In this clip, Liz Jacka explains that public broadcasting in Australia in the 1920s and 30s followed the British model and was designed to inform, educate and entertain – in that order.

In the 1920s, Australian society and culture were influenced by Britain, which was still thought of by many as 'the Mother Country'. When the Government took control of 'A'-class radio stations, their resulting formation was influenced by the British model developed under the first Director-General of the BBC, John Reith.

The legislaton which allowed the government to take over the 'A'-class licenses was passed in March 1932. The Reithian model sees broadcasting as a 'public service' which should act as a 'cultural, moral and educative force for the improvement of knowledge, taste and manners' (Scannell, Paddy and Cardiff, David, A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1991).

'Broadcasting ... carries direct information on a hundred subjects to innumerable people who thereby will be enabled not only to take more interest in events which formerly were outside their ken, but who will after a short time be in a position to make up their own minds on many matters of vital moment, matters which formerly they had either to receive according to the dictated and partial versions or opinions of others, or to ignore altogether. A new and mighty weight of public opinion is being formed...' (John Rieth, Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1924, as quoted in Scannell and Cardiff). 

Liz Jacka researches in the areas of broadcasting history and policy and is Emeritus Professor at University of Technology Sydney.

This is a behind-the-scenes documentary from 1955 revealing the kind of organisation that went into making a daily radio program at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (later, Corporation).

Reflecting on the fact that at this time the ABC was an audio-only broadcaster, this film has an unusual introduction. Instead of having written credits, the film opens with shots of the key National Film Board crew members at work on the program.

The presenter, Rupert Chance, introduces each crew member as we see them on the screen. There are no written credits.

The film features excerpts from radio programs at the time including Blue Hills, as well as appearances by sports commentator Bruce Weber and newsreader Paul McLeay, and Eugene Goossens conducting at the Sydney Town Hall.

In this clip, Tim Bowden explains how ABC radio, which was broadcast nationally, became a unifying factor in a big country. It was vital to Australia's cultural development and for its role in relaying news and sport around the country.

'At 8.00pm on 1 July 1932, the Prime Minister Joseph Lyons inaugurated the ABC. The ABC then controlled 12 stations – 2FC and 2BL in Sydney, 3AR and 3LO in Melbourne, 4QG in Brisbane, 5CL in Adelaide, 6WF in Perth, 7ZL in Hobart and the relay stations 2NC in Newcastle, 2CO at Corowa, 4RK in Rockhampton and 5CK at Crystal Brook.

'Opening day programs included the first Children's Session with Bobby Bluegum; the first sports program, Racing Notes with WA Ferry calling the Randwick races; British Wireless News received by cable from London; weather, stock exchange and shipping news; the ABC Women's Association session (topics were commonsense housekeeping and needlecraft); a talk on goldfish and their care; Morning Devotions and music' (ABC website).

Initially all shows were broadcast live to air, and each state ran its own programs. By the end of 1933 there were regular program relays between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Hobart joined the network once the Bass Strait cable was laid between Tasmania and the mainland in 1936.

Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author.

This audio clip is from the original recording, made in London by the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra, of Charles Williams’ 'Majestic Fanfare’.

Summary by Paul Byrnes

In this clip, Tim Bowden explains that newsreels were how people received their visual 'current affairs fix' before television.

Cinesound Review called itself 'The Voice of Australia', and was touted by Ken Hall (its managing editor) as the 'all-Australian newsreel'.

Like its predecessor The Australasian Gazette, Cinesound Review projected images of Australia and Australians that promoted national myths and heroes.

Newsreels featured iconic personalities – Aussie sportsmen and women, daring aviators and adventurers, glamorous socialites, courageous Aussie diggers and sun-bronzed Aussie lifesavers.

Production teams were skilled at recreating the drama of occasions, and frequently represented grand social and civic events.

The newsreels scored a coup at the opening of the monumental Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, when a camera operator captured footage of the infamous Captain de Groot as he slashed the ribbon ahead of the Premier, Jack Lang.

The legendary Australian fillmmaker, producer and director Ken G Hall was Cinesound's managing editor for 25 years. Hall boasted, 'We never used a foreign story except during the war and all those stories involved Australian servicemen and were made by Australian cameramen'.

Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author.

This clip shows the opening title sequence from the Cinesound Review newsreel. Five Cinesound cameras appear around the edges of the frame and the head of the Cinesound kangaroo is superimposed in the centre. The title graphic – 'Cinesound Review’ – appears as the newsreel’s theme music plays over the soundtrack.

