NBNTV ~ Policy and Regulation

“It is television’s powerful capacity to influence, combined with its ownership by a few, that has produced regimes of regulation and control throughout the western world.” ~ John Saunderson, MP

Contents

Speedbumps

This article covers sixty years of NBN Television's interaction with government during its operation as a terrestrial television broadcaster. The word 'terrestrial' relates to an era of mass entertainment that began in the 1920s and, almost precisely a century later, is being replaced by a multitude of innovative spectrum and fibre-bound technologies.

From the very start, NBN faced an array of government constraints that added to the cost and complexity of doing business. But they were essential speedbumps. Without them would be chaos, inefficiency, and even greater expense for both business and customer.

Regulation of broadcasting began with radio stations and followed naturally to television. Government's influence today extends to national communications network of phone, data, and media. A country as vast as Australia requires meticulous planning of the ‘airwaves’ - the frequencies of the spectrum. Regulations serve a dual purpose of managing resources to reduce anarchy, and to limit private enterprise’s natural tendency to grow unencumbered, to the detriment of all else. Regulation of a common space is one of government’s core functions. With radio, television, phones, and all wireless technologies, that public resource is the spectrum: the frequencies, bands, or channels, used to transmit signals.

In addition to control and specification of broadcast and receiving equipment and its use of a shared resource, regulation also aims to align private behaviour with public interest. As the argument goes, the biggest company will use its dominance to make start-ups uncompetitive. Lacking competition, the winner will exploit its captive customer base and see no reason to be efficient, or even ethical.

A question arises: why have conservative governments in particular (more generally perceived to be in the pockets of oligarchs) never allowed media proprietors open season? Why, in the early days of the industry apply such a strict regime, as was the case in Australia, as inherited from Great Britain along with its parliamentary system? Of many theories, one is that by that time parliaments were the domain of careerist politicians, press magnates (Hearst, Northcliff, Murdoch) had become their natural enemy. Politicians deftly chose to play the barons against each other to lessen their ire towards the government and themselves.

This mindset in part probably steered the post-WWII Menzies government in Australia as it planned for the introduction of television, an administration well versed in the tactics of regulating radio broadcasters. Under catch phrases “consumer choice” and “public good” strict rules applied to ownership and to program content. Owner of a newspaper or radio station had limited options for acquiring a TV station, and foreign control was severely limited.

After initial battles to acquire metropolitan stations, ownership tussles moved to regional stations. When metropolitan owners began buying shares in NBN, it got attention at the national level. In August of 1963, Postmaster-general Charles Davidson told parliament that although no breach of the act had been committed in the transfer of shares in NBN, “…television as a powerful means of mass communication should not fall into the control of too few hands.” By then the term “market failure” had joined the conversation to caution that regulatory commonsense is needed to ensure a working capitalism. Laissez faire was not the best idea for any resource, let alone a spectrum carve up.

The final outcome for NBN Television and its regional cohorts was in some way predetermined by government decisions in those post-war years of the 1950s when the structure and regulation of this new industry was being contemplated. Though the intentions of all governments since have been, ostensibly, to ensure station owners best served viewers, Australia’s media barons, hardened by decades in radio and newspaper proprietorship, persistently tried to slip through gaps and oversights in policy and legislation.

Despite the clear benefits of governance and the clarity it provided the industry in its early planning and building of stations, broadcasters would never give up. But the government watchdog had teeth back then. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal's (ABT) 1977 report Self-Regulation for Broadcasters? rejected a pure industry self-regulation model. It decided that accountability for broadcasters should remain with the Tribunal, a body accountable to the public.

As the world moved on, so too did an ongoing need for legislation and the industry's inclination to oppose it. As was ever the case with moguls, they set about to weaken regulations that, in those early days of powerful government monopolies, were quite onerous in favour of the citizenry. Australia did, after all, call itself a commonwealth for good reason. In 1992 the Broadcasting Services Act redefined broadcast media as not so much a public service but more of, well, a business. Self-regulation, ever a policy pendulum, was revisited in 2011with the Finklestein Inquiry, which found that media in Australia was not sufficiently regulated in either accountability or transparency.

The Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS, later FreeTV) can have the final word. In 1999 it told a productivity commission enquiry into broadcasting:

Governments everywhere in the world have intervened in the broadcasting industry to secure a range of economic, social and cultural objectives. Australian Governments have done so for many reasons. Some of these reasons are now of diminishing relevance, while others remain highly relevant on social, cultural or economic grounds. This submission assesses key broadcasting policies, in order to ascertain whether the public benefits outweigh the costs to the community of the restrictions imposed on the industry,

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Licensing

When the first modulated radio transmissions began in that brief airwaves free-for-all preceding the 1920s, it quickly dawned that frequencies should be allocated to licensees due to the very nature of the common medium. For if anyone can use anyone else's frequency, eventually no-one will be able to sensibly or reliably transmit anything. Self-regulation in such an environment would typically lead to argument, abuse, theft, and bedlam.

For although this was how free markets were supposed to work, it was obvious this market was different: it must, by simple necessity, share the airwaves. After a brief and hilarious "sealed set" regulation in the early 1920s, whereby a receiver was manufactured fixed-tuned to only one station (the manufacturer's or their business associate's) the government changed the rules to enforce an open spectrum.

A modulation standard, amplitude, was mandated and a band chosen, termed 'medium wave' that was centred on 1MHz. If each station owner had chosen technical parameters for their broadcast it would require the listeners to still yet buy a specific design of receiver, and another receiver for different station owner’s choice, again reproducing the sealed set fiasco. If you find this too ridiculous, you're referred to the history of Australian railways where each state (then colonies) chose different widths of railway tracks that required different engines and rolling stock - and unable, therefore, to move interstate.

Some will recall the battle of the electronics giants JVC and Sony during the introduction of home video cassette recorders in the 1980s. Not dependent on government allocation of a public resource, it became a classic and memorable example of letting the market decide. JVC’s VHS eventually won against Sony’s Betacam, leaving many unhappy consumers with thousand-dollar machines (in 1980 dollars, equivalent to $4000 today) and limited availability of pre-recorded entertainment. Ironically, Sony and its Betacam format went on to dominate the professional video cassette market, proving to those early Sony VCR consumers that their technical arguments were, belatedly, valid.

While the Commonwealth specified the frequency, power, and interference levels for radio transmitters, manufacturers were free to choose an optimal receiver design. Commonsense (and regulation) had prevailed. A single radio receiver design could access all radio stations. The market was soon dominated by five-valve (tube) superheterodyne receivers.

Technical specifications also prevented each 'wireless' service (radio station) interfering with others due to technical excess or incompetence. Transmitters needed a licence (as do, for example, vehicles) to limit their power and spurious 'out of band' radiation. Radio was a particularly tricky problem too, due to the low frequencies at medium wave that could travel almost unattenuated across the entire continent, especially at night.

An interesting aside: ownership of radio and television receivers was policed by the Postmaster-General’s Department (the PMG). Households and business had to pay a for licence to operate a radio or television receiver. Such fees began at the very outset of radio receiver marketing in the 1920s, but the fee was used from 1932 to fund the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Younger readers will find hard to believe that a nation-wide fleet of roving government vans were equipped to detect radio and television receivers in homes and compare them with a list of licensed households. This rather Orwellian activity was abolished by the Whitlam government in 1974. In the category "Losing Propositions" the subsequent Fraser government tried to reintroduce receiver licence fees.

The cost of regulation was clawed back by government imposing a fee upon those who wanted to use a monopoly resource that lay within common ownership. When Newcastle Television Broadcasting Corporation (NTBC) is called a ‘licensee,’ that says it is paying licence fees and must abide by its conditions.

Licence fees became a growing burden, particularly for regional television broadcasters who were forced to expand their networks for little gain of viewers. For example, in the 1970s, gap-infill translators were being approved for regional stations, leading to a type of early 'equalisation' (detailed later in this article) as minor exceptions to the single broadcaster rule for a region. The Upper Hunter Valley - which stretched westward where the Great Dividing Range took an inland diversion as it passed Newcastle - was a reception fringe area, despite Mt Sugarloaf’s commanding height and clear reach in almost all directions.

The most westward township, Murrurundi, was as far from Mt Sugarloaf as Sydney. By 1977 it was clear something had to be done, not only for that town, which gained VHF channel 1, but for the major inland towns of Scone, Muswellbrook, and Singleton (VHF channel 10), and Merriwa and Denman outside the valley, also channel 10.

The area [eastern slopes of the range at Murrurundi] experienced a poor television service (from NEN Tamworth) due to low signal strength and ghosting caused by the local topography. Applications to operate a translator were subsequently received from TNL (NEN Tamworth) and NBL (NBN Newcastle). In a major departure from previous patterns of establishment, the ABT [Australian Broadcasting Tribunal] determined that regional areas should, where possible, be provided with more than one commercial service.

Surprisingly, both NBL and TNL agreed with the Tribunal’s finding. The ABT recommended that an initial licence be granted to NBL, with applications for a second station to be called at a later date. NBN’s Murrurundi translator commenced operation on 16 July 1979; however, licences for the second translator (which would have most likely been provided by TNL) were strangely never called.”

~ Thurlow Pg204, cites NAA/NSW & ABT 1977. (ABT: Australian Broadcasting Tribunal)

Additional to the heavy expenditure on towers, buildings, transmitters, microwave links, and labour, were added the licences for not only physical transmitters but licence fees for spectrum they used. The greater bandwidth required by a television signal was reflected in greater fees. But separate spectrum bands were used to send program from studio to transmitter site via microwave link if (almost always the case) the latter was located remote to the studio on a distant mountain top. Therefore microwave transmitters also had to be licensed for both physical equipment and for the frequencies used.

At the peak of its expansion in 2009 with around 55 remote sites, NBN (alone, not its spin-off telco SPT) paid spectrum licensing fees to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) that approached a quarter of a million dollars a year. It was one of seven major engineering departmental expenses, along with personnel, energy, maintenance, transmission, etc. A subsequent review of unused microwave capacity found savings of over a quarter of this cost if unused path licences were to be surrendered, an activity that was ongoing due to its revenue-positive effect. Sometimes, however, paying a fee to retain a band was worth the constraint to competitors.

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Ownership

Television spread across Australia in stages. The first involved a national service (ABC) and two commercial services in Melbourne and Sydney. Hearings for licensees in the 1950s became national entertainment, as media baron after mogul strove to convince the government and impress the public that their primary concern was serving the greater good.

Stage two allowed one commercial and one ABC in the capital cities of Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Adelaide. The single commercial licence disturbed the Sydney and Melbourne owners, who were already looking at nationwide networking of their two competing channels. Fairfax and Packer reasonably thought that nationwide networking of their product would enable Australian content to be more affordably produced. However, the government’s “localism” policy for station ownership, especially in the regionals, stood in their way.

For the third stage, the government invited applications for a batch of regional TV licences that at first largely covered the eastern states. In each area it was thought that two stations might operate. When sparse populations raised concerns of profitability, just one commercial station was designated for each area.

Not until 17th of July, 1961, did Newcastle Broadcasting and Television Corporation (NBTC) gain its licence. It began broadcasting on the 4th of March in 1962 as "Channel 3."

Due to the government’s determination that regionals should be controlled by those with local interest at heart, NBN’s controlling entity (NTBC Ltd) comprised the following principal shareholders: Broadcasting Company Pty. Ltd., operator of radio station 2KO (Newcastle) and 2UE (Sydney) through two subsidiary companies; The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate Pty. Ltd., publishers of the “Newcastle Morning Herald” and the “Newcastle Sun;” and Airsales Broadcasting Company Pty. Ltd. (controlled by the A.L.P.) operator of radio 2HD (Newcastle).

And although each successful applicant was neither directly nor indirectly associated with any metropolitan commercial TV station at the time of making their application, The Bulletin’s “Business, Robbery, Etc.” (13 July 1960) scribe humorously illustrated a legislative hole through which a television OB truck could be driven: “Once bestowed, however, they (station licences) may be sold to the fellow next-door or, if he happens to be the highest bidder, Ned Kelly.”

As noted by media historian Michael Thurlow regarding the future of Australian television as set by precedents during those early years: “The willingness of the government to override its regulator, and the willingness of that regulator to be overridden, defined the power dynamic which now existed between the executive and its bureaucracy.”

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Colour Television

The original equipment bought to build NBN’s studio and transmitters was largely supplied by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) as a turnkey installation. Colour television was already operating in the US, so while RCA’s electronics was capable of colour, much of the components and modules needed were missing. Should colour be introduced, as everyone knew it inevitably would be, those modules could (theoretically) be added to existing plant.

It was not to be. Technology advanced too rapidly and the early RCA machines, largely tube (thermionic valve) -based, were obsolete within a decade. Except the transmitters which were "colour-neutral," one of which survived for forty years as a venerable spare.

Even as NBN proudly broadcast its black and white pictures, overseas equipment makers were hawking their colour wares around Australia. Left to market forces, the country could have ended up with a half-dozen different standards. The technology choices were SECAM in various flavours, the US’s NTSC (denigrated as an acronym for ‘Never The Same Colour’), and the German PAL system widely deployed in western Europe. The PMG and the ABCB had been evaluating these systems since 1966.

Consideration of all the factors relevant to the matter including the experience of overseas countries in colour television suggests the desirability of a cautious approach.”
~ Postmaster-general Alan Hulme in 1969

The cautious approach of Australian engineering standards committees tended to keep us from expensive mistakes, but occasionally bloopers occurred, such as when Channel 3 was dropped in the middle of the international radio FM band, where it remained for 50 years.

On 27th February, 1969, PMG Hulme announced the adoption of PAL (Phase Alternating Line) system of colour television. The ABC with its continent-wide network flagged that it needed more time to ready for colour. Eventually prime minister William McMahon said colour transmission would begin on 1st of March, 1975.

Documented costs to NBN are beyond reach, but there are numerous examples for Australian TV stations. NBN’s Wikipedia page cites a Newcastle Star 21st anniversary article (broken link) that upgrades for colour cost $360,000, which equates to $5 million today. The article includes “new offices and a boardroom,” but those were built several years later and unrelated to colour conversion. Canberra Television Ltd reported spending $2 million (in 1970), but that was for an entire new studio complex of fully-equipped buildings.

