As early as 1929, two Melbourne commercial radio stations, 3UZ and 3DB were conducting
experimental mechanical television broadcasts - these were conducted in the early hours
of the morning, after the stations had officially closed down.
In 1934 Dr Val McDowall at amateur station 4CM Brisbane conducted experiments in electronic
television.
Television broadcasting in Australia began officially on 16 September 1956, with the
opening of TCN-9, quickly followed by national and commercial stations in Sydney and Melbourne,
all these being in 625-line black and white.
The commencement date was designed so as to provide coverage of the Olympic Games in Melbourne.
It has now grown to be a nationwide system that includes a broad range of public, commercial,
community, subscription, narrowcast, and amateur stations.
Colour television in the PAL 625-line format went to a full-time basis on 1 March 1975
while subscription television, on the Galaxy platform, began in January 1995.
Digital terrestrial television was introduced on 1 January 2001 in Australia's five largest
capital cities.
Australia has three national public broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the
Special Broadcasting Service, as well as more recently, National Indigenous Television..
ABC Television is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, established in 1956.
ABC, ABC2, ABC3 and ABC News 24 are available nationally, in addition to Australia Plus,
focused at the Asia-Pacific region.
ABC carries a variety of local and national news, current affairs, and sports coverage,
as well as Australian arts and comedy programming.
It is well known for broadcasting British programming, primarily from the BBC, ITV,
and Channel 4.
ABC2, a second 'digital-only' channel began on 7 March 2005.
Aimed at providing 'more choice, more often', the channel mainly provided repeats of popular
ABC productions, such as Australian Story and Stateline, and was prohibited by law from
carrying programmes from a number of genres, however, since the removal of these restrictions
the channel's content has been broadened considerably.
ABC3, a third 'digital-only' kids channel began on 4 December 2009.
ABC News 24, A digital news channel began on 22 July 2010.
ABC 4 Kids, A digital shared channel began on 2 May 2011.
SBS Television is a division of the Special Broadcasting Service, founded to provide for
the estimated 20% of Australians that speak a language other than English in the home,
aiming to complement the ABC.
In recent years SBS TV has begun to target a broader cross-section of the Australian
community, in part because of the emergence of specialty subscription television channels
aimed at such minorities.
In addition to its free-to-air channels, SBS also has an interest in the World Movies Channel.
SBS shows many non-English language films with English subtitles, and each morning shows
news bulletins in foreign languages from around the world in its WorldWatch timeslot.
In addition to this, a great deal of programming from the PBS, Arte, BBC and CBC, and even
Comedy Central are shown.
Acquired entertainment programs include the US animated series South Park, Queer as Folk
and Inspector Rex.
In addition to news and current affairs programming such as SBS World News and Dateline, the network
also commissions locally produced documentaries, movies and comedy programs.
Less-popular mainstream sports such as soccer, cycling and athletics are also shown.
SBS currently broadcasts two channels, SBS One and SBS Two, launched on 1 June 2009.
National Indigenous Television, funded by the Commonwealth of Australia, is produced
in Sydney and broadcast via Imparja Television's existing satellite capacity.
The idea for a national, indigenous television service was initially conceived by the National
Indigenous Radio Service, which initially lobbied the government to start a new, nationwide
indigenous television network.
Although no major political party championed this cause, commercial broadcaster Imparja
Television stated in 2004 that it would run such a network, at least within its own licence
area.
In 2005 the federal Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts considered
funding such a station, and conducted a review process.