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Analogue TV gets an obituary

When analogue TV was turned off in regional SA yesterday, the manager of WIN TV entertained crowds with an impromptu obituary.

At 9 o’clock yesterday morning, analogue television transmission equipment was turned off at 21 transmitter sites across the Spencer Gulf, Riverland, Mount Gambier and South-East South Australia and Broken Hill TV licence areas.

The region was the second in Australia to switch to digital-only television.

But during the official events, the manager of WIN TV in SA (and former manager at Channel 8 TV in Mt Gambier) was asked to fill for a few minutes before the official changeover.

So he gave an impromptu Death Notice in the style of the old Funeral Notices that once featured each night on Channel 8 in the 80s and 90s.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMDXI9DvjHk[/youtube]

11 Responses

  1. So what happens now when there’s interference with your digital signal? We have no analogue to fall back on. Guess I can say goodbye to being able to watch Rockwiz on a Saturday night, being in poor signal area.

  2. @Kenny – three good things will come when analogue is switched off:

    1) The frequencies used for analogue TV can be used for other purposes: more bandwidth for mobile broadband, more bandwidth for digital channel quality

    2) Likely, the rules will change on sport coverage. Given everyone will be on digital after analogue is off, channels might put more first run content on their multichannels, and sport may show on a digital channel while other content shows on the main channel.

    3) The possibility of selling TV licences to other companies opens up

  3. @Stan, you are spot on. A lot of local people were not happy when WIN SA switched from Nine to Seven in October 2007 & until late 2009 when a feed of NWS 9 Adelaide came to the area, the only Channel Nine programming shown on WIN in SA was really the cricket in the summer. Now we get the Seven & Ten relayed from Adelaide with local ads inserted & WIN Nine now has the same logos & programs as the rest of the WIN stations in Australia. The way it is now is better than the way it was before the analogue switch off .

  4. I don’t live in regional SA but I believe this finally ends one of the legacies resulting from the infamous WIN-Nine War of 2007 (when WIN SA switched to Seven programming).

    As all the FTA channels will now be on a level playing field there; in-house WIN productions (like WIN News) & the WIN branding will move to the local Nine channel, & what was (until recently) known as WIN SA will simply be known as ‘Seven.’

    This lines up WIN in regional SA with the rest of the Nine-affiliated WIN stations in the eastern states. Sports broadcasts from Nine, Seven & TEN will now stay on the channels they’re affiliated to, instead of popping up on WIN SA all the time.

    This is good news for locals! Correct me if I’m wrong, though…

  5. They have to start somewhere, and I guess the country viewers are smarter since more of then have made the change to digital.

    Yes it doesn’t mean more FTA channels right away, apart from CH11 coming Jan 11. But it does free up the airways for other uses, maybe more reliable wireless Internet for the ABN?

    Quick question, did any of the morning shows report on the switch off in the area?

  6. @mikeys – What’s so urgent about switching off analogue. It doesn’t mean more digital channels. 21 transmitters in that region alone. Not just a few like the capital city stations.

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