Even after the colour standard was chosen and equipment installed and commissioned, government had a staying hand. City broadcasters with small networks (covering only their urban and suburban viewers) were ready and keen to transmit colour pictures but had to comply with the announced date of 1st March, 1975. They were allowed colour test patterns, if only for TV installers and retailers to confirm reception and TV set performance. The government's 1974 Recommended Standard for Colour Television Receivers document clarified for service companies, consumers, and manufacturers exactly what they should avoid in this new marketplace, where grey imports were burning many early adopters.

Pictured: The ABCB's circular received by NBN. Notice the handwritten inscription, "CC to H.McP. then file." where 'H.McP' is Chief Engineer Harry McPhee.

To manage this seemingly complex issue - how to transmit monochrome from a colour TV station - NBN's techs employed a novel system from an unexpected corner, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB). The trick was to filter out the colour subcarrier embedded in the television waveform with a simple notch circuit.

Although the introduction of colour television drained companies' finances during construction, they were subsequently compensated by a boom in advertising led by the rapid acquisition of colour TV sets, despite their cost to households. The cheapest models cost three times the average weekly wage, retailing at $500 in 1975. Not to be denied, low-income households turned to a barely affordable option in the late 1970s, colour TV rental, undeterred by a typical $25 per month ($250 today).

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Studio Expansion

NBN embarked on a quite dramatic expansion at Mosbri Crescent after the colour conversion. A third studio was constructed at the northern end, beside the already large Studio A. At the southern end, a new executive wing accompanied an expansive newsroom that reflected a clear appreciation of how important NBN's extensive news programming was to advertising revenue. Photographs and description are in the article The Heydays NBNTV ~ The Heydays.

The building was another substantial hit to revenue. The northern wing had become essential to relieve overcrowding of the small central space. The studio was built on the promise of production contracts. The 'hit' from the studio construction was never quite recovered, however. This time due to another branch of government, local government, that turned it into an ongoing cost, instead.

Studio C, would be one of the largest in the country. Driver for this huge studio was an agreement to produce two game shows for the Nine network. Disastrously, the Newcastle City Council delayed approval for two years in an argument over zoning and the production opportunity was lost, along with its promise of revenue.”

~ George Brown, NBNTV, The Heydays

A suite of well-appointed studio control and client rooms spent decades as storage spaces and ended their days as the IT department's encampment. The administrative block earned its keep, however, by replacing a 'rabbit warren' of cramped offices, and was a boon to the efficiency of an expanding news department. Meanwhile the second level earned income by housing, over the years, The Star newspaper, BHP's IT department, and Soul Pattinson Telecom's operations.

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Competition on the Horizon

As the 1980s approached, so too did the likelihood of competition from cable, RSTV (radiated subscription) and direct satellite broadcasting. When then Minister for Communications, Ian Sinclair, foreshadowed wide changes to the Broadcasting Television Act - a review of ownership and control, of public interest provisions, and even the operation of TV networking - regional stations took notice.

The reason, he said, was the refusal by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) to allow Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of ATV-10. This, realised the regionals, would make them more vulnerable to takeovers - a prescient notion, considering their profitability in the coming decade made them juicy targets for the new breed of aspiring media moguls… Bond, Skase, Ramasay, Gordon, Stokes, and Kevin Parry. So while one regional eye was on how new technologies might create ways to lose them viewers, the other had always to be on the endless maneuverings of both metropolitan network owners and assorted corporate raiders.

Satellite in particular had the potential to wipe NBN and the regionals off the map. That satellites might distribute television was demonstrated mid-1966 by the Intelsat 2 series, capable of 240 phone channels or two television channels. As INTELSAT II F-1 passed over the continent in October on its way to a faulty orbit, ministers of communication for both sides of government had ambitions for the technology far beyond its economics. As did metropolitan network owners still relishing the idea that, through this, they might overcome the two station constraint and network to the entire continent.

Kerry Packer, at that time heading Television Corporation Ltd., whispered in PM Fraser’s ear that Australia should join the big boys club and get its own domestic satellite. The price tag could, maybe, might be, met by letting the big three commercial networks use it to distribute their programme via a new communications carrier named AUSSAT, and thus bypass a recalcitrant Telecom. This not only alarmed Telecom’s management and their thousands of staff busily planning and deploying terrestrial links across the continent, but quite horrified regional television proprietors, particularly when they learned of a Packer proposal for the licensing of about one hundred new regional stations to redistribute the satellite signals of the three major groups to those areas.

For Packer, satellite was the key to unlocking cricket broadcasting beyond his metropolitan television network. With his rural ties and sense of Australia’s proper place in “the modern world”, Fraser was receptive to Packer’s upbeat account of... its potential to close Australia’s city-country gap. Cabinet agreed that detailed investigation was merited and established a taskforce that in July 1978 recommended the government proceed with planning for a satellite system and that it establish a new state enterprise to run it.”

~ John Doyle: "Australian telecommunications: From AUSSAT to NBN Co, policy has resulted in decades of wrangling and billions lost"

With AUSSAT already set up ahead of an incoming Labor government, Labor’s Minister of Communications, Michael Duffy, announced in November 1983 that a domestic Australian satellite launch would proceed. While regional stations remained more than a little alarmed, in the public mind it sounded of good news: surely just a way to provide TV to remote homesteads or something and fair enough? But to the terrestrial broadcast industry, the unions, and anyone invested, it was a huge issue with the potential to turn their world on its head.

Labor directed the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) to examine many pressing matters raised by this new paradigm, along with other long-festering issues:

Direct Broadcasting Services (DBS): whereby viewers could directly ‘tune in to’ the satellite and choose their ‘channel.’
Ownership and control: Literally, ownership and control of TV stations as monopolies advanced and proprietor numbers shrank throughout the nation.
Supplementary Licences: Favoured by NBN, this schema would allow equalisation to proceed in NBN’s viewing area (Newcastle, Hunter Valley, and Central Coast) by NBN creating two more channels to carry the second and third metropolitan networks. Eventually they would be divested to new owners when revenue made them sufficiently attractive.

The satellite question grew ever more complex for the Hawke government. For example, the “two bird problem.” If, as originally directed by the Fraser government, one satellite carried ABC services and the other carried the commercial networks, viewers would need two ‘earth stations’ (dish antenna and receiver) because the satellites would occupy different locations in the sky. Back then domestic earth stations were not cheap, so the ABC was justified in assuming the majority would install only one and choose the commercial bird.

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Equalisation

Michael Duffy had inherited quite the portfolio. A Labor non-factional independent, he was the right person at the right time, not easily swayed by partisan arguments. Although his preference was for regional supplementary licenses, the prime minister wanted full aggregation (after being talked down from the AUSSAT version). On 23rd May, 1985, came the announcement that three commercial television channels in each regional area was the government's "highest priority."

AUSSAT had revived a once-distant policy of equalisation, by which regional viewers get the same choices as metropolitan viewers - although it was no longer AUSSAT's task, but now that of the terrestrials, much to their displeasure. The story went that Bob Hawke had been persuaded (by powerful ‘friends’) that equalisation must be quickly implemented.

The [metro] networks successfully persuaded the Prime Minister that the speedy introduction of equalisation of services could be a major boost for the government's chances in a string of marginal provincial seats in the next election, due by December 1988. The more quickly the policy is introduced the less chance the divided regional stations will have of retaining some control over their destinies. While everyone within the industry and the bureaucracy recognises that the present timetable for equalisation is quite unrealistic, the haste in planning the new system will contribute to ensuring that the networks control it.

Equalisation will mean regional stations' profits will now be directed to covering the immense hardware bill created by tripling the country's collection of transmitters and translators.”

~ Peter Morris, Film News.

From day one in planning the roll-out of television, Australian governments had always sought to provide choice of programmes to both city and regional (‘the bush’) viewers. The policy made sense from an equity angle but, as balance sheets and costings regularly told, and for a country this expansive, never from a commercial one. For even in metro markets, the third commercial network had resulted in an ever-fragile 0-10 network, to the point of receivership (in 1990), as did its northern NSW affiliate a few years later.

In 1991 Capital Television Group’s Charles Curran* said that aggregation would succeed only if two of the three stations in each aggregated area merged:

Australia is the only country in the world with less than 50 million people that has three commercial television services. If the Labor Government is serious about micro-economic reform there is probably no easier place to start than regional television. Australia does have to see that it uses its scarce resources in the most appropriate way.

A two-station scenario would relieve the revenue raising problems of all three stations by cutting the competition. And affiliation agreements could be abandoned, leaving the two players to pick and choose the programs of all three major commercial networks, ensuring the loss of no popular programs. The overall standard of program schedules would improve as all weak spots in current schedules were strengthened by the programs of the third network. (*Curran)

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Aggregation

When the long-standing concept of Equalisation became a policy priority, it assumed the uglier handle 'Aggregation' to more accurately describe its implementation and consequences, if only by the word's similarity to what it caused all to suffer.

NBN had clearly seen the future emanating from a federal Labor opposition as they approached the 1983 election. Throughout the decade NBN had lobbied for ‘Multiple Channel Services’ through which it would establish two additional TV stations in its own area. Already loosely aligned with the dominant Nine network, NBN would broadcast two other channels carrying Seven and Ten’s programmes, in addition to Nine on its own channel. Those ‘services’ when profitable would rearrange their holdings (be sold) to eventually become competitors.

It was not to be. Equalisation came in the form of blunt force trauma: aggregation.

NBN faced an expansion - from a half-dozen transmitters covering the Hunter and Central Coast - to more than fifty mountaintop remote sites housing microwave links and transmitters. It faced building new mini-studio complexes to house sales, commercial production, and newsrooms in seven regional centres, along with teams to staff them, their vehicles, and equipment.

Yet another government-imposed and rather harsh speed bump.

It brought a hit to revenue from heavy expenditure with scant initial return on investment, and majorly in the loss of home market advertising. Even government calculations predicted NBN’s 1986 profit estimated at $9 million might become a loss in 1990. And while all the regional broadcasters were similarly exposed, the focus here is on NBN as a representative case.

NBN also faced a forced shutdown by the Department of Communications of its traditional ‘Channel 3’ that broadcast to almost its entire market from Mt. Sugarloaf on VHF. A sudden move to UHF would be disadvantageous at this early stage. UHF required a new antenna for viewers in weak reception areas, and depending on circumstance, for anyone within primary coverage. How many older television sets that did not receive in the UHF band was an unknown despite a decade of UHF-capable sets. Because no-one ever throws away a working TV set.

Along the way to converting their VHF transmissions, and to establishing new UHF outlets, the government offered many other concessions to the regional broadcasters confronting workloads and costs far beyond anything imposed on metropolitan stations. Transmitters were big ticket items costing up to $100,000 for main sites, which equates to $350,000 today. Those deployed for UHF aggregation sites would be tax exempt. There was, in addition, the ‘licence-free’ 7MHz allocation (a free channel), and licence fee rebates, too.

Image at right: Access to remote sites was via a string of padlocks. One for each broadcaster, others for council, utilities, contractors, and if on private property, the owner. Photo: Greg Williams

The brunt of aggregation planning and work was met by the transmission team that had to deal with an almost overwhelming amount of regulation affecting microwave links and their frequencies, transmitters' powers. and transmit antennae radiation patterns. New buildings, new towers, site owners' permissions, even council regulations across northern NSW. It was a massive undertaking.

The studio teams had an equally large and complex task, except they were relatively untouched by government stipulations, other than to follow technical standards. Their task in particular was to duplicate the programme across the new regions while implementing each area's unique local news and advertising during break-aways from the main stream. Their attention at executive level was heavily consumed by tracking regulatory and compliance issues in order to keep NBN's departmental managers informed for their strategies and decision-making.

Nobody escaped! Sales, Traffic, Operations, Commercial Production, Promotions, News, and even the studio crews found new tasks added to their daily chores, many of a complex nature never encountered.

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Competition from all Quarters

NBN management and staff might reasonably have thought, in those ‘simpler’ times of the pre-digital era, that their task over the next decade was simply to defend home territory and recoup expenditure from the northern NSW expansion: the establishment and operational costs of its seven new branches: Erina (Central Coast), Taree, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Lismore, Gold Coast, and Tamworth.

By the time staff and management had adjusted to dealing with six (Taree and Port Macquarie viewers combined) regionalised programme feeds and dared to imagine plain sailing into the future, another Tsunami of change was approaching, with a welter of government legislation to plan, manage, and enforce it.

In 1992 when the Broadcasting Service Act replaced the fifty year-old Broadcasting Act, it legislated a diverse range of services that would deliver increased competition in the form of community television and subscription broadcasting. It also brought changes to local content percentages, cross-media ownership rule changes, and introduced, policy-wise, a looser regulatory framework to allow more self-regulation. Down in the details were changes to how complaints about broadcasting must be dealt with.

The new Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) that replaced the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal in 1992 was given significantly different enforcement powers and an increased range of penalties that it could apply.

However, the main policy thrust was towards a self regulatory scheme based on industry Codes of Practice over which the ABA had limited powers. Focus had been moved from the former Tribunal’s rigid approach to industry codes that allowed for more industry involvement. As always, there is a backstory: had the Tribunal’s unsympathetic treatment of the billionaires (Murdoch, Bond, Skase) brought this not-coincidental transfer of power to the minister and to broadcasters, away from the ABA? (The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal - where to from here? Link to document )

Despite relaxed policy environment, it still had bad news and would report five years on:

The terrestrial television industry now faces substantial competition for its audience from subscription based television broadcasters. These new players have the opportunity to use new digital technologies to enhance their service offerings. Eventually, they may be able to marginalise those services which are locked into analogue delivery.

When the Internet was a just word the tech press kept talking about, the first intimation of new ways to deliver television was the high-frequency copper (HFC) rollout by Optus and Telstra in 1994 provoking discussion of those heavy cables adorning suburban street poles. “Cable TV” quickly became a crowded field with Foxtel and Austar joining Optus Vision. It took five years for the industry to both penetrate and profit. The slow uptake was a preserver to commercial broadcast TV, especially the regionals, although the outlook for 1997 was additional free to air licences .

