I remember it well, channel 0, the ABCB* consigned us this channel with such promise - never mind that it required the conversion of existing TV sets. But I was determined to get a good picture so bought a simple Yagi actually cut for this frequency (very wide dipoles).

Perhaps I didn't need an outdoor antenna as I could see their tower from the window (must have sent high RF to TV as this SE QLD HF signal was reported picked in Japan!)

*Australian Broadcasting Control Board.

When the SBS-TV started in Sydney it was known as Channel 0-28, with zero for VHF and 28 for UHF. Its VHF signal was so weak that most people had to try to pick it up on UHF.

Channel 0! A product of the period when the AM commercial radio lobby was so powerful they convinced the government that Australia would never need FM radio, so the VHF lower band would be better used for television!

I was working in a related area around 1990 when the Commonwealth was busily reclaiming the last of the VHF Band 2 stations from TV, to assign additional FM radio channels. Officially, this procedure was called "Band 2 clearance". Because of the inevitable pockets of resistance and complaint from broadcasters and confused TV viewers, it was known internally as "The Bantu Clearance", with reference to British colonial wars in Africa.

Maven

Channel 0, 5A and 11 were introduced to our dials at the same time, I think it was in 1963. This was in response to there not being sufficient channels available for regional stations that were popping up between 1961 and beyond.

The policy generally was that Ch 0 would only be used to introduce new metropolitan stations if it was not possible to assign them another channel at the time their licence was issued. This is why ATV0 in Melbourne and TVQ0 started out on Ch 0 instead of Ch 10. Since TEN10 was already operating in Sydney by then it is one of those bizarre incongruous bureaucratic nightmares that were designed more to cost money and waste government resources that delayed the use of Ch 10's frequency than, I dare suggest, any technical limitation at the time.

Ch 0 was later provided to SBS0-28 in 1980 in Sydney and Melbourne. As GTC mentioned, it was first known as Ch 0-28 and later Network 0-28 then just Network 28 when they dropped the use of Ch 0. Following the aggregation of regional television stations, most of which never traded at a significant profit, Network 28 became known simply as SBS due to it becoming a national broadcaster like the ABC and occupying too many channels to continue with an ident based on its Sydney headquarters. The ironic thing is, with the introduction of digital broadcasting, it would be technically feasible for SBS to broadcast on Ch 28 in all markets but I doubt they'll ever bother doing that.

After SBS abandoned Ch 0 in Sydney and Melbourne the channel became solely used for translator services in regional areas. With the recent demise of analogue broadcasting, Ch 0 has been consigned to the murky depths and will most likely never return. As digital broadcasting starts on Ch 6, Ch 5A is also goneskies.

O would also imagine that since all channels in a given area are broadcast by one transmitter these days, the use of three letter callsigns is also redundant. I am not sure if the Commonwealth Government still issues them.

Last year, even the super-conservative TCN9 in Sydney ditched their "TCN 9" signage from the front gate in favour of the more well known nine dots logo.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

AM commercial radio lobby was so powerful they convinced the government that Australia would never need FM

I kind of suspected this, would be alarming if true, but I believe it, after all there have been many cabinet shake-ups: the ABCB became the ABT became the ABA/ACA became the ACMA, phew!

Europe & the Americas kept the FM band clear after WWII.

The width of my antenna for channel 0 was over 2m but gave me excellent signal strength and my German Fernseh monitor's (1969 hybrid) varactor presets would tune Ch0 when many Australian TVs wouldn't!

If you look out the window (photo 1) you can see Mt Cootha where their tower was! Photo 2 shows TVQ-0 reception; their picture always had an odd pre-echo overshoot that would "sharpen" picture on cheap TVs (you can see it on the border lines of the Iran/Iraq war graphic) I believe it was a transmitter artifact as a reflection would follow the vertical transition.

Iran and Iraq at war? How the world has changed since the 1970s! Only difference now is that in Iran the government is fighting the people and in Iraq some of the people are fighting the government.

Anyway... Only thing I can see out your window is the roof of your shed.

Speaking of big antennas, I remember my grandmother's original antennas for NBN3 and ABHN5 being quite big - two of them in parallel on a tall mast. She lived in the Upper Hunter Valley and the two transmission towers are on Mt Sugarloaf near the F3 Freeway at Minmi. Probably more than 100km between the two spots.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

The artifact in your photo 2 looks like it could be result of too high "contrast" setting for the particular location.

