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.
Network 10 is an Australian commercial television network owned by Ten Network Holdings, a division of the Paramount Networks UK & Australia subsidiary of Paramount Global. One of five national free-to-air networks, 10's owned-and-operated stations can be found in the state capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth while affiliates extend the network to regional areas of the country.
Television in Australia began experimentally as early as 1929 in Melbourne with radio stations 3DB and 3UZ, and 2UE in Sydney, using the Radiovision system by Gilbert Miles and Donald McDonald, and later from other locations, such as Brisbane in 1934.
GWN7 was an Australian television network serving all of Western Australia outside metropolitan Perth. It launched on 10 March 1967 as BTW-3 in Bunbury. It was an affiliate of the Seven Network and served one of the largest geographic television markets in the world—almost one-third of the continent. The network's name, GWN, is an acronym of Golden West Network, the network's name from 1979 to when the current name was adopted in 2011.
GTS/BKN are Australian regional television stations serving the Spencer Gulf of South Australia and the Broken Hill area of New South Wales.
In Australia, regional television is the local television services outside of the five main Australian cities.
Imparja Television (IMP) is an independent Australian television station servicing over 3,600,000 km2 (1,400,000 sq mi), across six states and territories: Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. It is based in Alice Springs, and is controlled by Aboriginal people through ownership by Imparja Television Pty Ltd.
SAS, formerly SAS-7 and before that SAS-10, is a television station in Adelaide, South Australia. It is part of the Seven Network.
ABC TV, formerly known as ABC1, is an Australian national public television network. It is owned and operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is the flagship ABC Television network. The headquarters of the ABC TV channel and the ABC are in Ultimo, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales.
QQQ is an Australian television station broadcasting in remote central and eastern areas of Australia, owned by Southern Cross Austereo. The station is available via satellite and terrestrial platforms – mostly through community retransmission sites, although it also transmits into the town of Mount Isa, Queensland under the call sign ITQ. The station is solely affiliated with the Seven Network.
Seven is an Australian television network distributed by Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) in Tasmania, Darwin, the Spencer Gulf, Broken Hill, and remote eastern and central Australia. SCA's network is the primary affiliate of the Seven Network in the areas it serves.
TNQ is an Australian television station, licensed to, and serving the regional areas of Queensland. The station is owned and operated by Southern Cross 10.
CTC is a television station in Canberra, Australia. The station was the tenth to begin transmission in regional Australia, and the 26th station in Australia as a whole. CTC has an affiliation agreement to show content from Network 10. Just as it has had a number of owners, CTC has also had many different identities on-air – including CTC-TV, Super 7, Capital 7, 10 TV Australia, Capital Television, Ten Capital, Southern Cross Ten, Channel 9 and Channel 10. The station is owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo through Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd, as one of SCA's 10 stations.
This timeline of Australian television lists important station launches, programs, major television events, and technological advancements that have significantly changed the forms of broadcasting available to viewers of television in Australia. The history of television in Australia can be traced back to an announcement from the Menzies' government concerning plans for television services in Sydney and Melbourne.
Below is a list of television-related events in 1989.
The broadcasts of Summer and Winter Olympic Games produced by Seven Sport is televised on the Seven Network in Australia.
9Gem is an Australian free-to-air digital television multichannel, launched by the Nine Network in September 2010. The channel provides general entertainment and movie programming, from which the original name "GEM" is derived.
The Viewer Access Satellite Television service, or VAST, is a satellite television platform in Australia, providing digital television and radio services to remote and rural areas, as well as viewers in terrestrial black spots. The service using the Optus C1 and Optus D3 satellites. It is partly funded by the Australian Government and managed through a joint-venture between Southern Cross Media and Imparja Television. It is an even more restricted free-to-view replacement for Optus Aurora providing channels which have been absent on the remote service until now. The platform uses only H.264 video encoding and 8PSK, which allows for more lower bit rate channels on the limited transponder space that's available. The EPG uses an MHEG-5 guide instead of the usual more compatible DVB EIT.
This article is a summary of 1978 in Australian television.