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Timeline to Digital

This potted history of the turbulence that the industry was experiencing shows how much leg work was required of government to fulfill its mission of regulating an industry whose primary instinct was to profit.

Early 1990s

The 1992 the Broadcasting Service Act was the first stage of Australia's planning for digital television broadcasting. Over the next decade and a half it was progressively modified to meet the demands of both competing services (datacasting, subscription, and community TV) and emerging technologies (digital TVs and the Internet). Flat screen monitors had just begun to appear on desktop computers. Cell phones resembled large ‘walkie talkies” (a lovely old term for hand-held 2-way radios). So the idea of a TV set or a phone becoming a computer and directly connected to the Internet - itself barely understood, let alone in use - was almost science fiction.

1995

Mid-decade saw pay TV startups arrive. Parliament in 1992 had passed a bill for ABC subscription TV that the national broadcaster never acted on. By 1995 Galaxy began on MMDS, a radiated service which led to the debut of domestic microwave dish antennae, those with a parabolic mesh reflector pointed at Mt Sugarloaf. Optus had just rolled out its cable when Foxtel arrived. After a few years of heavy losses, by decade’s end the industry was reaching profitability and had penetrated 12% of the viewing market. So began a long battle of statistics between the pay TV and FACTS lobbists.

1997

A crucial year for the industry and the country.

In January 1997, The ABA Specialist Group’s report, Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting, recommended to the Government that Australia should move towards adoption of a single standard for the introduction of digital television services.

The decision to adopt the European Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standard for the Australian digital terrestrial television broadcasting system, made by the free-to-air television broadcasting industry, was an essential pre-requisite to the commencement of channel planning.”

~ ABA SFN Group discussion paper Feb 2000

Australia might have traditionally lagged behind the world of broadcasting in allowing or implementing new technologies. But delays had an advantage: we ended up, more often than not, with the best choice of technology. In this case it was “DVB-T” - Digital Video Broadcast, Terrestrial Single Frequency Network. It fitted particularly Australia’s fixed broadcast points, free access, ‘robust’ performance, and future-proofing.

1998

Next up was the government’s 1998 Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill. It gave free-to-air broadcasters several crucial commercial and competitive gains. Retransmission rights required that pay-TV operators pay the broadcasters to retransmit them. Broadcasters gained extra ‘free’ spectrum to simulcast digital and analogue during the transition. HDTV had to be broadcast at minimum levels to drive consumer take-up, which was as much carrot as stick. And new broadcast licences were frozen until 2006, to limit competition while the broadcasters tackled demands of the new digital environment.

In particular, however, was the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Act that directed the move from analogue to digital television. Metropolitans had to begin digital transmission by 1st January, 2001, and regionals by 1st January, 2004. Both analogue and digital had to continue in duplication of one another (simulcast) in metro markets for nine years, elsewhere longer if so determined by the government. The digital regime also required both standard definition (SDTV) and high-definition TV (HDTV) to accommodate newly arrived flat screen TVs. It also opened the way for datacasting services (by regulation theyut they supply information, not programme).

1999

In December 1999 the government announced what were in effect two substantial departures from recommendations after complaints by broadcasters' competitors about the moratorium on new licences and the gifted ‘loan’ of a free channel. Most dramatic of the new requirements was restricting the free channel to HDTV. But concerns about HDTV availability (uptake by viewers) and sets' cost changed the requirement - again, as broadcaster planners tore their hair out - to become ‘triplecast.’ Commercial stations must transmit the same content in three separate formats: analogue (the original PAL system), standard definition (SD), and high definition (HD).

In response to the ‘triplecast’ issue, in early 2000 NBN Station Manager Jeff Eather advised the company that the DTV decision is a requirement to Triple Cast. "This will affect our capacity... we must decide what is or is not allowed, how to use the excess spectrum” - an indication of just how agile management had to be, and their time consumed to keep abreast of an avalanche of evolving regulations.

2000

The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Digital Television and Datacasting) Bill oversaw the introduction of digital television. In May 2000 the Australian government announced the Regional Equalisation Plan to provide financial assistance to commercial broadcasters that would help them transition to digital television in their more remote areas. It intended to cover half of estimated costs until the proposed analogue switch-off. NBN, Prime, and NRTV each received (in year 2000 dollars) $13.6 million - $1.7 million a year, for eight years. A rebate for licence fees depended on the broadcaster having begun digital transmission.

A Productivity Commission 2000 Broadcasting report gave commercial broadcasters a brief moment to salivate over one of the report’s recommendations:

Unfettered rights for broadcasters to use their digital channels to provide multi-channels instead of HDTV if they so chose.” [But then the kicker...] “Unfettered competition from new market entrants using any additional channels available during the simulcasting period.”

Although the government did not accept the report in general, one of its mentions led to the creation of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), responsible for planning of both broadcasting’s spectrum usage and for other services also wanting to use those bands.

The report did, inadvertently, predict why free-to-air TV would survive well into the Internet age: "people, particularly from lower socio economic groups, depend upon free-to-air television as their primary medium of information and entertainment." It's tempting to speculate that, after paying for the television set, viewing is free and that scanning for channels is the (relatively) simplest way to see something on the screen, compared to an expensive and too complex range of built-in or external sources.

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Analogue, Digital?

The world "digital" appears so many times in this article it might lose meaning to those unsure what it really describes. As simply as possible we shall try.

In the world, things such as light, temperature, and sound vary continuously. When electronic circuitry was invented, those real-world variations could be captured by microphones and light sensors (in video cameras) and fed to the circuits, which processed them as continuously varying voltages that mimicked the real world. That was "analogue" electronics, from the word 'analogous' - to follow something. The end result was that we could see the world through television screens and hear it from the speaker.

When computers were invented, they first comprised banks of mechanical switches, then electronic tubes (or valves) that were the electronic equivalent of switches, then transistors, then millions of transistors in integrated circuits. The point being that computer circuitry depends upon switches, which generate only values of ON or OFF, aka zeroes or ones, 0's or 1's. Or digits, hence digital.

Digital circuits can achieve the same result as analogue circuitry, but differently. By regularly (and very quickly) sampling an input value - rather than simply following it (analogously) - a digital circuit creates a series of pulses that approximate the variable voltage the sensor generates. It does this by varying the pulses' width, or the frequency of pulses. In other words, it has created a series of 0s and 1s that are equivalent to an analogue variable.

When real-world variables (sound, light, temperature, etc.) are made into digital values, computer-like circuitry can process them. Which is to say that computers can understand them. Computer-like circuitry is at the heart of almost every electronic device that exists nowadays.

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Digital TV

The technical reward of digital television for the industry was that channels could be butted together, as for example are Newcastle's channels 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39. This was not possible with analogue television where channels had to be separated by two channel-width bands. Therefore, three analogue channels in a given viewing area occupied seven 7MHz-wide channels, while three digital channels in a given area only used three 7MHz channels. Seven megaherz (7MHz) is the bandwidth used by a television signal.

This saving of spectrum was famously called the "digital dividend."

The other and major advantage lay in the promise of high-definition television (HDTV) that would spur the video display unit (VDU) industry to create high-resolution flat-screens, that have become a universal interface for human technology use.

In late 2000, with the revolution now upon them, NBN's Managing Director, Denis Ledbury, prepared the company for the coming decade. In a corporate presentation Ledbury outlined the challenges presented by digital television legislation. Standard-definition television (SDTV) would be broadcast at all time, while HDTV must cover twenty minimum hours each week. In programming, the requirement were complex and overlapped into datacasting (that the company also had its eye on providing). They are covered in more detail further below under Programming.

For the DTV rollout, legislation proposed that: digital broadcasts must start no later than January 2004 and do so to receive licence fee rebates; that NBN must lodge an implementation plan with the ABA; within three years show twenty hours of prime-time HD; and "triplecast" - transmit original analogue, alongside SD and HD television signals. Ledbury then suggested "what will actually happen" would be that 7, 9, and 10 networks would run test broadcasts before the 2000 Sydney Olympics and be officially on air for 1st January, 2001. He thought Nine planned to broadcast 16x9 standard-definition TV from the very start, and that high-definition broadcasts would need to await the availability of source material, expected some time in 2002.

Already under consideration, the ABA would review whether streamed content on the Internet was a broadcasting service - a yet interesting consideration even today, when so much consumed content on home TV screens arrives seamlessly via the household Internet connection. In April of 2002 the report Media Streaming and Broadband in Australia commissioned by the ABA recommended that it not be. Of many, one consequence would have been that, if yes, such streaming would fall under the prohibition on datacasters providing a broadcasting service.

The importance of datacasting (broadcasting of data and information that excludes programme-like content) was foremost in the industry's mind at that time, as it closely tracked future developments in the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA 1992). For example, a review by January 2003 aimed to determine if datacasting rules needed amendment, and would schedules 4 and 6 (of the digital broadcasting rules) need change? Reviews listed for 2005 would cover: ban on provision of subscription, radio, or narrowcast services on DTV broadcasts; whether spectrum for datacasting is determined; if spectrum for broadcasting and datacasting was efficiently structured; if provisions for supplementary licences need amendment or repeal; review of competitive, regulatory, revenue for datacasting transmitter licences (post-2006); what conditions apply to commercial TV licences (post-2006); and by January 2006, a review of the simulcast duration.

In conclusion, Ledbury shared with department heads NBN Television's proposed deployment strategy:

Bringing Mt Sugarloaf's DTV transmitter online by 1st of June, 2001, would ensure a $1.7 million licence fee rebate for financial year 2001.
Installation of the on-air path would start by year's end (2000) for HDTV capability within 12 months of start date.
Regional conversion sequence to be Central Coast, 2001, Gold Coast, Coffs Harbour, and Lismore transmitters early 2002, and Tamworth by 2003. They would go into service with Prime and TEN, but might be delayed by HD TV set uptake percentages. Translators (that serve smaller population centres) would also depend, for conversion to DTV, on how many viewers had bought HD television sets.
Across the regional studios, commercial production should be converted to 16x9 SD-capable equipment by the start of service in mid 2001. For news equipment, field and newsroom, and for the Mosbri studio upgrade itself, the 16x9 SDTV rollout could be delayed "until the take up rate reached a 'reasonable level.' "

Budgeting for this major project was high, but reflected NBN's commitment on this occasion not to do things 'on the cheap' in acknowledgement that this was a long-term transition. As Ledbury's closing statement insisted:

The on-air equipment we purchase is based on the "building blocks" that will see us through the first ten years of DTV. There are cheaper alternatives but they will carry a very limited life.

Capital expenditure projections were extremely flexible at that early stage, and are more interesting for their proportional breakdown of the operational spends than for actual dollar guesstimates:

Totalling, in year 2000 dollars, an estimated $33 million (before rebates), the breakdown in $millions: On-air room (former VTR) 4.4; On-air server 3.5; Master Control 0.5; Presentation 5.0; Studio News 2.3; Studio Control 1.0; Commercial Production 0.3; Offices, News (assumed regional) 0.9; Offices, Production 1.2; Transmitters 8.5; Translators 1.5; and Outside Broadcast 2.8 million dollars.

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Digital Studio

In January of 2000, NBN engineering’s digital transition team gave management a report on the state of studio equipment, for whom it must have been a sobering read:

The entire plant is analogue. Standard definition 16:9 is not possible with any equipment, while up-conversion with existing electronics would be poor quality due to its age and cable types. Even a basic standard and/or high definition system requires an entire ground-up rebuild of digital foundations.”

~ NBN DTV Migration

For DTV, the studio hardware rebuild would not simply affect ‘engine room’ rack equipment, but the entire complex. A complete new TV station built into - intertwined within - the same physical space as the existing working analogue station. It would be daunting enough for a single network feed (typical for city stations). NBN, however, ran SIX network feeds, each customised by region-specific commercials and, during news hours, stories local to their region.

Although studio equipment choice was largely the station's, distribution of programme was strongly controlled by regulation, as will be described under 'Programming' further below. But that analogue had to be broadcast for well over a decade into the future was a considerable imposition on operations, and a challenge on how to duplicate the digital side of operations with all of its 'multi-channel' requirements..

How regulations impinged on the digital studio were by obligations on commercial broadcasters to, for example, comply with simulcasting requirements (analogue continuance), HDTV standards, and to follow quite rigorous captioning standards. And that latter one was a can of worms for the future, especially for NBN's news.

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DTV Transmitters

For the transmission team the task was even more confronting due to the geographical spread of its charge on mountain tops across northern NSW.

NBN’s broadcast network comprised a string of high-powered transmitter sites, in addition to numerous sites that fed small towns or communities beyond the reach of even the high-power transmitters. Major sites were shared with, to varying degrees, NTL* and NBN’s competitors Prime and Ten Northern (NEN and NRN at this time). Those were Mt Sugarloaf, Mt Moombil, Mt Nardi, Mt Soma, Little Duval, Mt Dowe, and Middle Brother.

* NTL (UK-based) in 1999 took ownership of around 560 Australian transmitter and relay sites for the ABC and SBS. Currently Broadcast Australia, part of BAI Communications.

NBN engineering’s transmission team broke down expected costs for each of these key sites to broadcast in digital. Being early days, an estimate was prepared based on digital transmission equipment prices from suppliers. Upgrading the entire infrastructure of just a single site was never going to be cheap. It involved replacing or modifying the antennae due to a channel change (huge structures atop massive towers), transmitters, ‘combiners’ that merged the outputs of multiple station's transmitters to feed a single shared antenna, and auxiliaries such as diesel-powered standby generators, air-conditioning, emergency battery banks, assorted electronics, and building modifications.

The estimates that follow are in 1999 dollars (*see further below).

