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Australia gets to GO!

Update: GO! is on the air with its first night of programming and national advertisements.

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GO4!When the new series of Wipeout airs tonight at 6:30pm, Australia will officially have another new channel.

GO! is Nine’s new digital channel aimed fair and square at eyeballs between the ages of 14-39 years old. With titles including Survivor, Gossip Girl, Fringe, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Moonlight and TMZ, there are certainly some alluring shows on offer. Compared to 20 to 1, Australia’s Perfect Couple and Commercial Breakdown Adults Only, GO! is practically worthy of an Emmy.

Those of us licking our lips for new episodes of Weeds and The Wire will have to wait just a little big longer. The Vampire Diaries is also due in October.

Like ONE HD does for TEN, GO! will add to Nine’s overall evening share. Programmes that are unique to secondary channels are tallied by OzTAM ratings.

This week when Nine turned on GO!, an SD channel, some viewers with digital TV tuners found Nine went blank as soon as they picked it up. Nine said it did everything it could to warn people of the technical issues, via newspaper ads and offering a helpline on 1300 152 231.

Promos branding GO! have so far seemed cheap and nasty, not much better than regional TV you might see when stuck in a 3 star motel somewhere. Hopefully when it launches tonight it will have a more professional appearance.

GO! also means 9HD breakout programming is no more, which is being particularly felt by AFL fans in Sydney and Brisbane. The AFL Footy Show no longer screens at 9:30pm on 9HD due to the technical limitations of having three channels, and instead screens later to Sydney and Brisbane, just as the NRL Footy Show is later in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Nine has moved Footy Classified to appease its northern AFL fans.

With GO! now on offer, attention turns to Channel Seven, as the final network to offer its new Freeview contribution.

Despite rushing 7HD to market, with poor programming ever since, Seven will be the last network to offer a new channel. Believed to be watching where its competitiors moved, Seven has kept everyone guessing. Even executives at TEN and Nine are still in the dark as to which way Seven will move.

Despite the fact that the network was reported to make an announcement by March, none has been forthcoming. Seven has previously indicated it has settled on its plans.

After GO! makes its fanfare, it will surely be time for Seven to hijack the limelight.

GO! airs on Channel 99 in metro cities and on 88 on WIN / NBN and will be added to Foxtel further down the track.

Update: GO! opened with a montage of its programming accompanied by an uptempo song. The first commercial break during Wipeout featured ads for KFC, Commonwealth Bank, Ford, and channel promos including Miranda Kerr saying “I’m ready to GO!”

169 Responses

  1. >As for TMZ, looks like such a ‘trashy’ show, and last time I checked the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced ‘Zed’ in Australia (directed at the announcer on the GO! preview loop).

    But as you are pronouncing the name of an American show, you use the American pronunciation.

    >Now here’s my challenge to Nine: let IceTV have full access to the “GO!” program guide so users of its service know what’s on.
    Why? So a company can make money off what Nine offers for free over EIT?

  2. “Promos branding GO! have so far seemed cheap and nasty, not much better than regional TV you might see when stuck in a 3 star motel somewhere. Hopefully when it launches tonight it will have a more professional appearance.”

    Come on David, it’s a youth orientated channel. Simple and affective. Continual Nine bashing from you… how about a bit of balance?

    1. John, there are youth channels on Pay TV that I think have classier promos. How is it Nine bashing if I have talked up the titles on offer? Did I bash Nine when I gave Rescue a good review? Or interviewed Les Sampson? Or in the feature on Tom Steinfort? Call ’em as I see ’em and the GO! promos didn’t grab me….if I was really bashing Nine, GO! wouldnt have had any stories here…..

  4. im going to have to disagree with you david, so far i have loved the Promos for GO, they are alot better then i thought, i just wish i could of seen more then 3 or 4 of them which have been playing on the preview loop.
    looking forward to my new sunday night tv lineup.

  5. Deb: see first sentence re channel launch.

    TV Tonight has GO! programming in the widget guide on the front page plus Advance Guides, but I suspect others could be slow to react.

  6. Let’s hope this channel runs on time for a change unlike Nine! 🙂 Meaning no over times! Looking forward to Go!. Already have a few certain shows ready for record. I’m quite excited about this channel, because between 6.30pm and 10.30pm on any other channel on FTA there is hardly anything of interest. 🙂

    I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Seven anouncing a new channel by the end of the third quarter, I reckon maybe early next year, seeing they are probably waiting to see how Go! does first. (but Seven still have a chance to proove me wrong lol)

  7. Glad that Go! is Good to go, there are actually quite a few shows that take my interest, so looking forward to dusting off the vcr.
    As for TMZ, looks like such a ‘trashy’ show, and last time I checked the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced ‘Zed’ in Australia (directed at the announcer on the GO! preview loop).

    @cjschrissouth: Me too, I was loving the 9HD repeats, and the fact that seinfeld had been remastered in HD (looked spectacular) but such an hilarious show that I won’t miss HD too much.

  8. is anyone from QLD who gets their EPG data from the signal 9 broadcasts actually getting the proper EPG with shows listed? or am i the only one without it? coz all i keep getting is “commencing on sunday at 6:30pm” they keep adding new ones of this to cover now and next but nothing beyond that, i really hope they do actually list the shows sometime before they go to air and that they don’t only update now and next constantly otherwise this is going to be a very long week for trying to program my recordings. i really hope they upload the whole weeks EPG in one go, maybe i should call the helpline or something.

  12. Go TV??

    I’ve rescanned, I can see the “ads” for GO! It’s 9.38 am 9/08/2009 but No Programs? Is there some kind of ‘technical’ hitch?

    I think it’s a great idea to have another channel that is not running football, motor racing, golf, tennis, cricket all day Sunday…. but where are these programs that are in the tv guide?

  17. It’ll be tough to try and embrace GO! Not just because of the awful channel name, but because everything Channel 9 does these days is met with mocking and ridicule (don’t get me wrong, I believe rightly so).

    While the TV nerd part of me is excited to see so many series starting from scratch, the I Hate Channel 9 part of me wants the whole station to fall on its ass.

  18. Love all the headlines that you guys are using (David and newspaper people).

    However I actually like the look of the network. It’s very “teen” with the bright colours and squares etc.

    Can’t wait to GO!

  19. Hope its on Foxtel sooner rather than later. In order to record from it, had to get out my old set top box and start using my 5 year old hard disc recorder which only just works! There’s already twice as much on GO we will be watching here compared to 9. If it wasn’t for my 3 year old daughter liking Humphry and the video show, we’d be watching 2 hours a week on 9.

  21. Go Multichannelling! Us FTA viewers have waited a long time for this day i.e: a alternative channel which GO seems to fufil & don’t have foxtel,i know there is one hd & abc2/sbs2 but they don’t really offer that much unless you’re a sports fan or minority show liker.Now all we have to wait for is seven’s offering on their multichannel,most media have said they would annouce it in the third quarter of this year,correct me if i am wrong,but aren’t we in the third quarter now?

  22. Yay for GO! but it looks like Nine has not learnt it’s lessons but not fast tracking Vampire Diaries, it starts early Sept in the US, up to a month before it’s planned launch in GO! This is a show aimed at the very market that will be keen to DL it.

    David after all the hype made about Wipeout in the past and now they have the local version, why didn’t it make it to the main Nine channel?

  23. Now here’s my challenge to Nine: let IceTV have full access to the “GO!” program guide so users of its service know what’s on.

    Otherwise, we won’t watch.

    Come on kids. You lost the court case, and were left with big gobs of egg on your face. Give up on the “our guide is intellectual property” rubbish already.

    You, err, do want viewers, right?

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