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Australia gets to GO!

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

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. GO ! – Television EPG Electronic Program Guide now running on most Set Top Boxes, EPGSTREAM’s XMLTV Download also carries GO ! – Television Guide for Windows Media Centers for free, search for them on the net, cannot post link here.

    regional areas now receiving and relay transmitters now adjusted to transmit the frequency as of Sept 1st 2009 keep scanning for new services on your tuner as these regional affiliate relays Win, & NBN are being serviced to relay Go! TV in coming months Sept Through To December, to reach outback and regional receptions.

    Also The SD Pixelating on GO! Television will be resolved before December, with more HD Content set for Summers Line up, also Repeat programming the following day at midday will cease Mid September.

    The Song for GO ! – Television is not available for download or Purchase, Nor it is found anywhere on the net including lyrics, the song for the 58 second promo was commissioned specially for GO! TV by Nine Network Australia, contact TCN Nine Sydney for more regarding this song, if they are sick of the calls they might be driven to mention the song title and artist on their future promo’s as Seven Network have done from this same experience of callers wanting to know the artist to Packed Rafters Promos.

    Hope This Answers a few of your comment Questions.
    and c’mon people This is a New Service virtually a month old, and will experience some technical issues, lets give them a chance to iron out the bugs and lets not be to eager to complain just yet….Give GO ! – Television …..a Go !!

    Regards
    Joe Simiana

  2. They say GO is for the young but I think it grooves for all ages.
    Moonlight, 11th Hour, Fringe to The Flintstones good to see this stoneage classic regenerate . Love the promo music and looking forward to the Vampire Diaries . Great Going..

  3. ..i can’t tell you how excited i was to hear GO! would deliver free-to-air music videos non-stop. True, maybe, unfortunately an evening’s play of music videos seems to consist of the same 6-7 videos in a loop. Time and time again. .. i kid you not.

    So, as a full-time worker/part-time student who’s up late late in to the nights (and is generally a nocturnal creature anyway! lol) *and* just Lurrrrrrvs music videos, i was very excited – but now i find myself channel-surfing between the brain-numbing infomercials, ‘Earth TV’ (SBS’ global weather forecast) and, occasionally, GO! (in the hope that a new music video might have been added, or that they might move on to a ‘new loop’ of videos at least?!) 😕

    ..come on GO! 🙂 ..it’s never too late (or early???) to shake up the playslist before your fledgling audience does ‘Go!’ – to another channel. Best of luck, ElleE xx

  4. Outback Australia I suppose our programmes are way outback of the list. I have 3 ABC’s 4 SBS’s radio stations and that is it for my Digital Coverage I thought perhaps with digital I would be able to get stuff I can’t get on normal TV channels like 10 and 9 and WIN or is that another name for one of the others, for a start..
    I hope when digital comes in proper they will sort of make sure everyone can get every channel available. Not only do we live hours drive from everyone else, but out channel choice unless we have pay TV in a choice of 4 channels. ABC, Southern Cross (7) SBS and Imparja form Alice Springs which used to chery pick from several channels now only shows 9.

  5. Oh, I see Bindi also refers to programming too.. or lack of it.. in her comment on 10th August.

    “EPG” is that what it’s called.. Electronic Programme Guide?

  6. Where can we find the programme guide for the new GO! station? So far, only by watching the station and it’s promos can we find out what is coming up.
    Makes it a bit hard to plan to watch anything in particular. I rely on my set-top-box programme guide to map out my preferred viewing for the evening just to find GO! is blank on information.

  7. Well after reading some of the comments on here. Its still amazing to see that despite a total flop of a digital television launch and well, The whole management of it there is a new channel. Wow they have had that bandwidth for 10 years and did nothing with it. Yuop re brand it and do nothing. Its about time that people reading on here actually look at how this could be and instead of putting there drivel on here actually write or call the networks and complain that they have a very poor product offering. Then and only then will they bother to stop the reruns and might just ad something more. For the 5+ age group and anyone that has lived in a country not run by the foxes there is this new (Laugh) thing called the internet and TV through a 29 cent set top box is as dead as a dodo. Hulu anyone. if you don’t know what that is then keep it going Freeview. I imagine by 2047 in Australia the government might just admit that they stuffed it up and change it.

    At least channel 9 did not give us another pointless HD sport channel and is keeping the HD that they have even if the footy show will not be in 15 times a day. So for all the complainers out there the only way anything will change is if you either stop watching it all together or tell the provider that you don’t like the programming. For the rest of us there is IPTV. In HD as well if your not with Telstra and swim outside of the foxtell bigpond.

    Anyone ever herd of a VPN. Oh its not the ABCs new channel either.

  8. And isn’t the comments policy supposed to ensure posts are respectable and considerate of other peoples’ tastes and opinions rather then everyone slagging off at each other?

    You can tell with the launch of GO there are more people on websites like this taking parts in forums about it.

  9. It looks like a good channel. I can see myself watching it more than the regular channel. I watched Bad Lads Army on Monday night without any problems. I also like Survivor, Terminator and Gossip Girl.

    And if they are repeating prime programming during the next day. Then that is probably the best content on FTA day time tv.

  10. @Craig. Thanks for clearing that up.

    My question then is – if the government knew what a shi**y current job commercial stations were doing, why expand the license to give them more channels and deeper pockets? Total neglect of public service and duty…as usual.

  11. Honestly people. Who needs tv when we have such entertaining blogs. :))

    Thomas, who cares if people want to “dumbly” sit in front of their TV screens? Let them. Sorry, I really do not care. I get pleasure knowing the sheep are being distracted while “they” run the world. After all, that’s the grand master plan. I once read something along the lines of “Give them sport so as to distract them and let us run the world”.

    Geez.They’re not exactly going to give us television that jolts us out of our stupor. 😛

    Plus, at least now I get to watch reruns of Seinfeld again 😀

  12. Micheal the whole point of this bitching is that the same rich pr**k millionaires are dominating our TV screens controlling what they feed us. Diversity is key! You blind fool.

    Fair go to independent media.

  13. What a pack of whining, negative hard-to-please pack of wankers. Hope you’re all not like this at your place of work, or with your families….. God help your colleagues and your children.

    Give em a GO!

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