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Australian television channels include two government owned national networks, three major commercial capital city networks, several regional commercial networks and independent stations that are generally affiliates of the major networks, and a handful of community stations.
Australia has two government owned national networks:
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) carries a variety of locally produced news, current affairs, and sports coverage, as well as arts and comedy. It also carries some overseas content, almost all of which is sourced from the United Kingdom. The ABC is most commonly associated with the television station, but it has other branches, including radio networks and orchestras.
SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) is primarily a multi-cultural station, carrying foreign language news and movies, as well as international sporting events that don't have mainstream interest in Australia.
There are several commercial broadcasting companies, most of which broadcast to both capital and regional areas.
Ownership and network affiliation do not necessarily align; see the table below for the relationships between stations. Markets served are shown by row; programming affilation is shown by column; on-air name is shown in the body of the table, along with station ownership in brackets.
1 One company has a monopoly in this area, as the ABA believed the viewers should have a choice of two commercial stations, even though there is only enough advertising revenue for one. 2 Non-aggregated area. Aggregation is the joining of multiple television markets into one, allowing all broadcasters to transmit to the new aggregated market. 3 Transmission via satellite for remote areas 4 TDT, a digital only station, only recently began broadcasting. Southern Cross, as the former sole broadcaster of Seven and Ten programming in the state, has retained significant Ten programming for the benefit of analogue only viewers. It is expected to align fully with Seven once digital television receivers are common enough that they will not suffer a backlash from dropping all its Ten content. 5 Unnamed joint venture company between Prime and WIN, due to start broadcasting in 2005. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Three commercial networks broadcast to the five major capital cities:
The capital city networks broadcast to the five major capitals. They are not available on satellite, even though for a country like Australia, such would seem like an ideal solution. Most of their programming is carried by regional affiliates in the smaller capitals, regional areas and rural outback areas.
The regional stations (on-air names) include:
Regional areas have, after the deregulation (also known as aggregation when referring to television network licensing) a set of varying regional broadcasters that have strong affiliations with the capital city networks. Many produce a small amount of local programming (mainly local news) in addition to carrying programming from the major networks.
Some capital cities also have a community station. Although the stations are not related, they are usually known colloquially as Channel 31
When each broadcaster is granted a license, they select a callsign. For commercial networks, these are generally three letters, followed by a number. The first two letters are selected by the licensee; the third letter indicates the state or territory; and the number indicates the frequency (channel) that the station broadcasts on at its primary site. For example, HSV-7 broadcasts on channel 7 in Victoria. Sometimes the third letter is used as part of the acronym or mnemonic to name the station - for example GTV represents 'General TeleVision' or 'General TV', although the V stands for victoria.
With the onset of aggregation in regional areas, and now digital television, the callsigns do not retain the meaning that they did in the past. Stations will sometimes change frequency, or have different frequencies at different locations, such as re-transmission sites, where the same signal is re-broadcast in a different area. However the three letter codes have generally not changed and are still used within the industry.
A list of callsigns is show below, with original explanations of the callsigns, and alternate uses shown in brackets.
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