Mt Sugarloaf, owned by NBN, was shared with NRN. There was a possibility that Prime might also move in. The UHF antenna already installed for, and owned by, NRN was unsuitable for NBN’s channel 36 (resolved by a later channel change), adding a future cost to these numbers: A DTV 5kw transmitter, $700,000; channel combiner, $100,000; mains power upgrade plus generator, $250,000; auxiliaries $130,000, totalling around $1.2 million. Plus a replacement or modified antenna, $unknown, and additionals if Prime added, around $150,000.

Mt Moombil, serving Coffs Harbour region and owned by NRN, was shared by NBN, who owned their UHF channel 34 antenna already mounted on NRN’s 60 metre tower. Nothing is simple. Nearby was a 140m tower with competing digital services (ABC 2, NRN 11, Prime 31, and SBS 28) enabling them to out-perform NBN if it stayed on the lower tower. Two estimates were needed: $900,000 for the short tower; $830,000 plus unknowns (transmitter power, combiners, rent) from the taller tower.

Mt Nardi, serving Lismore, Ballina, Byron Bay, and surrounds was owned by NRN and shared with NBN’s channel 47 off their 60m tower. The same unfortunate choice faced NBN at Nardi as at Moombil. The lower tower they occupied gave poor service, being originally intended for VHF coverage. Nearby was, again, a competitors’ 140m tower serving ABC 6, Prime 44, and SBS 41. The costs for running DTV from either were similar, at just below $1 million. But moving to the taller tower meant a far greater work load, plus long-term unknowns similar to Moombil in shared costs.

Mt Soma, owned by Prime and serving Tamworth and surrounds, broadcast a range of analogue UHF channels as Prime’s competitors: NBN 61, NRN 64, ABC 55, and SBS 52. It was a case of ‘divvying up the pie’ when negotiations began for the digital upgrades. But all being equal, NBN estimated $600,000 plus ongoing charges.

Little Duval, serving Armidale and surrounds, was owned by Prime, both tower and building. As often as not was the case, NBN owned the antenna, which was being used by NBN 39, NRN 42, ABC 33, and SBS 30 for their analogue broadcasts. NBN estimated this DTV upgrade to be at least $600,000 plus ongoing charges.

Mt Dowe, owned by NTL and just east of Narrabri, served the far north west of NSW on channels NBN 31, NRN 34, and SBS 28. DTV upgrade estimated at $800,000 plus ongoing.

Middle Brother, near Taree and owned by NTL, served NBN 62 and NRN 65. Similarly, the DTV upgrade would be at least $800,000 plus.

* For these major sites only, the bill was estimated to approach $6 million in 1999 dollars, which equates to roughly $12 million in 2025. Costs were based on yet to be determined transmitter powers, antenna unknowns, labour (contractor and wages), myriad auxiliaries, plus annual charges of site rentals, energy, maintenance, etc. Added to costing complexities was the unavoidable situation at every site where different stations owned, or part owned, different pieces of equipment shared by necessitiy. Typically antennae, and as additions were needed, buildings and towers.

NB: The original owners, you will note regarding all previous, were still on original VHF channels at their respective sites. For aggregation in the early 1990s the national broadcaster and commercial stations had all gone straight to UHF analogue.

A tentative schedule to deploy high-power transmitters at main sites was compiled early in 2001. It optimistically listed Sugarloaf for April 2001, Middle Brother, Moombil, and Nardi for 2002, and Mt Soma, Little Duval, and Mt Dowe by 2003. But Sugarloaf's DTV transmitter went operational on 2nd May, 2002, while by 2004 the rollout had been pushed back to 2007 for many of those main sites.

It is impossible to describe the pressure the transmission team were under. Aside from the DTV planning, as has been mentioned the original analogue studio, links (next section), and transmitters had to keep running until analogue switch-off date. The government would push that back to 2013.

While the DTV rollout was in full swing, George Hird had become anxious about replacing the ageing Sugarloaf Thomson CSF transmitters because manufacturers were deleting VHF Band devices from their catalogues due to a universal move to UHF digital broadcasting.

NBN finally got to replace it's Mt Sugarloaf analogue transmitters in 2004 with a 15KW (2x7.5KW) NEC air-cooled PCN-1600 series. For a taste of the work in the field, a montage has been added here compiled from rare photographs of the team preparing for the NEC install, and the many disparate tasks that were far more labour-intensive than merely plonking the transmitters on a base. Speaking of which, an educated guess, but the holes being cut were possibly/likely to allow air cooling via the base of transmitters.

Top from left: John Hills, Phil Lindsay, snake, John & George Hird.
Middle row: Paul O'Donoghue (Irish), Phil and Scott Vohland, Phil, drilling contractor.
Bottom: Greg Williams, Scott & George, George escaping, Greg, Scott, and John & Greg.
A montage was created because the originals were from NBN's ancient first-gen digital camera at 640x480px resolution. The photographer is unknown. All the crew (apparently) appear in the photos.

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Digital Network

Pictured: The old Harris analogue radios would (must) be keep running as best they could be maintained till possibly at least the 2013 analogue transmitter switch-off. They are shown here isolated in their original spot with the new world being built around them. Note the raised flooring, an alternative to overhead cable trays; also to aid airflow from the base of equipment racks.

When the full weight of moving to digital television revealed itself, NBN management saw in the forced duplication of the analogue microwave network not so much an unwanted expense but an opportunity. A fully digital microwave network opened the door to making this static cost centre into a revenue earner.

The idea was already set by existing non-broadcast network owners, such as newly-formed distributors of the former NSW Electricity Commission (Energy Australia and North Power) and the NSW State Rail Authority. Their microwave control and information networks carried additional third-party traffic. Why shouldn't NBN's carry any manner of modern communications traffic alongside television programme?

Imaginations ran larger: why not create a telco?

NBN approached Nortel Networks for the design and supply of their synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) radios that could carry not only NBN programme, but Ethernet, and high-speed data. Whereupon the free-to-air commercial television broadcaster, NBN Television, as a mere side project created the company Soul Pattinson Telecommunications (SPT), and threw in an Internet Service Provider, Kooee, just because. Covered in more detail in upcoming article "Corporate Entanglements."

The digital network of microwave links required new spectrum licences for their needed frequencies. Which then required NBN to provide all manner of detail (radio power, frequencies, antenna specifications) to the government authority, Spectrum Management, to ensure performance would both suffice for purpose and not interfere with other services. More paperwork, and it was just beginning.

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Channels

Australia’s chosen digital television broadcast standard - Digital Video Broadcast, Terrestrial Single Frequency Network (aka DVB-T) - fitted particularly well Australia’s fixed-point free-to-air model and suited the existing transmitter sites' coverage of this vast country. By 1st January 2001 digital terrestrial television was operating in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. But to reach that point, in the preceding years meetings of the Digital Television Channel Planning Consultative Group (DTCPCG) - and its later offshoot, the Single Frequency Network Group (SFN*) - had hammered out the details of this extraordinarily complex national project (*SFN is described further below).

The overall agenda was broad and searching with industry-wide meetings between government and private organisations, such as FACTS, ASTRA*, ABA, national broadcasters, and commercial networks including the independent NBN, discussing technical standards and frequency allocations. Overall, this committee was to determine how Australia’s 600-odd geographic areas would receive not just television but high-definition TV (HDTV) and digital services yet on the horizon (*Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association).

By August 1999 the group’s proposed channels for NBN’s home territory were listed, their eventual choice subject to interference from or to other channels. Such interference applied not only to in-home reception but to interference with translator inputs, for translators are transmitters fed by receivers tuned to other transmitters, not by microwave links. They are susceptible, like home viewers' TV sets, to interference, particularly from distant channels on the same frequency. This was to have dramatic consequences for Hunter viewers and some of NBN's translators, as described in the later section: 'Interference.'

Considering how channel numbers changed like musical chairs over the next 15 years, the viewing public coped quite well.

In phase 1, new digital channels had to be slotted in amongst existing UHF analogue services that had been running since 1990s aggregation.

In phase 2, immediately upon them being chosen by the ABA, wrangling began as broadcasters sought the best outcome channel-wise, since they would have to live with it until the analogue UHF transmitters were switched off 12 or 13 years hence.

In phase 3, all the channels above 51 would move down ('Restack' described further below), while so many in the lower band would be shuffled in an attempt to make each region's channel numbers contiguous - or because they now were too close to another region with the same channel number.

So began phase 1. As a rule, television channel numbers are grouped deliberately close to allow several transmitters to share the same antenna, much in the same way a single home antenna receives most channels. Antennae work best if tuned for a single channel. If tuned to cover more channels (wider frequency band) their performance suffers. It's a compromise. This applies to both receive and transmit antennas.

In 1998 a problem loomed in the government's choice for NBN of channel 34. At an ABA meeting George Hird (NBN assistant chief, transmission) objected to channel 34 being reserved for NBN in Newcastle, as George contended:

Channel 34 is a Band 4 channel and the existing Newcastle viewers have Band 5 receiving antennae, the transmitting antennae on our tower at Mt. Sugarloaf was designed for UHF 50 through to 57 (not 34) and that grouping of channels in location (same transmitting antennae) and close frequencies would produce the best result for the viewer as far as consistency of reception is concerned.”

While Hird was referring to viewers' new antennae, he had more clearly in mind the existing shared UHF transmit antenna on NBN's tower that a new NBN UHF transmitter would also want to use. In November, 1998, Hird told managing director Denis Ledbury that the ABA agreed "channel 34 was dead after acknowledging my raised issues and that channel 51 was now included in the Newcastle area plan along with channels 53 and 56."

In it's first meeting of 1999, the Digital Television Channel Planning Consultative Group (DTCPCG) ABA representatives met with over thirty industry members, including NBN's Chief Engineer, Max Lewis, and at which regional broadcasters proposed tentative plans for Newcastle. NB: All such plans were tentative at this stage.

Prime's plan listed only five channels "(36, 37, 38, 51, 56) designed to fit the maximum number of digital channels with minimum interruption to existing analog services" while acknowledging that "The identification of only five channels for Newcastle (sufficient for existing broadcasters only) was a problem." Max Lewis suggested that channels 53 and 56 should be swapped to accommodate the existing infrastructure at Mt Sugarloaf, and that there could be antenna problems with the spread of channels for Newcastle and they may therefore not be practical." Lewis was more likely referring to transmitter antennae. TEN's plan, withdrawn after discussion, was seen to not work well in Newcastle (channels 36, 37, 38, 51, 53, 56) or Wollongong and was withdrawn.

It was going to be a long and difficult discussion over the coming months.

Phase 2 began. By January, 2001, the ABA's plan for the Newcastle area listed channels 29, 35, 36, 37, 38, 51 and 53 for new digital services in Newcastle, with analogue UHF services already on Channels 45, 48, 54 and 57. National Transcommunications Ltd (NTL, shortly to become Broadcast Australia, BA) who managed the government site agreed with NBN to rationalise the transmit antennae on both of their Mt. Sugarloaf towers. It would be more efficient for them to not duplicate the antennae bands, as they currently did, and therefore one company would install a high-band UHF transmit antenna while the other would go low-band. This, however, would require some agility moving transmitters between buildings and connect the two transmitter huts with fibre to transfer programme to its new broadcast point. The plan was to first move NRN's analogue PAL service to the national broadcaster site, remove the band 5 antenna from NBN's tower and install a new low-band antenna on it.

The national site hosted analogue PAL services SBS 45, ABC 48, Prime 54, and ABC 5A. The intention was for it to broadcast NRN 57 PAL, and digital channels NRN 51 and Prime 53.

NBN's site hosted analogue PAL services NRN 57 (to move) and NBN 3. The intention was to broadcast digital channels NBN 36, ABC 37, and SBS 38. An interesting inclusion in the work was, after forty venerable years of service, to "decommission, remove and dispose of the NBN RCA Channel 3 VHF standby transmitter and all associated ancillaries."

Note that these digital channels were temporary, for after the 2012/13 analogue switch off, a UHF channel "restack" would move them to new channel numbers (per phase 3). NEN (Prime) and NRN (TEN) would move to 35 and 39 respectively, completing the string of channel numbers for Newcastle.

Note also that similar juggling had gone on across NBN's northern NSW sites, and indeed across the entire country. The sample negotiations described above were but a fragment of one such meeting, that of 15th February, 1999. The scale of this enterprise that stretched from this initial meeting, across decades, until the final television transmitter was "restacked" is a tribute to all involved, government and industry.

And while all this went on, services were expanding, new players were entering the landscape, and new technologies were demanding the attention of broadcasters and their customers.

By 2007 broadcasters were able to transmit “multi-channels.” In addition to the ‘simulcast’ offerings (new digital channels and original analogue channels both broadcasting) viewers had the additional choices of ABC2, ABC3, SBS Two, the Seven Network’s 7TWO, the Ten Network’s ONE and the Nine Network’s GO!

On the 9th of August, 2009, NBN's GO! Channel went to air. A year later, at midday on the 24th of September, 2010, NBN’s GEM launched.

From January 2009, broadcasters were permitted two SD channels in addition to their HD channel. This began with the launch of the Ten Network’s ONE HD in selected Southern Cross markets in July 2009.155 This was followed in August by the Nine Network’s Go! through NBN and WIN. Go! broadcast a mix of programming aimed at people aged between 16 and 39. NBN, WIN, and Imparja started carrying Gem later in September.”

~ Michael Thurlow

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Enter the ‘SFN’

In May 1999, the ABA asked the group (DTCPCG - see above) about the concept termed “Single Frequency Network” (SFN) that would economise channel use during the rollout of digital TV. The SFN model was part of a digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB) channel plan provided by the National Transmission Agency (NTA) to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) in March 1999.

Channel space would be crowded due to the analogue system continuing until its proposed switch off date. Members of the DTCPCG formed the Single Frequency Network Consultative Group, to report by December 1999. Side note: if technicians were brain-buzzed by the math of a colour subcarrier in PAL TV’s signal, DTV’s SFN was a whole new level of cerebral overload ~

…the main purpose of a SFN is to reuse the same frequency over a bigger coverage area [of transmitters traditionally on different frequencies]. How? The broadcast transmission time in the radio frequency domain, which is the beginning of an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed symbol, frame or superframe, can be shifted slightly forward and backward in the transmitters to optimize the SFN. The SFN adapter in the broadcast headend and all transmitter stations in an SFN contain redundant Global Positioning System receivers.”

