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Tassie broadcaster turns 60

TNT9, more recently known as 7Tasmania, is celebrating 6 decades on the air.

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TNT9, more recently known as 7Tasmania, marks its 60th anniversary today.

The station began broadcasting originally to northern Tasmania, on the 26th of May 1962 with The Mickey Mouse Club followed by a 15 minute local news bulletin, before the Governor of the day officially opened the station.

News Director Grant Wilson tells TV Tonight, “The station, which still operates from the same building has, like most regional broadcasters, faced times of boom and bust. Technology being the centre of these phases. The introduction of videotape recorders, ENG cameras and portable microwave links enhanced the capacity for the business to create local programming. Entertainment, quiz, children’s and variety shows tied the station to local audiences.

“The advent of television service equalisation, know as aggregation in the early 90’s saw most regional operators across the country align with one network. These affiliation agreements meant that regional broadcasters paid for network programming whether they used it or not. So began the demise of locally produced content.

“In Tasmania TNT9 brokered affiliation agreements with both the 7 and 10 networks and therefore discretion to program the station by cherry picking from both networks. We considered our position as a bonus and quickly established our programming mix the most watched in Tasmania. Changes to the local news product at the turn of the century were well received by viewers and the TNT 9 news offering has never been headed.

“Culturally TNT has always been a great place to work. One of hard work and equally hard play mixed with a comradery and a common desire to produce the best possible service for our viewers. The signal might come out of a playout centre in Sydney and the programming is almost exclusively a relay of the 7 network programs but the original culture remains.”

Over its six decades it has been known as TasTV, Southern Cross (its current owners) and rebranded as 7Tasmania in 2018.

“The celebration has been on air with news segments taking a look back to the good old days, on-air promotions of the celebration and will culminate this Saturday night with a cocktail party for over 150 past and present employees at the Launceston Country Club Casino. People are travelling from all over the country to attend and one former employee is travelling from the UK to join the fun.”

Amended.

4 Responses

  1. People tend to forget that 7 Tasmania also produce a bulletin for the Spencer gulf. 7 Tasmania only put their bulletins on you tube I can’t find them on 7 plus. I do like the crude jokes the Weather presenter makes at the end of each tas bulletin

  2. They got the rough end of the pineapple when the aggregation carve up happened in 1989. There weren’t enough people to have three networks in Tasmania so seven and nine had to show the odd network 10 program, thus missing out on the more popular seven and nine programs. On retrospect it would have been a better idea just to relay Melbourne programs to Tasmania rather than having the two local stations involved in a juggling act

    1. No.

      At aggregation, WIN (TVT-6) carried programmes only from Channel 9 (at that time the No. 1 network in Australia)

      Southern Cross (TNT-9) showed mostly Channel 7 programmes, with a sprinkling of Channel 10 shows.
      They cleverly promoted themselves as offering the best of 2 networks, while WIN was only “Still The One” (referring to Channel 9’s current slogan)

      Expectations from day 1 was that WIN, originating from the capital and largest city Hobart and carrying the No.1 network shows would annihilate them.

      Especially as WIN had dropped most Channel 7 and Channel 10 shows the previous year.
      (Southern Cross’s programme drop buffer was smaller)

      But they were tops from the first day when Saturday Disney got 70% of the audience vs 30% to WIN who had hired a train to travel from Hobart to Launceston, and loaded with Channel 9 import stars.

      From day 1 onwards Southern Cross had at least 12 of the top 20 shows every week, with ABC and WIN sharing the rest.

      You…

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