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NRTV Reunion to mark 50th anniversary

Former staff at Northern Rivers TV are invited to a dinner to mark 50 years since the station was first formed.

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A reunion will be held next month to mark 50 years since Northern Rivers TV was formed.

All former staff are invited to a dinner at Park Beach Surf Club, Coffs Harbour, on Saturday June 13. Tix are $50. For details contact [email protected] before Saturday May 30.

In January 2015, NRTV (Southern Cross TEN) turned 50 years young but plans for the station began in 1959:

A sub-committee of the board of the Daily Examiner newspaper was appointed to investigate the feasibility of such a license. This committee met in Grafton in February 1960 and Mr A R W Forsyth was appointed chairman.

Public meetings were held in various towns in the Northern Rivers region and a proposed name of the television company – Northern Rivers Television Ltd was chosen. It was incorporated as a public company with a nominal capital of 500,000 pounds on the 16th of March, 1962.

The board submitted it’s application for a license to the Australian Broadcasting Control Board in April 1962 and the approval was granted in October of that year. After that, work began on building the transmitter at Mount Moombil (west of Dorrigo) and making sure the station was fully staffed and ready to commence transmission, which it did on Saturday January 1965 at 6:45pm. The official opening was telecast from the Park Beach Hotel Motel, with the Postmaster General – the honourable A S Hulme, having the honours.

A few months into transmission and it became obvious that there was interference on the license due to a near by ABC transmission. This forced NRN10 to change its frequency and call sign to NRN11.

In 1969, NRN made it’s first profit – $1,747.00. Things became more difficult in the early 1970s for the station – with ever increasing costs and the somewhat limited audience. With this, directors entered into negotiations with it’s northern competitor RTN8 to merge their respective interests and operations. This merger was approved by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board in 1971. The following year, this gave the NRN shareholders their first dividend – 10 years after their original investment.

In 1975, the station successfully converted to colour television – the cost of the conversion being $517,000. During this time, an agreement was reached between NEN9, ECN 8, DDQ 10 and SDQ4 to form a consortium known as Great Eastland Television. This consortium offered advertisers in these 6 coverage areas as one collective market.

In 1980 another merger occurred, this time with a take over from Northern Star Holdings, the North Coast’s largest public company. Northern Star Holdings was already a major shareholder in Northern Rivers Television LTD as well as owning other media interests – including television and radio – in areas ranging from Southport to Coffs Harbour.

At midnight on December 31, 1991, NRTV (telecasting the TEN network signal) became one of three television stations broadcasting to the now aggregated market of Northern NSW. The other two stations were Prime (taking the Seven telecast) and NBN (taking the Nine telecast). The cost of the technical restructure needed for aggregation came in at $13 million.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though and in October 1993, the DDTV Group (who had owned Northern Rivers Television since 1987) went into receivership. This was bought about due to reduced revenues, increased costs associated with operating in an aggregated market and poor performances in the overseas interests owned and operated by DDTV Group. The receiver, Ferrier Hodgson, sold NRTV to an investment consortium made up of Jack Cowin (Hungry Jacks), Kerry Stokes and Telecasters North Queensland.

In March 1995, the regional Queensland television operation of Telecasters North QLD Ltd merged with the station to form the publicly listed company, Telecasters Australia Limited (TAL). This enabled TAL to broadcast the TEN programming format to an area from the Hawkesbury River in NSW up to Cape York in Queensland and Alice Springs to the West.

In 2007, Southern Cross Broadcasting (who owned Southern Cross Ten Northern Rivers) merged with Macquarie Media Group, forming an Australian wide network of regional television stations and regional radio stations. In 2011, Macquarie Media Group merged with the Austereo radio network to become Southern Cross Austereo.

11 Responses

  1. NRN didn’t change its call-sign! the station’s identity is vested in only the call-letters NRN. The channel is not and never was a proper part of the station’s(any station’s) identity. NRTV, or to give it’s full name, Northern Rivers Television, the identity it should still be using, by rights, is made up of two stations amalgamated together. They are Station NRN-Lismore and Station RTN-Coffs Harbour.

    1. Other way around, is was RTN8 Lismore and NRN11 Coffs Harbour, both formerly separate stations before merging in the early 70s with the Lismore studio eventually shut down over time.

      1. Either way round, station should still be identified on-air as NRTV, and Peter Hanrahan should still be reading the news out of the NRN Coffs Harbour studios, with a relief reader presenting a 30-minute bulletin(comprehensive, of course) from the same studios own weekends. We in the regions should not be seeing any Sydney faces on our screens at all!

  2. It was great on the Gold Coast in the 7s and 80s, we received the 4 (or later 5) Brisbane stations, along with NRTV and ABC NSW, which actually gave us 7 channels of unique programming, unlike the homogenised offerings now. Also got to watch the news an hour early in Summer 🙂

  3. I came into contact with NRTV when I was on holiday at Byron Bay in February 1985. I watched it on the TV in the motel room. I remember the first night of the ratings and TEN in Sydney showed Raiders of the Lost Ark. NRTV relayed it. I remember thinking how great this was compared to the scummy Capital 7 Canberra (CTC-7) which was probably the worst TV station in Australia which never showed The Naked Vicar Show, Eight Is Enough, Chico and the Man, The Don Lane Show or The Dukes of Hazard among many others.

  4. We can reminisce about the days of real regional TV, when local programs and news were produced, before all of the mergers and acquisitions on borrowed money, and aggregation, destroyed regional stations.

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