Liz Jacka describes the initial programming and influences on early television in Australia.

On 16 September 1956 the test pattern on Sydney's TCN9 gave way to a grainy black-and-white image of presenter Bruce Gyngell speaking the first words uttered on Australia television: 'Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to television'.

The Broadcasting and Television Act 1953 stated that 'licensees shall, as far as possible, use the services of Australians in the production and presentation of radio and television programs'.

At first, television was broadcast for only 22 hours each week. Local content for television was mostly low-cost variety and quiz shows.

HSV7 Melbourne and ABC-TV went to air in time for the November 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Other stations followed over the next two years: in Brisbane (QTQ and BTQ), Adelaide (ADS and NWS), Perth (TVW) and Hobart (TVT). 

The ABC's television service in Sydney (ABN2) launched in 1956 with a news bulletin read by James Dibble. Dibble continued as the ABC's newsreader until 1983.

Liz Jacka researches in the areas of broadcasting history and policy and is Emeritus Professor at University of Technology Sydney.

Bruce Gyngell's famous words, 'Good evening... and welcome to television', launched the new medium in Australia on 16 September 1956.

The opening line was actually not filmed on the night due to technical difficulties; the surviving footage presented here was recreated, reportedly the following year, for TCN9 Sydney’s first anniversary special.

Read more about the surviving footage of Australian television's opening night.

Tim Bowden describes the popularity of radio dramas and soap operas in the 1950s and 60s, before television took over people's attention in the evenings.

He mentions examples including Blue Hills (1949–76), Yes, What? (1936–40), Dr Paul (1949–70) and Portia Faces Life (1952–70).

Serials populated by 'ordinary Australian families' were the most popular entertainment on radio in the 1950s. The genre termed 'soap opera' originated in American radio serials of the 1930s, and owes its name to the sponsorship of programs by major soap and powder manufacturers.

Promoted as a way to 'liven the humdrum', they offered an escape from the drudgery of real life. Listeners rode the rollercoaster of emotional crises throught their beloved characters.

The focus on nuclear familes – mum, dad and the kids – expressed and reinforced the most important social values of Australia in the 1950s.

The most famous of all Australian radio soap operas in the 1950s was Blue Hills, which aired Monday to Thursday from 1949 to 1976, a total of 5795 episodes. Blue Hills was broadcast as part of the ABC radio Country Hour.

The 15-minute serial dealt with the problems of rural life and recounted the adventures of the Gordon family. Whole towns ground to a halt for 15 minutes each day and the service in stores and pubs virtually stopped while each episode went to air.

Other popular soap operas included When a Girl Marries, Portia Faces Life and the classic Dad and Dave.

Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author.

Few Australian radio serials have had the enduring popularity of Yes, What?.

A total of 520 episodes were broadcast on Adelaide radio station 5AD with the first going to air on 23 June 1936 and continuing until December 1940.

Originally titled The Fourth Form at St Percy’s, it was based on an English radio series called, The Fourth Form at St Michael’s.

The show was written and produced by, and starred, Adelaide lawyer and actor Rex ‘Waca’ Dawe who played the Headmaster of St Percy’s with a small number of other cast members playing his students in the Fourth Form.

The series was being broadcast nationally by 1938 and 300 episodes are still available through Grace Gibson Productions for broadcast on commercial stations.

Sony released CD box sets of the serial in the 2000s.

Writer Mac Gudgeon talks about the importance of Australian content on our screens – it reflects our culture and society. If we are unable to tell our stories, diversity will disappear.

'Action! Suspence! Drama! Join the typical team of investigators from the Victoria Police force as they probe major crimes throughout the State'.

In 1964 Melbourne's HSV7 commissioned a weekly police drama called Homicide from the production house of Hector and Dorothy Crawford. Based on their earlier radio drama D24, the first episode, 'The Stunt', screened at 7.30pm on Tuesday 20 October 1964.

For the first time in a television drama, Australian audiences were confronted with culturally familiar settings and characters without American or English accents.

Cops in Ford Falcons chased criminals around Melbourne backstreets, rather than American police in Chevrolets steaming down Sunset Strip. According to Australian Classic TV, this makes Homicide 'the most important and most popular drama series ever produced in Australia'.

Homicide was a great success and ran on the Seven Network for close to 500 one-hour episodes for over 13 years. The series achieved limited international sales, the first ever to do so, and stimulated the production of other local television drama in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in the police crime genre: Cop Shop (Seven), Division 4 (Nine) and Matlock Police (Ten).