You were obviously getting a very strong signal. Transmission signal modulation was calibrated to account for a certain rate of decay out to the limits of the service area. The higher end of the frequency modulation decays slightly more rapidly than the bottom end, so signal closer to the transmitter could appear out of balance toward the higher frequency.

It was not unusual for receivers very close to the transmitter to be more difficult to adjust for the perfect visual balance. Also more likely to get some minor reflected signal - eg off the roof of the shed - enough to blur the phasing to some degree.

It's all history now, with analogue transmitters switched off.

Maven

On an off-topic note, about 22 years ago I lived in staff accomodation when I worked at Gladesville Hospital. I was on the 3rd floor and on a Thorn 53T1 coloured set I could bring in all Sydney stations without an antenna at all and Prime, WIN and Capital (now Southern Cross) from Knight's Hill near Wollongong with just two foot of speaker wire jammed in the PAL socket.

Getting WIN was important back then during summer when media blackouts prevented the cricket test matches being shown live in the viewing area they were played in - something I doubt the governing bodies of sport would contemplate these days with the money they receive from broadcasters.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Growing up in Traralgon, which is about 160km from Melbourne, everyone had multi-element aerials on long poles supported by guy wires to receive the Melbourne stations.

The local stations which was GLV 10 & ABLV 4 (ABC) was transmitted from nearby Mt. Tassie. GLV 10 was the first regional TV station in Australia, commencing in late 1961.

When ATV 0 moved frequency to channel 10 in 1980, GLV 10 had to move to channel 8. GLV 8, now being wedged between HSV 7 & GTV 9, was causing interference on those adjacent stations. The broadcasting authorities gave everyone some sort of aerial filter to help alleviate the situation.

Since aggregation, these multi-arrayed monster aerials have all but disappeared from Traralgon. When I think back to those days, these monster TV aerials were a bit of a status symbol. I now think it looked pretty ugly!!

In a lot of regional areas antennas from the 1960s survive on the cable-stayed water pipe masts that were put on people's roofs and also freestanding trussed masts which you can climb if you have the energy and the daring, especially these days as the rag bolts and flanges would have some rust in them.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Only thing I can see out your window is the roof of your shed

Most likely edge of part of range called the Gap (left side), I hiked these hills through dry grass & small rocks would not do it now thinking of Eastern-Brown snakes.

artifact in your photo 2 looks like it could be result of too high "contrast"

Apparently artifact is chroma/luma group-delay from their mid-sixties (high level visual modulation?) RCA transmitter. A common problem with old transmitters that worked fine in monochrome.

QUOTE: AM commercial radio lobby was so powerful they convinced the government that Australia would never need FM

In the USA many AM stations set up sister stations in our (then) new FM band. Usually using the same callsign, with FM added on the end. Broadcasting the same program as the AM station, but with better fidelity. It took about 20 years before FM became popular, and become serious competition to our AM stations. Possibly because of stereo on FM. I remember when on vacation (holiday) in Australia back in 1986, I heard advertisements on some AM stations (4AM or was it 4CA?) announcing that they are now broadcasting in AM stereo, and that a sponsor's stereo shop was selling the receivers for AM stereo. Maybe that's when AM was starting to feel the heat from FM?

It's fairly commonplace for rural AM stations here to also run an FM station from the same building though the difference is that the two stations must have different programming, including news bulletins. Though those stations who cannot generate sufficient revenues to run two separate bulletins will simply relay a bulletin from a capital city station on their FM station and comply with local content rules on their AM station.

A little bit of cheating does go on though. In Sydney, 2GB and 2CH share an owner and the news bulletins are shared across the two stations but the content for the bulletin is mixed slightly to create a small difference. I've noticed that the traffic report on 2GB's news comes before the weather and weather comes before traffic on 2CH. All other content is different though. 2GB is Australia's highest rating station with its talk-back format and relays its programming to all other capitals plus dozens of rural stations and 2CH is a music station just for the Sydney listening area.

The one way an AM or FM station can simulcast in is on digital radio. Sydney has something like 30 digital stations to choose from with all the analogue stations simulcasting in addition to many digital-only services.

I think the reason the government hasn't mandated the death of analogue broadcasting yet is because digital radio transmissions simply doesn't have the reach of analogue, particularly AM. More transmitting stations would need to be set up to cover all the blackspots. Digital is still yet to roll out in rural areas too.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...