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Community TV meets on digital switch

The managers of state-based Community TV stations are meeting in Melbourne today to chart their next plan of action.

tvs1Community TV leaders are meeting today to address its ongoing problem with the Federal Government and an unclear gameplan to switch to digital platforms.

The managers of state-based stations are in Melbourne, to chart their next plan of action. Whilst Senator Conroy has promised community TV it “will not be left behind” there was no funding in the budget for the community sector to make the switch.

At a state level, the support is more grass roots. A motion was recently moved in the Upper House of the South Australian parliament for pressure to be applied on the Federal Government.

“Further to that, the next time all the Premiers get together that all the Premiers get together and put pressure on the Federal Government,” said the manager of Adelaide’s Channel 31, Brian Dutton.

“We continue to strive to get it and we’re pretty confident that we would have it in the next twelve months or thereabouts, because it’s not an enormous cost to the Government,” he said.

Sydney’s TVS manager Laurie Patton (pictured) recently said, “TVS is the only free-to-air station in Sydney without a digital channel and this is causing us problems with our viewers. We believe our audience growth would more than double very quickly if we were able to simulcast”.

Comedienne Corinne Grant was this week quoted as saying: “Channel 31 is where me and Rove cut our teeth. The station is important to the whole society and is the starting point for many careers.”

Campbell Manderson, Channel 31 Melbourne’s station’s digital campaign manager, added: “We just want a fair suck of the sauce bottle, Kev.”

Source: ABC, The Age

13 Responses

  1. Hello Michael,

    Yes, the entire community however, the local community is that of the local community and not a representation of the entire nation; if this was so then we wouldn’t need the community television sector because mainstream and public media has the community covered – don’t you think?

  2. ‘ct’ makes an interesting case – except that Community TV would need more than 5%. A standard TV channel has 7MHz worth of bandwidth which is only capable of carrying a limited number of channels (as is the case with the existing networks’ digital channels). The Australian Community Television Alliance has asked the Government to provide sufficient bandwidth for CTV channels to broadcast at the same level of picture quality as the networks transmit their primary channels. Our point is that if the Government is serious about making Community Television viable in a multi-channel world our channels must look as good as everyone else.

  3. If you ask me, the digital transmission needs of the public broadcasters ABC/SBS/NITV should be grouped together covering 3 mux frequencies, with Community TV added in at state wide level, This should be managed by a third party transmission consortium owned by the government. This would better serve all these broadcasters and be more effecient. The ABC should have 50% of the available bandwith, with SBS getting 40%, leaving NITV and CTV with 5% each. But of course, this is way too sensible an idea.
    ct

  4. @ Mike Retter: Community TV doesn’t want digital because of the clear picture, they want it because analogue TV is obsolete. And the commercial stations should be pushing for community TV to get onto digital – because if community TV gets onto digital then that’s a far less threatening option than another free-to-air commercial network.

  5. Michael… why just shame on Labor? The coalition completely ignored community TV from the introduction of digital TV in 2001 and for the remainder of their term in government. At least Labor has acknowledged that there is a need to help transition the channels onto the digital platform.

    Having said that I agree it’s disappointing that they didn’t move to do that in the budget. I think they probably haven’t decided on the best way to do that, and that is probably where the holdup lies. i.e they won’t want to give up a whole 7MHz mux, but it may be that they grant a second mux to the ABC and require them to carry the community channel. In Sydney at least, the D44 channel could be required to carry TVS, but D44 is still only a “trial” datacast service. Personally I hope they kill off this lame-arse trial and just give the bandwidth to the ABC. The ABC could carry ABC3, ABC4, NITV, the community channel plus another SD channel if that happened. That’s a win for everyone.

  6. No, thought you may of had a follow up. Sorry if that sounded rude, was not my intention. Could you find out, i would be very interested thank you

  7. I think it cant be left behind. When the digital switch takes place community TV must also make that switch. I am sure the government will do this but the networks dont want something like community Tv on a level playing feild with crystal digital reception. The government plan to give CTV the switch over, not leave it behind, but have to do it despite the other free to airs wishes. I think it will start becoming part of Freeview by the turn of the year.

  8. My Understanding is that whilst the community stations would like some federal funding what they really want is free or low cost access to the license in order to transmit in digital so they can keep on doing what they are doing

  9. Let the communities that these stations service fund them.
    That is – local councils in the broadcast area.
    State and Federal governments should not be funding local community TV stations.

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