~ Fischer, National Association of Broadcasters Engineering Handbook

That was bad enough for mere technicians. Pity NBN’s management when they too had to confront programming matters and discovered consequences of this SFN business. However, NBN, as the largest independent regional broadcaster, claimed seats in these committees during the DTTB planning process, rubbing shoulders with the national and commercial network broadcasters.

In addition to Max Lewis, Chief Engineer, Transmission, and George Hird, Assistant chief, NBN station manager Jeff Eather was prepared to tackle the complexities too, accompanying them to these high-geek meetings. With the 2001 deadline approaching, the first meeting on 3rd September, 1999, at the ABA’s Sydney office launched members into unknown waters. Although several European countries (Sweden, Netherlands, and Spain) had committed to SFN, no comparative operating networks existed to guide members. They progressed on the ‘technical’ faith that this would work. But experiments and testing were underway. As the terms of reference implied:

The objectives of the consultation group are to provide advice to the ABA on the extent of the advantage to the community of SFNs in planning for digital terrestrial television services in Australia, in an area, with regard to options for providing improved reception of digital terrestrial television services. The practicalities of single frequency networks to extend digital television coverage of the licence area.”

That is: would it work? If so, would it help viewers?

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Central Coast Conflict

When the question was put: "Could the Central Coast transmitters ‘join’ the same frequency network (per the SFN protocol) as their source transmitter?" two issues arose. Sydney broadcasters needed to know how or if their Central Coast transmitters would be fed from Sydney. NBN - already serving break-away local programming to the area - wanted to know how it could lose a service it had long provided.

The problem was that two large and completely separate markets (Newcastle and Sydney) were competing for limited channel allocations in a common overlap area:

Overlapping licence areas - to consider SFN options for areas adjacent to metropolitan areas, where commercial television services have overlapping regional areas within their licence area, where some program material is different from the relevant metropolitan area. This work is relevant to the Central Coast/Gosford/Sydney/Newcastle areas in NSW and to the Gold Coast/Brisbane/Sunshine Coast areas in Queensland. Work in this group could extend to cover what is termed large-area SFNs, such as those that might be deployed in major regional licence areas.”

~ SFN group.

The ABA’s concern was:

Current NBN services on the Central Coast have different programming, at particular times, to the NBN services transmitted from the Newcastle high power services transmitted from Mt Sugarloaf. Under the simulcast requirements of the digital television legislation it may be expected that NBN would be required to provide a different digital service on the Central Coast to that provided from Mt Sugarloaf, in line with their current analog services. However, any requirement for NBN (et al) to have different digital programming on the Central Coast than that provided by the Newcastle high power services at Mt Sugarloaf may prevent the implementation of a wide area SFN, for these services, incorporating the Newcastle high power services and Central coast repeaters.”

ABA argued:

…six channels being available for use in the Central Coast. The area is however, served by eight broadcasters – the two national television services (ABC, SBS), three Sydney commercial television services (ATN, TCN, TEN), and three Newcastle regional television services (NBN, NEN, NRN)."six channels as being available for use in the Central Coast. The area is however, served by eight broadcasters – the two national television services (ABC, SBS), three Sydney commercial television services (ATN, TCN, TEN), and three Newcastle regional television services (NBN, NEN, NRN).”

Therefore, when the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) told the ABA’s SFN discussion in March 2000 that “NBN should use the same channel on the Central Coast as is used for Newcastle” it got NBN’s undivided attention. For it was almost two years earlier, in December of 1998, that NBN's managing director, Denis Ledbury, had made clear to Giles Tanner, ABA's General Manager:

NBN has serviced the Central Coast region for some 36 years and is the only station providing a true local service to the Central Coast – local news, sport and weather; local advertising; and promotion and support of local community and charity events; all sourced from our Central Coast office. In a survey conducted for NBN by AGB McNair, over 60% of all people on the Central Coast regarded NBN as their “local station.”

It is essential therefore that NBN be allocated a digital channel in this market and any moves to delay NBN for the benefit of competing metropolitan stations, or to deny NBN ongoing equal access to serve our markets, would result in a major outcry from the affected communities and will be fought vigorously by NBN.

The problems identified in the Central Coast market and their flow-on effect on adjoining markets, make it imperative that the ABA make the planning of all markets a priority, and that the planning of new services be delayed until solutions are found to accommodate the demand for digital frequencies for existing services. Without this approach, the planning process may not result in the best outcome for viewers in our communities, particularly regional communities who may well be disadvantaged so that metropolitan dwellers can receive “new” services at sometime in the future.

Ledbury's point was that, in advance planning for metropolitan markets

[I]t is clear that the impact of this planning will have major ramifications for regional markets and as such we believe that it is not possible to separate the planning. If the planning of metropolitan markets and regional markets is not done simultaneously there is a real possibility that regional communities will be disadvantaged by being denied access to the new digital services or its availability may be severely delayed.

In June 2000 FACTS told the ABA in response to its paper “Options for additional digital channels for main and repeater services in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong” that “NBN must have breakaway capacity: NBN is currently providing a separate service to the Central Coast and must be give channel capacity to maintain that service.” Reporting progress to a 12th July meeting, Ledbury told executives:

...that FACTS Federal Council meeting is being held this morning. FACTS are in support of our position. We were led to believe that spectrum would be given to enable local programming to continue. Allocation plan released last week showed that this was not the case, meaning our local service in that area would be gone for digital. I believes there is no way they can take away an existing service. Networks [ed: metro?] are in support of regionals as long as they also get frequency. If this happen then there is no frequency remaining for datacasting.

FACTS argued NBN’s (joined by NEN and NRN) case extensively, on historic grounds, and that the government could not take away a service already provided:

The proposal that NBN, NEN and NRN each operate on the same channels for Newcastle and the three Central Coast transmitters is not acceptable. NBN has operated separate programming between Newcastle and the Central Coast for some time and NEN has already advised the ABA of its intentions to provide similar capacity in the near future. The Central Coast community and the broadcasters serving that area must be given the opportunity to have the service to that area tailored to meet their requirements.

The aggregation of multiple service areas provided in the Government’s development of television equalisation has proved viable, in part because the regional broadcasters have the ability to cater for the individual requirements of separately identifiable communities within the larger aggregated markets. Individual market advertising, rather than being a minor element as suggested in the ABA’s discussion paper, is in fact a crucial element for local businesses and viewers in these communities, and is essential to the viability of regional commercial television. The ability to provide special localised programming, news and special event coverage is important and the advent of digital will enhance the regional broadcaster’s abilities in this respect.

In addressing the “non-allotment of channels” (section 7), the ABA paper suggests the ABA “should consider whether to impose a special condition on such licences ensuring such programming is provided”. All regional broadcasters have established separate programming capability to different communities within their larger aggregated markets. They are in regular touch with those communities and adjust their programming accordingly. Regulatory intervention into the programming to sub-markets within a total licence area is not warranted.

The Central Coast area is one that has grown extremely rapidly to be a significant identifiable market area over the period since equalisation commenced. It is now larger than many other regional centres that currently enjoy separate programming capability provided by broadcasters. Development of separate programming for that area is a natural evolution. Rather than constraining such developments, channel planning for digital should facilitate broadcasters’ ability to develop their service according to changes in their markets.

Further, with the technical complexity that would be involved in a wide area network covering high power Newcastle and multiple lower power Central Coast transmitters, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the capability of meeting the demands of adequate coverage.”

In January 2000, answering company concern that programme ‘break-away’ to Central Coast windows might be at risk, Jeff Eather had double good news:

ABA has indicated they will protect the current breakout signals to NBN. It has acknowledged they are unable to take away services that already exist. NBN will retain separate frequency whilst the metros will be operating from the frequency out of Sydney and Prime and Ten out of their Newcastle frequency. Therefore other stations will be unable to have breakout programming. We will be the only local based programming in the Central Coast.

Despite numerous objections throughout the year from both the ABA engineers and various submissions, in September 2000 NBN’s management and engineering teams had positive confirmation that the station would get a channel for the Central Coast and not be forced to broadcast to that market under a ‘wide area’ SFN tied to the Newcastle transmitter. News arrived in the form of a lengthily-titled report: “Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting, Explanatory Paper, Variation to Digital Channel Plans New South Wales: Part 1 – Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and Central Coast AUGUST 2000”

The ABA has decided not to adopt preliminary views 4, 5 and 12 of the July 2000 draft variation to the NSW: Part 1 DCP that would have required the Newcastle commercial broadcasters to serve Newcastle and the Central Coast with wide area SFNs. The ABA has therefore decided to allot additional channels (channels 56, 59 and 68) for local programming to the regional commercial television broadcasters. The ABA will also consider options for imposing a condition on the licences of the regional commercial broadcasters, in order to ensure the appropriate coverage of matters of local significance.”

And not only would the ABA be keeping an eye on NEN and NRN. NBN would likely do so too, as it had since the start of aggregation when competitors failed (usually due to financial constraints) to adhere to requirements, such as local news.

The issue was to linger and return. A decade later, as the restack* planning was underway to finalise the digital rollout, George Hird found it necessary to remind the chair of FreeTV’s planning group:

Regarding the action point to investigate SFN timing between Newcastle and the Central Coast on Channel Block D. NBN currently feeds the three Central Coast Transmitter sites with Microwave Links which feed Central Coast specific News and commercials therefore it is not possible to have an SFN between Newcastle and the Central Coast for NBN.”

* Restack is discussed in detail later.

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Switch it off (and on again)

Notes taken during the years from 2001 to 2007 comprise a great deal of the nitty-gritty in getting things to work across the network, such as sorting antenna patterns, transmitter powers, reception interference as the spectrum crowding worsened, jockeying for channel allocations, with back and forth between broadcasters and government agencies overseeing the DTV rollout.

As required, city broadcasters began UHF services on 1st January, 2001. They would simulcast (run both) their UHF (digital) and existing VHF (analogue) transmissions until 2008. Regional broadcasters were required to begin DTV broadcasts between 1 January 2001 and 1 January 2004, whilst keeping their original analogue VHF and UHF transmissions running.

The end date for regional simulcast was projected to be 31 March 2011. The full timetable as envisioned in the early stages was as follows:

Table 1 Digital television rollout: timeline of events.

Date	Event
July 1998	Introduction of the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Act 1998
March 1999	ABA releases the Commercial and Draft National Television Conversion Scheme
April 1999	ABA releases Draft Metropolitan Digital Channel Plans (Includes five mainland capital cities, Hobart, Newcastle, Canberra, Wollongong, Batchelor, Toowoomba)
July 1999	ABA releases documents to outline the technical and general assumptions used in allocating digital channels to broadcasters
July 1999	ABA releases Digital Channel Plans for several metropolitan markets ( Brisbane and Toowoomba; Darwin and Batchelor; Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong)
October 1999	Release of further Digital Channel Plans for metropolitan markets ( Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, and Melbourne)
22 Dec 1999	Announcement by the Minister: "Digital - New Choices, Better Services for Australians"
Mid 2000 to Jan 2001	Digital television transmitters set-up and testing of digital signal
1 Jan 2001	Commencement of Digital Transmissions in Metropolitan Areas (Five mainland capital cities, Hobart, Newcastle, Canberra, Wollongong, Batchelor, Toowoomba)
1 Jan 2001 to 1 Jan 2004	Commencement of Digital Transmissions in Regional Areas
1 Jan 2003	High-definition programming quotas come into effect
2005	Reviews to be finalised by Minister
31 Dec 2006	New commercial television broadcasting licences may be issued
2008	Prescribed end of analogue simulcast period in metropolitan areas

Source ACMA website

Several items in the table above affected progress by broadcasters, some good, some an impediment. Commercial broadcasters' quotas remained at a required 55% Australian content between 6am and midnight, based on the 1992 Act. For the HDTV channels, the commercials had to run 20 hours a week. No new TV licences in licence areas (no new free-to-air networks) would be issued until the end of 2006 to help maintain revenue during rollout costs of the digital transition.

In 2005 the government had chosen to abandon the 2008 switch-off deadline, with only 10% of households viewing digital terrestrial TV (DTT) and barely 12% of the 15 million households with TV sets watching digital transmissions - free or paid. The target date was delayed to 2011 for urban areas, but remained 2011 for regionals. ACMA research found 40% of viewers would not convert and 11% still unsure (not so much if but when).

On 19 October 2008 Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, announced a phased, region-by-region timetable for the switchover to digital television. Digital switchover would begin in Mildura in Victoria on 30 June 2010, progress throughout regional and metropolitan Australia, and conclude in the metropolitan and remote area markets in 2013: Report - Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital TV Switch-over) Bill 2008

But FreeTV ‘has issues’ ~

In summary, the Bill will allow a region by region switch-off timetable and has changed the timeframe for the statutory reviews into new commercial TV licences and the content requirements for multichannels. On first reading, the Bill's provisions regarding the ASO timetable are generally consistent with the Free TV submission.

However, the Bill is not consistent with our position on the multi-channel content provisions (multi-channels currently exempted from captioning and Australian content requirements) and the reviews: Free TV argued for the current content exemptions for multi-channels to be extended until one year after switch-over, at which point they should be reviewed; The Bill makes no change to the current expiry time for the multi-channel content exemptions (which expire upon switch-over in each licence area), with these issues to be reviewed before switchover (before 1 January 2010).”

FreeTV met with prime minister Kevin Rudd in October to alert him of their current concerns about food and alcohol advertising restrictions, multi-channelling, antisiphoning, switchover costs, the restack, and rumblings of a fourth commercial television licence. The opportunity was not missed to also complain about money:

David Leckie told the PM that the market is extremely tough, that you can’t see that far forward and that everybody is revising their forecasts. He noted that Channel 7 has put out a profit warning as have Channel 10. Grant Blackley added that the market is behind last year and that advertising is a discretionary item. Channel 10 results will be out in the next few weeks. David Gyngell mentioned that Gerry Harvey who is one of the biggest retail advertisers has just announced that Harvey Norman will be cutting their advertising budget by 20-30%.”

