schedule was not to arrive until 2008 with the launch of 
Despite the arrival of competition – and the subsequent suite of digital multi-channels – into what is Australia’s smallest capital city (population: 120,000) Nine Darwin continues to take pride as the market leader and maintains its local reputation with its flagship being the local Nine News bulletin, fronted by Jonathon Uptin (pictured). Production of the local newscast has recently been revamped to match the look and style of its Nine Network counterparts in the eastern states. 
