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ELEVEN is on the air

"Stick around you're going to love ELEVEN," Labby and Stav tell viewers as Australia's newest Free to Air channel hits the screen.

Australia officially has a new TV channel, as ELEVEN began programming at 11am today.

Channel hosts Labby and Stav welcomed viewers by running through some of the feature titles including Neighbours, The Simpsons, Supernatural, Nurse Jackie, Californication, Futurama and more.

“Labby and Stav here, we want you to join us weekdays from 4:00 for Couch Time, where we play back some classic TV show,” said Labby.

“That’s right we’ve got Happy Days, we’ve got The Brady Bunch, we’ve got Family Ties, and a whole stack more as well,” said Stav.

“Stick around you’re going to love ELEVEN,” added Labby.

The purple-themed youth channel then launched into a first-run episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson with the Scottish-American host dropping lots of Aussie gags in his opening monologue.

“Australians, if you’re watching this show for the first time on …what is it, Channel ELEVEN… oh, that’s my favourite channel in Australia…(swear) it is now…, ” he said.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘Wait a minute he doesn’t sound Australian at all!’ it’s because this is how Americans speak nowadays!”

He dropped more Aussie gags throughout the show including “A dingo stole my baby.” Duh.

The show will be repeated tonight at 10:30pm followed by a new episode.

A joint venture between TEN and CBS, ELEVEN is available in metro locations on channel 11 and in regional areas on channel 55 (retune your TV to find). It is available via Southern Cross Media across regional markets in Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania; Spencer Gulf and Broken Hill; and broadcasts in Mildura by Mildura Digital Television. Southern Cross Media will also offer ELEVEN to those regions with access to the VAST satellite service.

Foxtel cable subscribers can access ELEVEN via Channel 131. It is not available yet to satellite subscribers.

The new channel boosts the number of Free to Air channels on offer in the battle with Pay Television.

Freeview CEO Robin Parkes said: “ELEVEN’S launch marks a great day for TV viewers.

“Millions of Australians right across the country can now enjoy yet another free digital multi-channel. There are now ten free digital multi-channels that have been launched since Freeview was formed just over two years ago, a period that has seen an incredible expansion in the available choice of free, quality TV entertainment.”

However the timing of the channel launch was upstaged by the devastating floods in Queensland and the aftermath of Toowoomba’s ‘inland tsunami.’ As ELEVEN launched, Premier Bligh was giving a press conference in which she advised of 8 people dead, 72 missing and a toll that expected to rise. Areas of Brisbane, where ELEVEN’s own host studio is based, were now on flood alert.

For more information on ELEVEN visit eleven.com.au

-oh, and first request of ELEVEN: can we please make the logo transparent and not solid?

98 Responses

  1. I take it back about the Couch with Labby and Stav. If they throw out the scripts, it has potential. But right now, they’re pretty poor.

    Ferguson was great last night. 11 could probably afford to bump the show to 11 or 11.30, but I guess it works out well having some separation of shows:

    10.30pm – Craig Ferguson (Eleven)
    11.30pm, Midnight. 12.30 or whenever Gem feels like it: Conan (Gem)
    Midnight or 1am: Letterman (Ten)

  2. Not loving it so far. They waited so long before broadcasting the EPG, Mork & Mindy didn’t start from S1E1 (are they wanting to do a channel 9?), and it’s the same schedule 7 days a week – couldn’t they think of something different to do on weekends? As someone said, will make it hard to follow a show if it’s on every single day.

    @Stan, you’re right. The joke was about him not having an American accent.

    @Mark, something else entirely. The launch of 11 would mean One becoming HD-only, and they weren’t ready to do that until there were more HD tuners out there. Ten said this right at the beginning when launching One. Note that none of the other HD-only channels launched until August-September, so they weren’t that far behind.

  3. So if it’s a joint venture between TEN and CBS

    Does that mean CBS gets a percentage of ad revenue in exchange for cheaper programming rights for it’s content? Or something to that degree?

  4. Just watched both of the Craig Ferguson shows. Loved them, He is much better than the other late night shows. I was laughing out loud. Hope he a huge hit in Aust.

  5. Love being able to see Roseanne, Brady Bunch, Family Ties, Happy Days. And the Office is always good to have back on our screens.

    Eleven comes up on 11 on my tv automatically. But in the lounge i did the channel scan and Eleven is channel 350. Stupid digital box.

  6. He11o he11o,

    It’s been a fun day with Lab and Stav yelling the entire time, and the plastic couch protectors appearing and disappearing as they switch between pre recorded material! They’ll be seen less and less as the 11 brand grows.. hopefully not gone altogether though!

    Looking forward to everything running smoothly and hopefully more brand new content, and/or more series nicked from other networks and scheduled better!

    Congrats 11.

  7. I’ve said it before that I really have looked forward to the new channel. Although it did start through no fault of theirs on just an awful time i.e. the QLD floods and WA fires. I’m shocked and my heart goes out to all affected.

  8. @ johnjet

    I’ve heard some people with the same problem (i.e. it still being on Ch 12 after rescanning ) did a factory reset then scanned the channels again. This fixed it. You could try that. I hope it works for you too.

  9. This is a channel I can turn on and leave on. Lots of shows that I enjoy. Lots that are ok (and better than anything else on tv at the moment). Great to see Everybody Loves Raymond again. Haven’t seen it in years. Still funny. Was it the pilot tonight? Never seen it before.

  10. Arrrr! I just wanna watch Nurse Jackie and Califonication and signal dropped out for some stupid reason then tried to re tune and totally lost channels…. After 3 weeks of nothing on finally something good and i can’t watch!!!!!

    So angry

  11. I’m not liking Labby and Stav either. All their bits sound like infomercials, it’s so clearly scripted. However, I’m loving everything else! The Hello promo with the countdown in it was exciting and so many good shows today! Some of the graphics are kinda ugly but I don’t mind as long as they’ve got the goods 😀

  12. Sorry for the double post…

    I can recommend the SRT5428 from Strong if you’re after a cheap STB that can double as PVR by plugging in an external HDD or thumb drive. Just $50 last week at Clive Peeters (HDD extra) also if you have AVI and other files load them onto the HDD and you can play them on you TV.

    It doesn’t have the best remote and can be a little slow at times when changing channels but for $50 it is a great unit for anyone wanting a cheap way to go digital.

  13. I have deleted and rescaned my Samsung LCD TV 6 times and each time Eleven comes up on channel 12. One HD comes up on channel 11 and 1. I’m not going to rescan a 7th time so Eleven I will nickname as “Twelve”.

  14. oh, forgot to mention in my list of problems:

    – zooming in of Fullscreen shows, it looks really blurry! if you can’t get rid of the black bars then whats the point.

  15. even though the channel is not even a day old they’ve still got problems –

    – that Huge watermark/logo (seems to be bigger then every other channels)
    – Couch Time (unfunny, cringe worthy dorks) it would be ok once a day but they seem to turn up before every show almost.
    – choosing to play repeats of new shows from the start like ‘Cleveland’, 90210 is understandable.
    – saturday nights are a bore, 1 movie a week how about movies all saturday night including horror.
    – weeknights after 11:30 are repeats of shows during the day, how about some 1 hour shows.
    – weekends during the day, exactly the same as weekdays. how about some old school aussie shows.
    – shows missing, could have found slots for them. how about less Futurama and Simpsons during the week.

    But it is a new channel and Im sure it’ll change over time so hopefully those problems I listed will be fixed. some new shows returning is nice but could have been filled with so much new content. weeks ago some of these problems were expected though. the missing shows weren’t in the promos.

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