Homicide demonstrated two significant factors to the Australia broadcast industry, relating to production at the time. First, it showed that the local industry was capable of producing quality dramas, using the talents of a large pool of local actors, directors, writers and production crews. It further demonstrated that Australian audiences would watch, and actually preferred to watch, programs made by Australians for Australians.

Mac Gudgeon is a freelance writer of film, television and theatre.

In this teaser, leading in to Homicide’s opening title sequence, convict Edgar Thompson (Roy Alexander) is on the run after escaping from the prison farm at Beechworth. He heads for a shack in the countryside, not realising that a man called Matthew Hawke (actor uncredited) is inside. A confrontation follows. Later, a man driving past the shack finds it in flames – with Thompson’s body inside. Summary by Kate Matthews.

Tim Bowden talks about how the introduction of TV in Australia in 1956 affected radio. Radio soon changed focus and continued to prosper, particularly during daytime hours and because of its immediacy.

The introduction of television services in Australia brought vast changes to the radio industry. Radio's serial dramas, variety and quiz shows – the mainstay of evening programming – appealed less to listeners when they discovered they could watch similar formats on televison.

Many listeners would rather watch films and shows imported from the United States than sit in a room and listen to a locally produced, original play on the radio. Some radio broadcasters predicted that television would be the death of radio altogether. But radio reinvented itself, and fought back powerfully on two fronts.

First, radio could report news instantly, while television news was intially slower to produce. So radio increased its news reporting. Radio stations bought more cars and fitted them with two-way radios, to get to the scene of news stories and quickly report back to the newsrooms. Radio promoted itself as the medium for the news 'scoop'. 

Second, radio introduced a format termed 'talkback'. With television up and running in Australia, listeners still continued to tune into their favourite talkback shows on radio. So radio stations looked for ways to enhance the format and invited their listeners to 'phone in'. Previously illegal, the break for radio broadcasters came in 1967 when the Federal Parliament authorised the broadcast of material via the telephone.

At 9am on 17 April 1967, radio host Mike Walsh on 2SM opened the lines to listeners' calls, making him the first presenter to have his own legal talkback program on Australian radio.

Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author.

Barry Jones introduces his 3DB show and discusses road rules with a caller on the second day of legal talkback radio in Australia, 18 April 1967.

Read more about the introduction of talkback radio in Australia in 1967.

Ray Edmondon describes how, following the advent of television in 1956, newsreels in Australia shared the common fate of cinema newsreels in other parts of the world.

The medium became a news magazine, gradually shrinking in length and increasing in sponsored content to compensate for diminishing budgets.

In 1970 the two rival newsreel production companies combined: the all-Australian Cinesound Review joined forces with Fox Movietone News (Australian edition) to become Australian Movie Magazine. The venture quietly faded out as a production company in 1975.

The NFSA's Cinesound-Movietone Newsreel Collection has been added to the Australian Memory of the World Register, part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Program.

Ray Edmondson has been an international leader in preserving, restoring, interpreting and presenting audiovisual media. For his outstanding contributions to audiovisual archiving, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1987 and made the NFSA's first Curator Emeritus, in 2001.

This 'year in review’ edition is not a typical example of the newsreel’s format. It presents some of the significant events of 1971 and includes a range of story types.

This clip includes scenes of anti-apartheid demonstrations against South African sporting teams; John Gorton’s tour of Vietnam; William McMahon becoming Prime Minister; a wool fashion parade staged in the New Guinea Highlands; an unusual wedding celebrated underwater at Sydney’s Marineland; and tennis player Evonne Cawley (then Goolagong).

Note: the quality of the soundtrack on this clip is poor because of deterioration of the original sound negative.

In this clip, Tim Bowden talks about the influential and groundbreaking early ABC current affairs program, This Day Tonight (1967–78). He describes it as cheeky and irreverent but also hard-hitting and – controversially – satirical.

Arriving even earlier was the ABC's Four Corners (1961–current), which first went to air on a Saturday night at 8.30pm on 19 August 1961. The program was presented by Michael Charlton and was the first of 17 episodes to be presented live.

The first item was an interview with an American astronaut, Scott Carpenter. Next followed a story about the end of the Second World War and the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945. Interviews with musician Larry Adler and swimmer Jon Konrads concluded the program.

