Now with Beer Garden for our smoking patrons.
Here's some background on it all:
On September 5, 1959, NWS-9 began broadcasting, to become Adelaide's first television station. A month and a half later on October 24, ADS-7 kicked off its own rival station and the television owners of Adelaide were now given a choice of which channel to watch the nightly news from. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation finally made the leap from radio to television broadcasting on March 11, 1960, and on July 26, 1965 a fourth channel was established, being run under the call-sign of SAS-10, creating a status-quo within Adelaide's broadcasting community, which wouldn't be broken for another two decades.
The Special Broadcasting Service was given the rights to expand into Adelaide, Brisbane and the Central Coast, after successfully running stations in Melbourne and Sydney since the end of 1980, finally becoming Adelaide's fifth permanent station on June 30, 1985. By late 1987, ADS-7 had become acquired by associates of the Ten Network, while SAS-10 had fallen into the hands of the owners of Channel Seven in Perth. This created some confusion, until a deal was brokered between the two, seeing both stations switch station numbers on December 17, 1987, to now create new call-signs of SAS-7 and ADS-10.
In the early 90's, the Australian Broadcasting Authority took in applications for tentative licenses to broadcast in each of Australia's major cities. With this, a new station called "Adelaide Community and Education Television" or ACE TV for short was established, beginning their broadcasting in May, 1994. ACE TV proclaimed their station channel number as Channel 6, despite physically broadcasting off of the Channel 31 band (often reserved for Community Broadcasters). ACE TV however, found themselves in hot water after breaching their contractual obligations, failing to broadcast after May 25, 2002 and were disbanded in December of that same year. The community television license for Adelaide was picked up by a new group named C31, which was launched on the April 23, in 2004.
With the onset of digital television services, the larger television networks began experimenting with secondary stations. These secondary stations often broadcasted the same as their primary stations, however during special events such as the Olympic Games, they showed footage of events that generally gained a smaller following. These new digital-only stations could all be viewed upon their launch day across the country's major cities. The first of these secondary channels to broadcast its own shows was "ABC2" which was launched on March 7, 2005. The Ten Network then created a "Sports Only" channel, named "One", which was launched on March 26, 2009. More secondary stations soon followed with "SBS Two" launched a few months later on June 1, with the Nine Network's station "GO!" first airing on August 9, the Seven Network launching a secondary station named "7Two" on November 1, and "ABC3" first launching on December 4.
On July 22, 2010, the existing digital stations were joined by Australia's first dedicated, 24 hour, free-to-air news television station in "ABC News 24". "7mate" began broadcasting on September 25, with the Nine Network's "GEM" datacasting channel being launched the next day. C31 rebranded itself as 44 Adelaide and began its digital services on November 5, 2010. Network Ten launched a new youth-based channel called "Eleven" on January 11, 2011, instantly capturing a large demographic of Adelaide's viewers.
Since the launch of "Eleven", the next few station launches have been pretty poor in quality in my opinion:
TV4ME................18 September, 2011 (ceased transmissions on 19 May, 2016)
Gold...................01 May, 2012 (ceased transmissions on 27 November, 2013)
TVSN..................24 September, 2012
NITV..................12 December, 2012
SpreeTV..............17 September, 2013
Fresh Ideas TV.......25 November, 2013 (ceased transmissions on 7 December, 2014)
EXTRA................27 November, 2013 (ceased transmissions on 24 September, 2018)
EXTRA2...............27 November, 2013 (ceased transmissions on 26 November, 2015)
Racing.com..........29 August, 2015
Food Network.......17 November, 2015
9Life..................26 November, 2015
7Flix..................28 February, 2016
SBS Viceland.........15 November, 2016
Your Money..........1 October, 2018
7Food Network......1 December, 2018
The only one of these stations I'd consider watching is NITV, if I can come across some Imparja Cup footy or cricket. Apart from that, it's been quite disappointing. Perhaps we're spoilt for choices by having as many free-to-air channels as we do, but honestly, I'm sick of finding a new station pop-up on my TV's channel list, only to find out that it is datacasting VHS quality crap. I'd almost rather not have it, and I'd definitely trade them all for even one more channel that can air anything other than ab-blasters, steak knives and vacuums.
My parents got me and my sister Galaxy back in the day, and I was lucky enough to have Foxtel for a few years, aswell. Is it worth going back to? What do you guys think of this? If I've missed any important points in my timeline, feel free to let me know and I'll gladly edit what I have written!