In particular, it was explained that a fourth commercial television licence “does not work in regional Australia… with 300 transmitters required to reach across the country there is no incentive for a new provider to extend a licence to the bush, which would leave regional viewers at a disadvantage to metro viewers.”

And, finally, all that FreeTV broadcasters wanted was certainty. Which makes curious why they were named as ‘stakeholders’ in the federal opposition’s successful November 2008 amendments to the Digital Switchover Bill that vaguely “urged the government to embrace Coalition safeguards for Australian television viewers… These amendments [were] developed after extensive stakeholder consultation, including broadcasters.”

Facing jeopardy to DTV rollout timetable, an infuriated minister Conroy: “The Opposition is deliberately attempting to sabotage Australia’s digital television revolution. A firm timetable is vital for industry certainty and to assist viewers to make the digital switch.” Conroy was reportedly ‘not happy’ with the broadcasters, which brought a denial* from FreeTV Australia CEO Julie Flynn, that the group had not consulted with Nick Minchin.
*While no direct link to a media release or news item can be found, a personal note collaborates her denial.

But perhaps privately the broadcasters, the free-to-air TV stations, had decided ‘certainty’ could take second place to their growing concerns about falling revenue and increased competition from those newer media delivery systems that were draining it. The amendments would, they might have hoped, deliver them relaxation of content rules and captioning requirements, more freedom in multi-channelling, and, pushed by magnates like Kerry Stokes of Seven West, a “level playing field” to compete against unregulated global platforms.

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Blackspots and Fillers

Two projects remained to complete the “digital transition.”

Blackspots and "gap-filler" locales are described as, typically, small communities with no TV reception, either due to distance or to their unfortunate positioning in, say, the shadow of a mountain.

Restack (below) was the final move of TV channels from temporary allocations, due to analogue UHF channels using their intended frequencies, into a band where all UHF channels were planned to be.

Viewers living in blackspots were, to put it bluntly, always going to be unlucky. It was one of the many penalties for living 'in the bush.' Depending on circumstance, their options were to ‘self help’ by either an individual or a community paying for a well-sited receiving tower, if such site existed, bearing a high-gain antenna. A community option would be to re-broadcast it (on a different channel, of course) to the community’s homes. This describes exactly what a 'translator' is in the broadcasters' world, but the rebroadcast is at much higher power.

An agreed list of initial locations in NBN’s service that needed immediate attention were categorised as either blackspots (poor to none) or ‘gap-filler’ whose population ranged broadly from 500 to 9,000 people.

Designated blackspots were Mullumbimby Creek, Armidale North, Smiths Lake, Warialda, Stroud, Byron Bay, Lismore East, Telegraph point, Maclean/Ashby, and Forster. So-called gap-filler locales were Port Macquarie, Stokers Siding/Uki, Bellbrook, Bendemeer, Bingara/Bundarra, Boambee Peak, Broken Back, Southern Newcastle area (Belmont), Mooball/Burringbar, Woolgoolga, and Wauchope. This latter group were estimated (2009) by RBA to cost over $2 million to provide service.

More apparent spots would emerge as being affected by co-channel interference instead of weak signals. As described in detail under "Interference" Buledelah, Nelson Bay, Anna Bay, Medowie, and surrounds joined the list of communities needing assistance.

Nationwide, for viewers beyond a broadcaster's (affordable) reach, there was the option of satellite.

While AUSSAT was an original option, this was early in the world of domestic earth stations and few would or could use it. As technology matured, a more widely available Remote Access Satellite Service (RASS) was introduced by the government during aggregation, circa 1990 (to be eventually replaced by Optus's Aurora platform a decade later). The feeds were encrypted so that only 'approved' viewers had access. As a carrier of metropolitan networks, it was jealously patrolled by the regional broadcasters, who in some respects had control over which viewers could gain access.

When, as so many did, a viewer in NBN's coverage area asked how they might access RASS, because NBN's signal was poor, the station would determine exactly where the viewer's home lay before agreeing to support their application. In July of 2000, for example, Max Lewis fielded one such question during a meeting about procedure when handling such enquiries:

Regarding the Remote Area Satellite Service, we have found that applications are coming from pocket areas that we are already aware of. Viewers complete a statutory declaration and then forward to ABA. The ABA then forwards to us.

As Optus' Aurora was phased out (ending in 2013/14), in 2010 the government funded a service called Viewer Access Satellite Television, acronym-appropriate as VAST. The feeds carried ABC, SBS, and the three commercial networks, and radio services. In March, 2009, Regional Broadcasters Australia (RBA), while agreeing that blackspots in reception should have direct-to-home satellite reception, argued that such a service could not offer regionalism in the form of local content without an uneconomic number of satellite transponders. RBA argued, therefore, that VAST-approved blackspots should be minimised to around 3% rather than the 10% proposed by the Digital Switchover Task Force (DSTF) and that regional broadcasters would cover the difference with their full suite of localised SD and HD services.

In May, 2023, it was announced that the government would fund the satellite service for a further eight years. Considering the sophistication and cost of early domestic “earth stations” a VAST installation (DYI kit) is less than $1,000, which is in the same range as a high-gain terrestrial receiving antenna installation that typically requires a tall mast or tower with a large antenna.

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Restack

Restack was a more useable term for the government's slogan: 'Digital Dividend.'

At right: A typical congregation of vehicles for technicians, electricians, riggers, with all hands on deck for a restack. Photo: Greg Williams

This was a huge project for broadcasters. The clawing back of UHF spectrum after the full switchover to digital TV had enabled a shutdown of analogue transmissions. The simulcasting of both new and legacy television up until 2013 had fragmented UHF channel allocations by squeezing them in between and around existing analogue (UHF) services. Many were of necessity temporarily placed in bands required for other purpose in the near future. It was now ACMA’s task to reallocate stations on channels 52 through to 69 into the lower band. It was a daunting task that, as this discussion will make clear, involved a degree of crossed fingers and bold assumptions. And pity the committees. The restack involved changing frequencies of 1,250 television channels at 426 sites nationwide, in many cases installing new transmitter combiners and antenna stacks as well.

The first mention of 'restack' appeared in an invitation to ACMA’s RadComms 2006 conference in December where an item on the discussion agenda was “Digital dividend."

Geoff McMillen, Manager, Spectrum Engineering Section, ACMA, told attendees that ACMA as the regulator must balance the spectrum demands for efficient operation with spectrum plans and band plans that kept in mind international standards. But although ACMA decisions were based on engineering viability of spectrum use where spectrum shortage is a norm in most bands, Australia was well placed to plan the spectrum properly, as an island nation. FreeTV CEO Julie Flynn raised the organisation’s concerns under her address: TV Spectrum in the Next Decade. When analogue switches off more spectrum may be needed for coverage of gaps. Restacking of channels after analogue switch off could mean replanning in some areas. Who pays for restacking, those who get the benefit: government or new owners?

The ‘digital dividend’ slogan, soon adopted by government, worked fine for marketing, but teams who grappled with its complexities on a daily basis shortened "channel stacking" to “restack” - an epithet to keep the ultimate goal in mind. The term emerged organically as broadcasters discussed their options. For example, this 2008 discussion paper circulated by Regional Broadcasters Australia (RBA) titled “Thoughts and Cost Estimates for Proposed Channel Stacking.” made clear the idea was literally a "channel stack." It also included a surprisingly high guesstimated amount and who might pay it:

Knowing that all the channels are to go to the UHF Band (Ch 29-58), to model the channel stack arrangement is now relatively easy. The existing VHF DTV channels would require full replacement – antenna system (combiner and antenna) and transmitter. For the UHF high powered sites, these would need to be retuned to the new channel (retune transmitter and combiner) and the low power sites (child sites) UHF and these would also require a similar retune to the new channel.

Applying the same methodology across all the markets, we could estimate the cost for northern NSW to be $32,000,000. Total cost to restack regional Australia, excluding remote and regional WA and Central and Remote Australia would be a one-off cost of $223,400,000 to the government, freeing up spectrum which would auction for excess of that amount and return in excess of that amount each year. This scenario locks out the spectrum for a fourth network but allows for spectrum to be available for telcos.”

The term ‘digital dividend’ was cemented in the title of the government's Digital Dividend Green Paper in January 2010. It was becoming obvious that new technologies, especially smart phones using data, and related services, would make heavy demands on spectrum.

This spectrum will become available as a result of the switch to digital-only television broadcasting in Australia, which will be completed by 31 December 2013. The digital dividend will be released as a contiguous block of spectrum in the upper ultra-high frequency (UHF) band, comprising the frequency range 694 to 820 MHz inclusive. The government's decision on the size and location of the digital dividend is a crucial step in the process of releasing spectrum to enable next generation communications services such as wireless broadband.

The green paper took input not only from free-to-air commercial and national broadcasters, but from communications industry (carriers, service providers and vendors), subscription television, media organisations; consumer and industry organisations, emergency service, law enforcement and national security organisations, Federal, State and Territory government agencies, and utilities.

George Hird, NBN's seasoned transmission engineer, was feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of change with task piled upon major task that had been coming at the small transmitter team for over a decade. When an urgent request for NBN's restack costing (to inform a FreeTV consultant) landed on his desk in April 2008, he replied with justifiable exasperation:

"There isn’t a generic cost for channel stacking … channel stacking is a mammoth task and each site/area is unique. I think costing for channel stacking is premature since we don’t have all the facts. We cant change existing allocated channels (A or D) going into ASO and we don’t know how many more channels (frequency allocations) we need to obtain same coverage. All that aside we can take the worst case scenario where antenna, channel combiners, transmitters, etc., have to be changed for all networks and all translators hanging off the main sites.

George was right, that his small team was beyond the implied job of converting NBN's fifty plus sites within the timeframe. The government would get many similar pleas from others such that, in 2012, it nominated Broadcast Australia to oversea the transition as national project manager, and hire sufficent staff to meet the deadline.

Upon arrival in late 2010 of Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Dividend and Other Measures) Bill 2011 and the suggested timeline for restacking, some at NBN were (yet again) alarmed, to say the least:

The re-stack scenario allows for a 2 year period from the end of analogue switch off (end of 2012) to the re-stack day 31st Dec 2014 in which we have to reconfigure all our current sites to the new TV Broadcast (re-stacked) spectrum. A period of 2 years is much too short considering the enormity of the project, 4 – 5 years would be more practical. In most cases for the re-stack, the transmitters will work with the main costs being in the output filter channel combiners. The only way sites can be converted to the new re-stack plan is in series (one after the other) where a new channel combiner is put into service and that allows the removed (old) channel combiner can be returned to the factory for retuning and made ready for the next site. Cassilis and Collaroy (Redwell Road) could be allowed to go to VAST since NBN is the only commercial network at the site. Until we know our new re-stack channel allocations we cannot specifically plan the work required for each individual site. It is important that ACMA nominate the new Channel Band Plan ASAP.

~ George Hird (assistant chief, transmission)

By February, 2011, ACMA published its “Clearing the Digital Dividend” discussion paper that defined the path to a 2014 target to complete the switchover by clearing TV entirely from channels 52 to 69. The ACMA convened an informal committee of government and industry members called the Restack Planning Advisory Group (RPAG). It had barely three months, because:

ACMA intends to consider responses to this discussion paper and make its final decision on planning principles at its May 2011 meeting. To allow submissions to be adequately considered, they will need to be received in early April. The comment period therefore closes on Monday 4 April 2011.

Buried in the fine detail and future confusion was the corollary to all this: when the myriad transmitters had been ‘restacked’ (moved to another channel number), potentially millions of viewers would need to retune (rescan) their TV sets to find them again - after, no doubt, a period of puzzlement as to why their favourite channels had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. But that was a small and necessary price to pay for what was a much needed spring clean of the airwaves.

In early 2011 FreeTV also formed a planning group (PG-DTTB) to formulate broadcasters’ response. Members included Seven, Nine, TEN, Southern Cross, Prime, WinCorp, Imparja, and NBN’s George Hird and Stephen Brown. It was yet another workload on top of the already demanding schedule as the analogue switch-off deadline approached. No surprise, then, that Dr. Tom Chee of FreeTV made an urgent plea on 10th March:

Dear PG-DTTB Planning members, We have not heard from you… if you have any comments… we would like to receive them by COB Friday 11th March [for] the final analysis prior to the Policy/Engineering joint meeting on Monday 14th March 2011.

It was during discussions among the FreeTV group that the aforementioned interference from Illawarra’s Knights Hill transmission was brought to ACMA’s attention, at which stage they still considered it ‘anecdotal.’ The authority also raised the future matter of feeding the Central Coast transmissions from Mt Sugarloaf’s single frequency broadcast - the “SFN” issue.

FreeTV members were concerned about cost estimates to broadcasters, wanting assurances that the government had allowed for intangibles. Their technical concerns, however, centred on interference. Co-channel interference:

This paper brings to the attention of the Restack Planning Advisory Group areas where there have been issues in co-channel reuse previously. Restack planning has to be compromised in some spectrally-congested areas. This [applies to] regions of South East Queensland and Illawarra/Newcastle. The latter is in particular an example where there were already issues in co-channel reuse prior to restack. FreeTV members should not be obliged to fund, deploy, and/or implement solutions to resolve any consequences of realizing the Digital Dividend. This includes costs associated with new site(s) established solely to act as interference mitigators, or additional microwave links and/or in-band links implemented at a transmitter site to alleviate interference post restack.”

By October, 2012, the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) had reached agreement with Broadcast Australia (BA) to manage the project that would oversee a “restack of the Australian television spectrum.”

Final dates for frequency moves under the ‘restack’ were settled in October, 2013, for NBN’s northern NSW sites. The station’s 49 sites were listed according to which nights (“restack night”!) would apply. It would mean an enormous amount of travelling for changeover transmission teams. Broadcast Australia was in the process of hiring specialist technical and rigging staff to create a minimum 15 teams of “skilled broadcast technicians” although unforeseen factors meant at least 20 teams were needed. The number of techs required “far exceeds the number of qualified staff available in Australia for this purpose and therefore as a matter of urgency recruitment of overseas staff needs to be undertaken in order to meet the proposed schedule.”