Several weeks later, Four Corners producer Bob Raymond and Michael Charlton took cameras to an area that few white Australians had ever seen – Box Ridge Aboriginal reserve near Casino in northern New South Wales. An elderly man living on the reserve made the observation that they weren't living in a democracy: 'An Aboriginal kiddie born here is not a citizen of Australia', he said.

The program delivered a powerful political punch. The NSW Government discussed it at a specially convened Cabinet meeting two days after the program aired.

Four Corners has been part of the national story ever since: exposing scandals, triggering inquiries, inspiring debates, confronting taboos and interpreting fads, trends and subcultures.

One of the most memorable Four Corners programs was 'The Moonlight State', broadcast on 11 May 1987, which included footage of illegal booze joints, prostitution and gambling dens in Queensland, the existence of which had long been denied by Queensland's conservative government under Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The subsequent inquiry saw senior police officers go to gaol and the government voted out.

Tim Bowden is a broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, oral historian and author.

Image: Reporter Bob Sanders on the streets of Sydney for the first episode of Four Corners, which aired on the ABC on Saturday 19 August 1961.

In this clip, Liz Jacka talks about how the revival of the Australian film industry in the 1970s also led to a golden age of TV mini-series in the 1980s.

In 1981 an adaptation of Neville Shute's novel A Town Like Alice went to air on the Seven Network. The production was a blockbuster event, screened over three nights – a drama series with three episodes each of 120 minutes. A Town Like Alice was a national (and later international) success with audiences, and stimulated the interest of television networks in mini-series.

At the same time, 10BA tax concessions provided investment funding for quality film and television productions for filmmakers to explore ideas and techniques. Productions became more adventurous and inventive, drawing on European and American styles of production but reflecting Australia cultural and special themes. These factors created the conditions for the production of dozens of high-rating mini-series that were snapped up by television networks and eagerly consumed by the viewing public.

At first, historical themes dominated, ranging from the portrayal of life in the penal colonies in For the Term of His Natural Life (1983), Sara Dane (1982) and Under Capricorn (1984); bushranging in The Last Outlaw (1980); the pioneering spirit in All the Rivers Run (1983); the rise of nationalism in Eureka Stockade (1984); the treatment of Aboriginal Australians in Women of the Sun (1982); industrial unrest in the 1920s in Waterfront (1984) and, in the 1990s, convent life in the 1960s in Brides of Christ (1991). In 1985 Return to Eden broke new ground with a story set in the contemporary world of corporate high-flyers.

The Kennedy-Miller organisation – creators of the Mad Max films – also produced a set of mini-series that dealt with major historical events in new ways: The Dismissal (the downfall of the Whitlam Labor Government); Bodyline (the controversial Test cricket series between Australia and England in the 1930s); Cowra Breakout (the Second World War and a massacre of Japanese prisoners-of-war in Australia); and Vietnam (dealing with Australia's involvement in that war).

The mini-series also explored contemporary Australian life in detail with the ABC's Scales of Justice (1983), The Magistrate (1989) and (later) Blue Murder (1995), and SBS's In Between (1987). In Between was the first large-scale local mulitcultural productionn for the ethnic broadcaster.

Liz Jacka researches in the areas of broadcasting history and policy and is Emeritus Professor at University of Technology Sydney.

At a garden party, Douglas Jardine (Hugo Weaving), the very model of an English gentleman and a very fine cricketer, is discussing the phenomenon of the young Donald Bradman (Gary Sweet) with his friends and colleagues – all gentlemen players and selectors. There’s Lord Harris (Frank Thring), one of the English selectors and a close friend of Jardine’s family, there’s the former English captain (Rhys McConnochie) and the flamboyant cricketer Percy George Fender, (John Gregg). Jardine says that Bradman is so good he’s going to change the way cricket will be played. His friends disagree, saying that Bradman is a flash in the pan and no match for England’s softer pitches. Summary by Janet Bell.

In this clip, Liz Jacka discusses how the arrival of SBS TV in 1980 opened Australian television up to the world with the arrival of programming from a broad range of countries.

She characterises the first 10 years of SBS TV as focused on addressing particular ethnic communities. From about 1990 onwards, the character of SBS changed and it has since targeted a wider cosmopolitan audience more generally attracted to diversity and experimentation in TV content.

Between 1945 and 1975, nearly four million people migrated to Australia. The trigger for this large-scale migration was the end of the Second World War, and many were displaced people fleeing war-torn Europe.

