Home & Away

Affiliate stations in Oz have more in common with the US style of networking than with the UK regions.

Channel 7, for example, broadcasts to most of the main city areas, and the feed is networked (with appropriate time-delays where necessary). Local shows/promos/ads and news are also played out from Seven's Digital Broadcasting Centre in Melbourne, rather than inserted at the local station. Prime TV (an affiliate of 7 which broadcasts to country regions in the eastern states) gets a clean feed of Seven's shows and inserts their own captions. GWN (which broadcasts to the western country areas) operated similarly now, though they used to show programmes from a variety of networks and had their own schedule therefore. Being affilates, they could actually opt to become affilaited to a different network and suddenly start showing only Channel Nine shows, and taking their clean feed. Quite complex compared to the UK system. But as far as most big shows go (like H&A) the affiliates just get a clean version of the show sent down the line from Seven.

Si-Co pretty much summed it up, but here's a more detailed version to show you how complicated it is.

There are 5 Capital city markets (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth), 4 aggregated regional markets, which are markets that get 3 separate commercial stations plus ABC and SBS (Queensland, Nthn NSW, Sthn NSW, Victoria) and a handful of other regional markets which usually only get 2 commercial channels and ABC. Where theres 2 commercials, 1 station usually doubles up with programming from 2 of the main networks. (Tasmania, Darwin, Western Australia, and parts of Qld, NSW, Vic and South Australia.

The aggregated markets are divided up further into Sub-Markets which are usually smaller and are focused on the large provincial cities and their surrounding areas. Queensland is divided into 7 (Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Wide Bay, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba), Nthn NSW into 5 (Gold Coast, Tweed/Lismore, Tamworth, Coffs Harbour/Port Macquarie, Newcastle/Gosford), Sth NSW into 5 (Wollongong, Canberra, Wagga, Orange, Dubbo), and Victoria into 6 ( Albury, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland, Mildura, Shepparton)

Now for who owns what:

- Nine owns the Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin stations.

- Sunraysia TV is an affiliate and owns Nine Perth.

- Nine Adelaide is owned by Southern Cross broadcasting who also own the Ten affiliate in the 4 aggregated markets (Southern Cross Ten), the Seven/Ten affiliate in Tasmania (Southern Cross Television), and the Seven affiliate in Darwin and Central Australia (Southern Cross Darwin & Southern Cross Central)

-WIN Television (or WIN Australia as they now refer to themselves) operates the Nine affiliate stations in the aggregated Qld, Sthn NSW and Victoria markets, plus Tasmania, Western Australia and some of regional South Australia.

-NBN (Newcastle Broadcasting) owns the stations in the Nth NSW aggregated market.


-Seven owns it's 5 capital City staions plus the regional Queensland aggregated market (Seven Queensland). This means Seven basically owns 12 different stations.

-Prime Television is the Seven affiliate for the stations in the remaining 3 aggregated markets plus GWN (Golden West Network) in Western Australia.


-Network Ten just owns it's 5 Capital City Stations.

It gets even more complicated with WIN and Southern Cross owning a joint Nine/Ten station in regional SA, plus a joint Ten digital only station in Tasmania. It'd be so much easier if our television was organised similar to the UK instead of being a mix between the UK and US systems.

Thanks for that 9 - you explained it much better than me!

I knew bits and pieces of that already, but you plugged some crucial gaps for me.

As far as I know, only Tasmania is behind in H&A (by about one week), the rest of the stations are on a par with Seven. Tassie is resuming H&A next year on 17 January (so I have heard), possibly a week after Seven is due to air the season return.

So why aren't they gonna catch it up then?

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with Tasmania being behind with H&A, but Channel Nine at least, don't let any of their affiliates show a program or an episode of a program before it's been shown in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne. If Channel Seven does the same thing this could explain why Tasmania is behind, as they start daylight savings (summer time) a month earlier than NSW, Vic and SA.

This would mean that a new episode of H&A would be shown at 6pm AEST which would be an hour before it's shown in the mainland capital cities. So if Tasmania is a week behind, then they can still show H&A at 6pm AEST because the eps have already been seen in the cap. cities a week earlier... if that makes sense lol.

That makes sense...

Unfortunate for the Tassies though who had an Olympic Cliffanger of **UK/IRELAND SPOILER ALERT** Rhys leaving Beth so he could go back to Shelly compared to everyone else who got the much-hyped/touted/talked-about death of Noah .

But if being on par would mean Tassie saw it before Sydney I could understand - but surely the Eastern cities are going to see it before the Western cities do anyway?

BTW - if anyone wants to see what we mean by "longer recaps" the 2003 Season Finale (taped off of GWN in Australia) and the 2004 Season Return (taped off of Five in the United Kingdom) can be downloaded from www.backtothebay.com

I don't know if it's a similar situation over there, but over here, because basically all the big Network executives are in Sydney or Melbourne, Those markets are usually the most important, so it doesn't matter what happens in the other markets, as long as its right in Sydney or Melbourne.

The last set of 2004 titles started on Monday night here. 2 scenes have been re-arranged and for those who already know, or don't care who's left Dan and Scott are now in a shot together, and Jesse and Josie are now by themselves .

H&A wraps up the 2004 season next Friday (26 Nov) and with a developing storyline this week Eric Dalby turns out to be Alf Stewart's grandson , it looks like we may have another updated set of titles to start off 2005 with in February.

That new shot doesn't work as well as the previous one, the couple in question throwing water at us led nicely into the song's key-change and the waves crashing down in the next scene.

But what a great pair of episodes last Thursday and Friday huh?!

BTW - Australian episodes can be downloaded from www.summerbay3000.net - highly illegal but we can blame ITV for making us have to wait so long.

What do the Aussie networks show then for the next couple of months instead of Neighbours and Home and Away?

I could understand moving out of the schedules over the Christmas/New Year fortnight (as they should do in Britain!), but a couple of months seems alot to fill.

Noooooooooooooo! Home & Away all year lets us catch up with Australia.