Site owners would be busy supplying BA’s teams with technical data pertaining to their plant, local government development approvals, site safety, site supervision, documentation, and final sign-off and certification.

All sites were to be completed by year’s end, 2014. Sites were grouped by ‘market’ which were Newcastle, Central Coast, Gold Coast, Mid-north Coast, Far-north Coast, and New England (north west NSW). Not every site in a single market area could be done on a single trip, due to multiple reasons, chief among them being that the network was fed by many transmitters receiving their input from other transmitters, changes to one might break a chain of many. Planning had to be meticulous.

And so it began. During 2013 and 2014, more than 1300 TV transmitters and translators around Australia were moved to a new channel, fifty of which were NBN’s. Broadcast Australia (formerly the government National Transmission Agency, now privatised) had created a broad team of specialists - technicians and engineers, riggers, project managers - from scratch, borrowing from industry and hiring from overseas.

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TLAP

This somewhat esoteric construct - Television Licence Area Plan - is rather hard to describe in simple terms, short of reproducing verbatim the entire government documentation. It has mention here only due to it being the final regulatory piece in the DTV rollout project. It might seem a superfluous layer, but it is actually the foundation of broadcasting in Australia, as its name implies.

In short, a TLA is a defined region wherein a broadcaster is authorised to provide television services. As mentioned, it’s a layer, a regulatory construct that defines a broadcaster’s legal obligations that include content requirements, ownership rules, and technical parameters (power, siting, etc.). Its functionality (in practice) was, in the DTV rollout’s final stages, governed the ultimate channel plans, as all the UHF channels were ‘stacked’ into the lower band, below channel 52.

The TLAP controlled the restack, and although it allowed ACMA to forge ahead effectively unchecked, it was implicit that it was best it do so with broad agreement from all affected parties. Those parties (FreeTV, of our concern) had no choice but to ultimately agree, while likewise ACMA had little option other than get agreement.

NBN was in agreement with this broad thrust, with some caveats. There was concern about viewers accessing Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) from an area known to be adequately served by a terrestrial (land-based) broadcaster, especially both before their new service begins, and afterwards. For example, if an area is considered deficient in service (fewer services than from satellite) then it gets access, but only after a defined time. With possibly too many loopholes in applying such rule, NBN was critical of any means that it might lose viewers to satellite, considering how large a region its limited means (as an independent) were forced to serve.

It would become even trickier when the minister could exempt broadcasters moving to digital in communities of under 500 people - an ‘underserviced' area - depending on who else was on VHF or not. The upshot was that NBN (and any terrestrial broadcaster) would not want a scenario that made a community choose either land-based or satellite. They would likely choose satellite.

All seemingly trivial, but with considerable adverse outcomes for traditional broadcasters over time, as competition grew from emerging services with the falling cost of technologies needed to access them.

FreeTV examined problem areas post-switchover and in November, 2012, summarised their requests to ACMA on TLAP changes that they hoped might apply. At Currumbin where regional broadcasters (NBN’s Gold Coast break-away market) overlapped with Brisbane metro stations, modifications were sought to the antenna pattern that determines what effective power radiates in which directions. Similarly at Gosford, but for a different reason - extreme topography (hills!) - an increase in power was sought. FreeTV (NBN, NRN, NEN) agreed in reductions of effective radiated power (ERP) at Newcastle, Stroud, and Upper Namoi, with an increase in power at Upper Hunter IBL with its Merriwa feed.

Other issues raised for northern NSW included uncertainty about 19 of 24 repeaters potentially assigned to suburban power levels when they were clearly rural in nature. At which point, the reader is reminded that rules about the power output of TV transmitters is a compromise: too much power is never enough for good reception, but an increase eventually interferes with non-broadcaster services. The converse applies, and FreeTV expressed misgivings to ACMA on that issue at some length. Finally, FreeTV implored ACMA to address viewer awareness (also known as ‘lack of it’) of factors that would affect their re-tuning to the lower band channels, from both possible receiver deficiencies and antenna changes in gain, band, and direction.

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Reception

The viewer rarely accepts that receiving a TV channel is their problem. Or that the station’s only duty is to transmit it.

While delivering rental TVs around Newcastle and the lower Hunter, a mental map was formed of all the reception black spots. Rental TVs came with a small set top antenna for households where no external aerial was installed. Even though Channel 3 (at that time) was on a relatively low frequency (that gets into corners less accessible to higher channels), it still had trouble in shadows (lee side) of large hills. Think New Lambton, Kotara, Merewether, even Mayfield around Bull St's east end, and so on. There was also the surprise discovery that West Wallsend was a null zone; the transmit aerial atop the Mt Sugarloaf tower was so high above the township that it barely ‘leaked’ any signal almost straight down into Westy.”

From this, you can imagine that TV signals - and WiFi, and mobile phones, and FM radio - all work best when the transmit antenna is visible from where you are trying to receive. This is called ‘line of sight’ and implies that radio frequencies travel much as light does. If there were a large powerful light source atop Mt Sugarloaf’s tower, at night it would light up the landscape with illuminated peaks, and shadows behind mountains. This is directly analogous to TV reception. But why does TV work in so-called shadows? Radiated signals tend to diffract (scatter, bend) upon striking edges (eg: hilltops), and thereby reach into the shadows. Light does also, but to a far lesser extent.

During an investigation of interference in 2013, a FreeTV officer chose to do an 'ad hoc' survey of Medowie, and noted the wide variety of receive antennae on homes. Several large estates at Medowie are heavily wooded. The angle of reception between Mt Sugarloaf and Woolongong's Knights Hill is narrow. The surveyor noted the following, which demonstrated that viewers don't take their own responsibilities seriously, and expect television signals to magically appear on their TV sets.
A large number of low roof mounted antennas which would be under the 10m AGL planned level
A large number of combination UHF / VHF antennas with 10 element UHF yagis
Some 10 element UHF yagis (like the Hills TC10)
A few 30 metre masts with VHF phased arrays (like the Hills CA16)
A few UHF phased arrays (like the Hills Hunter and Wisi type)
Quite a few directional yagi antennas which may be off bore sight to Mt Sugarloaf

Surprisingly, and counterintuitively - while UHF analogue is prone to the usual radiation issues of absorption by vegetation, shadow areas, and directivity - digital TV on UHF would perform quite well. Australia's chosen standard employed a construct Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) that could cover a greater, more reliable area than analog signals by design, to overcome limitations of distance, interference, and obstacles (non-line-of-sight environments).

The reason broadcasters always sought lower channel numbers lay in the physics of propagation. Higher channels used frequencies that were more line-of-sight, and therefore worse at penetrating fringe reception spaces, especially in the lee of hills and mountains. Apart from technological solutions, such as COFDM, the station's cure was otherwise only to increase transmitter power - licence permitting. But for the viewer it meant much antenna experimenting and expense, with considerable angst at the homes in those living in reception shadows. Regional stations with sparse viewer populations scattered typically across countryside of mountains, hills, and forest, dreaded being stuck with a high channel number. It ensured complaints, about which they could do little, their transmitter power and antenna distribution being tightly controlled by licence conditions.

This map below illustrates how the NBN signal from Mt Sugarloaf is seen from households in reception areas.

Enlarge the image (click on it) and note the green shading. Where it’s dense is the primary reception area. Where it thins out is fringe reception. Note how far it travels but, increasingly from Mt Sugarloaf, only mountain tops are strongly “lit.” To reach Muswellbrook, Scone, Murrurrundi, and Merriwa, etc., repeater and translator sites were built in the upper Hunter. Similarly for Gloucester, Dungog, and the Central Coast. These in part comprised NBN’s coverage in the pre-aggregation days, before 1990. More recently small re-transmitters were added for Kotara, Merewether blackspots and many others suffering weak or interference, such as Stroud, Buladelah, Belmont North, Port Stephens, etc.

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…and Interference

Interference became an issue that the government found almost impossible to completely resolve. A pre-digital and classic example was when an atmospheric temperature created a duct (tropospheric propagation) above the ocean surface, the signal from WIN’s relatively low-powered VHF Channel 3 translator at Broker’s Nose near Wollongong arrived unattenuated at Newcastle and created havoc with NBN’s local channel 3 - an issue that repeated in summers across the decades. Those who thought, assumed, or hoped even, that the move to UHF (more 'line of sight' - in theory) and digital might make this a problem of the past would be disappointed.

There was no avoiding the inevitable. Almost from the start, viewers had problems not of their own making. Although it was, and always would be, the viewer’s responsibility to set up their own equipment (antenna, cabling, distribution, and receiver), the interference was beyond their control. This Medowie viewer was quite capable in all self-management respects, and yet…

I have in the past seen our local TV station's (NBN) and the ABC's signal drop in and out for no apparent reason. In addition to this Prime TV is always the first channel to pixellate when the whether is about rain, closely followed by Channel 10 then NBN and ABC together. However the NBN and the ABC signal can drop out at any time even on a warm sunny day.

Recently while tuning in my new HQ PVR I noticed that new TV channels were picked up and that NBN and ABC did not register. The new channels were the Sydney channels 7, 9, ABC and some newer channels I had never seen before, like channel 44 and thru to 47 and 48. Since NBN did not lock in, I did a re-scan and I got NBN and the local ABC. I thought this strange but did notice that the NBN signal was not as strong while the Sydney and extra channels were available, that said the signal was not low enough to cause any problems.

However, a few days later while watching NBN the signal just disappeared completely, NO signal and no frequency available on the information screen, however the Sydney channels were all fine with a full strength signal along with the new channels. After 5 or ten minute or so the Sydney and extra channel disappeared and NBN reappeared. This kept occurring on and off over a few months when the NBN and ABC signal finally disappeared for over 30 minutes.” ~ January 2010

And another:

We have no TV reception in nelson bay. It went off about 2 hours ago. It’s the same for all the channels... I have had reception problems for NBN, ABC/SBS and Ten for the last week. Prime reception is OK. Prior to this reception has been OK. Issue only occurs periodically, usually from 5PM onwards. All stations are being received this morning (7/2/2011). …continuous loss of signal from about 2:20pm on 6/2/2011 This is not the first time this has happened on a weekend. My antennae has direct line of sight to Gan Gan.”

When viewers provided information this precise, NBN’s transmission department knew, from the description, what was happening and alarm bells rang. Digital television on UHF was no panacea for fringe area viewers. The government boffins had repeated their original VHF duplicate channel allocation sin. Two things stood out: this viewer was within Mt Sugarloaf’s primary coverage; DTV receivers were frustratingly enigmatic, they either received or didn’t. Unlike the old analogue service where the channel’s signal strength was clear from the picture (snowy, ghosting). As was the presence of interference and its type (co-channel, power lines, spurious harmonics).

Politicians were receiving complaints, which meant the CEO was having her ear bent, leading to a missive landing on NBN's Digital Services Manager’s desk asking: “Has this progressed at all with the Minister’s Department?” For back in 2011 NBN had asked Regional Broadcasters Australia (the regional equivalent of FreeTV) to lobby the department on their behalf to draw attention to the unacceptable situation that was now clearly co-channel interference, even in the mountainous districts to the north. For example, while Vacy was known to suffer co-channel interference, Dungog was yet to be proven at the time, commissioned only in March 2010. In the mix, and we might add almost everyone in a bad spot, were Warners Bay and Caves Beach.

As George Hird, assistant transmission chief, told ACMA:

The issue is directly to viewers in areas of North Belmont, Jewels, Redhead, Medowie, Salt Ash, Tanilba Bay, and Anna Bay. Off air input to Gan Gan has been proved to be suffering from Illawarra co channel but can be fixed by [using a] link input, and viewer co channel issues dealt with by additional translator sites such as Mawsons lookout for Belmont North and possibly Gap fillers in the Port Stephens areas from Gan Gan.”

In 2011 an ACMA study of people affected by interference from the Illawarra TV transmissions into Newcastle (and adjacent) found of over 22,000 affected viewers, 16,000 of them lived in the area under review. Due largely to the radiated pattern from Mt Sugarloaf, relatively few Illawarra viewers (approximately 5,000) suffered interference from Newcastle.

In March, 2012, Brown offered a forceful opinion to RPAG’s 5th meeting:

NBN cannot overstate strongly enough the problems that are going to arise from co-channel interference from Knights Hill into the Newcastle area. During optimal weather conditions [for long-distance, out of region reception], and the grouping of all the channels in Block C could mean that there will be no free-to-air television for affected viewers in this period.

Hopefully the television viewers of Newcastle will not be disadvantaged when it comes to the interference that they will suffer. At times it seems to me personally that the Newcastle region is seen as the compromise area for other areas around it (Sydney Metro, Illawarra). I hope this is not true. My goal, and the goal of NBN, is to provide the viewers of Free To Air Television in Newcastle a consistent, interference free signal.

In February 2013 reception disruptions in the Newcastle region were endemic. A report by FreeTV Australia - "Interference from Illawarra DTTB services into reception of Newcastle DTTB services in the Hunter Region" - appealed to the Digital Switch Over Task Force, and to ACMA, on behalf of NBN.

NBN TV seeks the assistance of the Digital Switch Over Task Force and the ACMA to recognise the presence of interference from Illawarra DTTB services into reception of Newcastle DTTB services in the Hunter Region and develop a strategy to establish what is required in the current DTTB planning to minimize interference to DTTB reception in the area and what is required by householders to optimise reception of the Newcastle services.”

Viewers around Medowie, Lemon Tree Passage, Salt Ash, Soldiers Point, and an area stretching from Raymond Terrace to Medowie, west of Nelson Bay, had brought an increasing number of complaints to NBN about their affected DTTB (Digital terrestrial television broadcast) service. Buladelah and Stroud were documented as large populations added to those suffering poor reception, a scenario repeated throughout the entire northern NSW fringe and blackspot confirmed areas.

In a case study, the aforementioned report describes Illawarra signals were found (due to ducting) to be affecting Dungog, via reception at that service’s translator input (translators retransmit a signal they have received directly from a broadcasting service, rather than a ‘clean’ signal fed from, say, a studio, via microwave link). Incredible as it seemed, WIN’s signal from Knight’s Hill arrived directly at the Dungog translator 270 Km away sufficiently strong to interfere with NBN’s much stronger input signal from Mt Sugarloaf.