As the number of new arrivals increased, Australia's ethnic communities criticised the Anglo-centricity of the broadcast media. Many migrants felt Australian radio and television did not cater to audiences from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

In 1975, two small radio stations – 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne – began broadcasting for four hours a day in seven and eight languages respectively. Initially established to inform migrant communities about the newly-introduced Medibank health system, the service gradually expanded.

In 1977 the Broadcasting and Television Act was changed to provide for the establishment of a national Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) with mulitlingual radio and television services.

SBS Television went to air on Friday 24 October 1980. The first program screened by SBS was a documentary by Peter Luck about the history of Australian immigration. In its early days SBS was available only in Sydney and Melbourne, cities with large numbers of non-English-speaking migrants. Since then, SBS has extended its service nationally.

SBS policy dictated that half the scheduled programs should be conducted in a language other than English. SBS Radio broadcasts in English and 67 other languages, the major languages spoken at home by millions of Australians. These languages include, for example, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Vietnamese, Romanian, Slovenian, Tongan, Welsh, Yiddish, Urdu, Bosnian, Bengali and Assyrian, as well as Australian Indigenous languages.

Liz Jacka researches in the areas of broadcasting history and policy and is Emeritus Professor at University of Technology Sydney.

Image: detail of SBS logo, published under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0.

Scott Goodings talks about how TV soap Number 96 became a phenomenon in the early 1970s, coinciding with a freeing up of the arts in Australia.

'Catch up with everybody who's catching up with everybody else at Number 96' (Number 96 advertising slogan).

On Monday 13 March 1972, Sydney's TEN 10 screened the first episode of a new soap opera that changed the face of Australian television. On that night, Australian television lost its virginity.

Australia's first prime-time soap opera – Number 96 – commanded the attention of viewers with a blend of sex, suspense, and situation comedy.

Set in a fictional apartment block in Sydney, it traced 'the lives, loves and emotions of ordinary people'. The series brought taboo subjects like sex, rape, infidelity, drugs, racism and homosexuality into many homes for the first time. It was a form of education for families, dressed up as popular entertainment.

When Lucy had her breast cancer scare, Australian women rushed to their GPs and had their first-ever screening for breast cancer. Don Finlayson, a lawyer who happened to be openly gay, developed as the sanest resident in the block of flats.

Number 96 broke new ground for commercial television. The attraction was not just the show's raunchiness; its mix of drama and comedy made it widely appealing.

Number 96 exploited the cliffhanger as a dramatic device like no other show, with subplots involving the 'knicker snatcher', the 'pantyhose strangler' and the 'hooded rapist'.

Despite the largely adult content of Number 96, at one point the series was the No.1 rated show with children aged 5 to 12! While viewers loved the show, media commentators and 'the Establishment' criticised it, and censors scrutinised its every moment.

Number 96 screened on weeknights for five-and-a-half years and a staggering 1218 episodes.

Scott Goodings is a self-confessed TV Freak and freelance television reviewer.

It’s strange to think that Kylie Minogue was only on Neighbours for two years, so indelibly is she associated with the show. The only thing viewers loved more than her character Charlene, a plucky apprentice mechanic in overalls and a riot of blonde curls, was her romance with Scott, played by Jason Donovan.  

Their TV marriage in 1987 was and remains the royal wedding of Australian soap, an event almost as important in the 1980s as the Charles and Di nuptials – at least to the more than 20 million people across Australia and Britain who tuned in for it. Charlene’s bridal look – illusion netting, appliqué, baby’s breath floating in her permed fringe – inspired countless copy-cats.  

Minogue and Donovan had been child actors together, playing siblings in the 1970s TV show Skyways, but by this time an off-screen relationship was developing, and the chemistry as they exchange looks at the altar seems movingly real. Their paths would track close initially, as both began musical careers and even recorded a duet together, but it wasn’t long before Minogue – now forever just Kylie – shot off into the stratosphere of awards, gold records, multi-million-dollar tours and style reinventions, becoming the ‘Princess of Pop’ and the most successful Australian female recording artist of all time.  

In this clip, Scott Goodings talks about the reality TV revolution in Australia in the early 2000s. In particular, Big Brother (2001–14, reintroduced in 2020) led to an influx of 'ordinary Australians' appearing on TV that were different to the people represented in local TV dramas.

The rise of home video technology was behind the ratings success of a new kind of program, Australia's Funniest Home Video Show, launched on Nine in 1990. The show combined viewers' video clips with sound effects and comedy voice-overs. However it was not without its antecedents, such as Candid Camera.

These technologies have also reduced the cost of professional news gathering and led to increased sourcing of footage from the public in the pre-smartphone and pre-social media 1990s, most famously in the Rodney King case in Los Angeles.

