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ABC Guide

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Your Money

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Television Edict

 We didn't grow up with television. I don't think we finally got a TV until I was in my teens and boarding away. It may have even had to wait until around the time that a certain jillaroo appeared on the scene.

Watching TV was a part of our holidays and I think I remember those hire sets where you fed coins in the metre. I don't know about Walker's Cottage in Coogee as I was too young to remember, but we had one for our two week stay in Hall's Head every year.
Though a very early introduction to television was the moon landing when all the schoolkids piled into cars and watched the event on Carltons' set. I don't know whether this is because they were one of the first families in the district to have a tele or because they were one of the closest properties to the school and what passed for a 'town'. Or both.

In any case, though we were impressed at the time, TVs were small, black and white, and only operating for limited broadcasting hours; closing with the national anthem (then God Save the Queen) after which all you could get was the test pattern.

There was a choice of three channels: Channel 2, Channel 7 and Channel 9.

SBS provided a counterpoint to the ABC cultural mix by presenting a multicultural mix in 1980.
   

Channel 10 didn't appear until 1988, the bicentenary year.

So far, so straightforward. The issue now is that the number of channels has increased exponentially. The main channel has country offshoots that play many of the same programs but have local news, sport and weather. Then there are the weird sub-channels with names like Peach and Bold
And this is without considering pay TV. AUSTAR, Optus Television and Foxtel arrived on the scene in 1995. 

We have the streaming platforms. Netflix was founded in 1997. Stan was launched on 26 January 2015; Australian, a joint project of Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media.

• Amazon Prime Video
• Disney+ 
• Apple TV+
• Shudder
• Binge
• Kanopy
• Tubi
• Foxtel Now
• Hayu
• Kayo
• SBS On Demand
• ABC iView
• Ten Play
• Nine Now
• DocPlay
• Acorn TV
• iwonder

 [list courtesy of Business Insider]

A number of these have only come into the picture in the last year so we're being current and up-to-the-minute here. But this whole post is a preamble to a state-by-state coverage as we did with radio and newspaper. It just makes it clearer what's been covered and how often.

II

Digital television for free-to-air arrived in 2001. Analogue shut down in 2013.