The 1990s also saw the start of the low-cost 'reality TV' phenomenon that dissolved the boundaries between game shows and documentaries. Reality TV productions involve using ordinary people, and in doing so the medium of television comes to play a direct role in contestants' lives. Notable local examples from the 1990s – before various talent and cooking competitions exploded the format in the 21st century – included Race Around the World (1997) and Going Home (1999).

Cheap and portable cameras were behind the success of the ABC's Race Around the World. The program followed a group of young filmmakers who were funded to travel the world and record 10 x four-minute documentaries using camcorders. Race Around the World introduced the viewing public to John Safran, who famously demonstrated his techniques for breaking into Disneyland and streaking through the streets of Jerusalem.

SBS was also experimenting with production technologies and drama and comedy formats in its 1999 program Going Home. The show was based on the interactions of evening commuters on Sydney's rail network, and their commentaries on the events of their day.

Scott Goodings is a self-confessed TV Freak and freelance television reviewer.

This excerpt comes from Australian Idol Series 1, Episode 32: Finale Live From the Opera House. The hosts are Andrew G (Osher Günsberg) and James Mathison with the Opera House used as a dramatic backdrop in the final showdown between Guy Sebastian and Shannon Noll. The choice of location adds musical credibility to the event.

This special episode ran for two hours, with the excitement building across the first hour of musical performances and sweeping shots of the crowd. Here at the one-hour mark, fireworks allow for the release of some of that tension and hint at the big budget behind the program.

The soundtrack features an inoffensive but rather bland fanfare, typical of a fireworks broadcast, and then morphs into a remix of the Australian Idol theme song. The display is juxtaposed with the faces of screaming fans before Noll and Sebastian arrive on stage. The performers' dress and style have been carefully crafted to contrast what they have to offer voters.

The Australian Idol logo is everywhere on the night and colourful lighting and crane shots successfully emulate a concert setting. The camera picks out famous faces in the crowd including Kieran Perkins and his wife Samantha. Idol judges Ian 'Dicko' Dickson, Marcia Hines and Mark Holden watch on, as do proud family members and third-place-finalist Cosima De Vito.

This event employs multiple cameras and slick editing. It's a good example of professional live editing and successfully captures the energy and excitement for the television viewing audience.

Notes by Beth Taylor

In this clip from 2005, Mac Gudgeon talks about the origins of community television (CTV) in the 1990s and why it is so important.

Since this interview was recorded in 2005, most community TV licences have expired as community broadcasting has shifted online.

Community television was allocated to Channel 31 on the UHF band in 1992. 

It was open access television for individuals and groups from all areas of the community including educational institutions, filmmakers, multicultural and community groups, sporting bodies and local businesses.

CTV programming reflected a wide range of communities including language groups, environmental and social justice groups, LGBTQI+ programming, as well as local information, local sport, student productions, Indigenous programs, panel discussions and magazine-style entertainment.

CTV was made possible by low-cost technologies, especially affordable and relatively portable video-recording equipment in the 1990s. It traditionally catered to community interests not served by mainstream broadcasting.

Mac Gudgeon is a freelance writer of film, television and theatre.

This is a short clip from Dulcie Yowyeh's interview with actor 'Steve' on Sydney community TV station CTV-1.

Steve talks about filming a tiny speaking part in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

In this clip from an interview recorded in 2005, Christina Spurgeon talks about social inclusion aspects of 'crossing the digital divide', in the transition from analogue to digital TV transmission.

The commercial and national broadcasters began digital television transmission on 1 January 2001 in the metropolitan markets of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The phase-out of analogue transmission was completed in December 2013.

Digital television broadcasting provides higher quality viewing and more television services by using the same digital technology used in computers, compact discs and mobile phones. 

It delivers clearer, sharper pictures with less interference and ghosting, and has allowed for additional channels and better access to services like subtitles, captioning and datacasting.

The difference between analogue (traditional) and digital televison lies in the way information is carried from the source (the transmitter) to the receiver (the television).

With analogue broadcasting the signal is in the form of a continuous wave, whereas digital is in the form of discrete bits of information.

To receive digital TV, viewers need either a digital television set that can process and display the full digital signal, or a digital top box that can convert the broadcast to an analogue signal for reception by a traditional analogue television set.

Christina Spurgeon has lectured in digital media and entertainment industries. She has a professional background in Australian media and communications policy and radio journalism, and is a published author.