With interference being reported on the evening of 9th December 2012 NBN TV took the unprecedented action of switching off the Mt Sugarloaf transmitter at this time to see if the interference was in fact coming from Wollongong. On the output from the monitoring receiver at 2.30am at the Dungog site, the receiver locked to the incoming signal from Wollongong, showing an MER (in the final grab) of 31.8dB. …Given the impact of this interference at Dungog it is understood the interference at Medowie, Lemon Tree Passage, Salt Ash and Soldiers Point is likely to be comparable.”

Ultimately, there would, or not easily could, be any resolution. FreeTV told NBN's management team in May, 2013, that in response to an investigation into the Newcastle and Hunter DTTB reception and interference issues:

[T]he situation cannot be resolved without some changes in the DTTB planning which may have major consequences. And this is perhaps as far as the engineering efforts can take us at this point in time given the currently proposed planning parameters... [and that] this matter be referred up to management and policy representatives within the industry for briefings. I do not believe the FreeTV engineers should send a response to the ACMA. It may transpire that a higher level response is required given the overall impact any decisions could have.

To which Stephen Brown, NBN’s Broadcast Engineering Manager, fired a sympathetic but exasperated reply:

I think it should be remembered that whilst this work is valuable and may alleviate some of the problems in the Newcastle Area, it will not fix the underlying problem and people who can only use the Mt Sugarloaf transmitter will still be affected by this high level of interference from the Illawarra.

I would not like to see this strand of work be seen as a panacea for the problems that the co-channel interference causes. I fear that along with the modified antenna campaigns that the department are going to roll out, this will be seen as the fix and Newcastle will be doomed to inferior television reception for the foreseeable future.

The Restack process is the perfect time to fix the underlying root cause. If the process is hard for the ACMA and the DBCDE, then so be it. If we need to point out their process deficiencies then we have to. They are the only people who can fix it with their processes and planning powers. Let us not forget that is was their planning process that got us into this situation in the first place.

I commend the work that is being done, however I feel that it is only ‘papering around the edges.’

The ‘papering’ for locals involved radiated power upgrades to Gan Gan and several new translators, all at NBN's expense, all of it unexpected and so unplanned for. By July 2013 planning was underway for shared hosting at four sites, Gan Gan (replacement) and Wallaroo near Nelson Bay, Nerong to serve Buladelah, and Peppers Mountain to serve Stroud. At each site would be deployed five low-powered transmitters and antenna array, one for each network, totalling about $1 million, based on a template installation at Belmont North.

Work involved ‘upgrade’ to provide more reliable off-air feed to Buladelah and Stroud, whose sites would retransmit (‘translate’) signal from a receiver looking at Port Stephens (Gan Gan). A ‘gap filler’ transmitter at Wallaroo would serve Medowie.

On 10th December, 2015, local politician Bob Baldwin told long-suffering viewers via Newcastle’s newspaper The Herald:

Paterson MP Bob Baldwin, who has campaigned heavily on the issue since his 2013 federal election win, announced the Gan Gan and Wallaroo digital television towers were now up and running. Mr Baldwin said the upgrades were the culmination of intense lobbying of the federal government working with Regional Broadcasters Australia (RBAH) to upgrade digital television reception in Port Stephens. Towns that are covered from the Gan Gan site include Nelson Bay, Shoal Bay, Fingal Bay, Corlette, Soldiers Point and Tea Gardens/Hawks Nest. The new site at Wallaroo is to provide an alternative transmission signal option for viewers suffering from co-channel interference in the Medowie, Salt Ash and surrounding areas.

Although the co-channel interference scenario would, of necessity, be repeated across the continent, it appeared almost willful for the government decision makers to repeat the mistakes of the past for this densely-populated region of Australia, when they again set duplicate channel numbers for Newcastle and Illawarra. As any Amateur Radio (HAM) experimenter - who has worked New Zealand operators across the Tasman Sea from Australia’s east coast “running 10 watts into a quarter-wave at 146MHz” - could tell them, VHF and UHF travels very, very well, given the right conditions. And those condition occur quite predictably each and every summer along NSW's eastern seaboard.

Pictured: Probable TV signal strength in VHF and UHF around Australia captured on 31 Jan 2009. It shows very intense ducting between Illawarra and Newcastle.

On the 4th of December, 2006, NBN alerted viewers via newspaper advertising on the mid-north coast about digital test transmissions:

DIGITAL TELEVISION
NBN Television advises Digital Television test transmissions from Middle Brother in the Manning River district will commence from Monday 4 December 2006 on VHF Channel 12 (226.5MHz). These transmissions may cause interference to radio or television reception. If interference is experienced help can be obtained from the the DBA website, www.dba.org.au under reception/interference or the NBN website www.nbntv.com.au If the interference problem cannot be resolved then call NBN on 02 49292933 or email NBN at nnswtvreception@nbntv.com.au or write to: Chief Engineer NBN TV PO Box 750L Newcastle NSW 2300

To recap, Middle Brother, like most of the coastal high-power transmitters (VHF or UHF) were subject to tropospheric ducting over great distances during warmer months. When the path was across water, in their case, signals could arrive strong enough to view as a local channel in areas well beyond the intended geographic reach. This was one problem. The other, that kept planning groups in long and painful discussions, was “co-channel” interference that was due to limited available frequencies that therefore had to be shared. Yet another source was adjacent channel interference: spurious effects whereby side-channel frequencies impinged upon nearby signals. There was even an investigation into how certain channel allocations might interfere with inputs to domestic appliances, such as the RF output of VHF players that used a channel on the TV set.

During the deployment of new channels in the northern tablelands (New England) region of NSW, complaints were rolling in as transmitters rolled out. Dealing with viewer complaints was probably the most thankless task for a member of a TV station’s RF (radio frequency) team. In March, 2007, it fell to George Hird, then NBN’s DTV Transmission Manager, to placate Tony Windsor, MP, at Tamworth:

NBN Television has a major scope of works with its digital transmission services rollout throughout Northern NSW. This project throughout NBN’s broadcast licence area commenced in 2001 in Newcastle and will be completed by 2011. It spans a geographical area from the Central Coast to the Gold Coast, and through the upper Hunter to the North West and New England regions.

Our service covers a considerable geographic expanse, serving a population of 1.9 million. Recently NBN completed the rollout of the main high power digital transmitters on the east coast of its coverage area from the NSW Central Coast through to the Gold Coast in Southeast Queensland. These new digital transmitters are operating in all the areas on the east coast along side the existing analogue transmitter systems, so that simulcasting of analogue and digital television, as per Government Legislation, is in operation.

Currently, we are rolling out our next stage of digital transmission services in our upper Hunter sites, and later this year will start our rollout in the larger geographical market of the North West and New England region where there are three main transmitting sites covering Tamworth, Gunnedah, Werris Creek, Armidale, Narrabri and Moree. This stage of our expansion of digital services includes the digital transmitter installations at Mt Soma, Little Duval and Mt Dowe - plus the rollout and integration of fibre and microwave link systems to deliver program to these transmitters.”

Over the decades random complaints were treated with a degree of sympathy and callbacks with advice were common, no matter where the viewer lived. But during the DTV rollout it was barely possible to maintain complaint listings. For example, a sample compilation of reception complaints to NBN listed almost 340 verifiable incidents in a 12 month period to April 2010 from across the station’s service area.

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Programming

Content control by government has been a cost to the company from inception. On the expenditure side of the ledger, it was in the form of time consumed by staff and management to ensure that content did not infringe classifications. In particular, what is or is not suitable to screen in timeslots that children might be watching or, conversely, what is adult content.

Whether by mischievous intent or genuine oversight, NBN's Saturday movie was introduced by an animated opening billboard that ended with the word "Saturday" zooming out towards the viewer. Of course - and why it took so long is the mystery - someone eventually rang the station to complain that the last thing they saw on their screen was "turd"

Improprieties such as this were a minor issue compared to prohibited content. For, on the ledger's other side, revenue was constrained by what could not be advertised. In June 1972 the Broadcasting and Television Act decreed that each tobacco advertisement was to state simultaneously by image and sound that “Medical authorities warn that smoking is a health hazard.”

Cigarette advertising was banned entirely from radio and television on 1st September, 1976, after a decade of saturation advertising. It created an earnings hole that - by various estimates between 8 and 12 per cent of advertising revenue - was never completely filled. The disruption was countered in part by forcing the broadcast industry to enhance programming that would appeal to a wider audience to capture demographics hitherto ignored, and thereby create advertising opportunities in niche markets.

In later years captioning, too, became a cost. Mandated before it was technologically reliable, at least for automation, meant a long period of dealing with complaints and reprimands. Disability support associations were ever vigilant and quick to admonish any station's misstep.

With local content the broadcast industry was generally recalcitrant from the start. Percentages were negotiated during licence hearings before even the first licence was allocated. Channel 3 didn't shy away from local shows and revelled at hosting locals in the busy studio. Newcastle was unique amongst Australian cities, described by locals as "Our Town" or a big country town, and remarked upon by visitors as oddly parochial.

Local productions throughout the 70s and 80s exemplified this spirit. NBN, realising the insatiable interest of the public across all ages treated its juvenile audience with due attention. While running its share of imported cartoons, the list of local kids' shows makes a respectable list. From day one almost, the station's resident funny man Norm Brown made his appeal to young viewers, joined by, of all people, newsreader Murray Finlay.

Pictured at right: BHP High School Quiz finalists, in Studio A, 1973.

The 1970s featured Romper Room, BHP High School Quiz and Beat Hill's Respect our Animals. Beat's 1980s series Beating Around the Bush would surely qualify as educational for children of all ages, and general viewing, as did Art Ryan's breakfast show. Big Dog and Friends became the station mascot with his own show, easing out Buttons and Nine's Humphrey Bear. Other 80s shows were Children's Choir (1980), Early Birds (1985), and Handybank School Quiz (1982). Into the 1990s Big Dog and Romper Room held the banner for local content. Outside Broadcasts (OBs) covered largely sporting events that inevitably involved sports for the young (basketball, soccer, skateboarding, etc.).

However, requirements for children's programming grew to be onerous and complex. While at the beginning (1960s) the argument between government and industry was over the degree of local content, any local content, soon complaints about the banality of imported material aimed at children led to the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) trying for incentives to coax networks into children's shows, but they had little effect. In 1979 an ABT enquiry led to the "C" classification, which meant stations could no longer pay lip service to kids. By 2008, ACMA's standards had transformed the space into a regulatory minefield:

a licensee must broadcast at least 20 hours of first release Australian documentary programs each year
a licensee must broadcast at least 260 hours of children’s (C) programs each year
a licensee must broadcast at least 130 hours of first release Australian (C) programs (50 per cent of total C requirement) each year
a licensee must broadcast in the C band at least 8 hours of repeat Australian C drama programs each year
a licensee must broadcast at least 130 hours of Australian preschool (P) programs each year
annual drama requirement – the drama scores for all first release Australian drama programs broadcast by a licensee in prime time in any year - must total at least 250
the three year drama requirement, which scores for all first release Australian drama programs broadcast by a licensee in prime time, must be at least 860 over three years
a licensee must broadcast the C drama’s annual requirement – at least 25 hours of first release Australian children’s drama programs – each year
that for the three year requirement for C drama, licensee must broadcast in each three-year period at least 96 hours of first release Australian children’s drama

By then it had become NBN's new owner Nine's problem. Their compliance that year totalled 131 hours of first-release children's 'programs,' 44 hours of first-release children's 'drama' and 86 hours of repeats.

As the new millennium began, so too did an array of programming challenges of a nature that reflected a new era of complexity and regulation.

Australia's Goods and Services Tax (GST) was an impost that drew management's attention from the core business of selling entertainment (or, should that be, selling advertisements!). It was introduced on 1st July, 2000 and applied 10% to a very broad base with few exceptions, to replace a long-standing wholesale tax and many state taxes.

In March 2000, sales manager Deborah Wright sought a meeting with NBN station manager Jeff Eather to discuss manifold potential disruptions for the company that would require urgent review: rate cards (for all markets, and NBN had six!); sales promotions; sponsorships; procedures for sales, production, and facilities; and changes to accounting procedures. Overseas experience (Britain, Canada) was a loss of around 10% of client expenditure on advertising due largely to uncertainties or misconceptions. Proactively, therefore, NBN chose to educate advertisers on the operation of GST, tutoring sales staff on how to address client concerns and misgivings. The effect was overall hard to quantify due to so many variables. Disruption was less that feared, as broadcasters claimed input tax credits for GST paid on expenses. For example, although GST was added to purchased content, this was claimed back as an input credit.

Later that year, in a presentation covering challenges presented by the transition to digital television (DTV), Managing Director Denis Ledbury outlined what he saw in legislation the NBN must take careful heed of. In addition to the oft-mentioned requirement to transmit a minimum of twenty hours of HD television programme, were these intricacies:

More than one event of the same kind to be broadcast simultaneously from the same venue was (fortuitously for broadcasters) overturned in the Australian senate.
Legislation then defined digital programme enhancement content as:

Content the sole purpose of which is to enhance a television programme
Where the subject matter of the content is closely and directly linked to the subject matter of the programme
Where the content and the programme are transmitted simultaneously. The provision includes advertising and promos, and specifically includes such things as: a match from different camera angles; each player's results in past matches; video highlights of those past matchers; and, each player's ranking and career highlights.

Programme overlaps will only be allowed when a live sporting event extends beyond the start time of a regularly scheduled news programme.
Genre rules:

Current Affairs has bee removed from genre restrictions, meaning that datacasters can provide news and current affairs content subject to the "no more than 10 minutes of video every half hour" restriction
Information-only Programmes - now allowing a little more than originally proposed, though they must not contain "a significant emphasis on a dramatic impact and entertainment value."
Education Programmes no longer must be directly linked to a course of study in order to fall within the scope of datacasting content.

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EPG

The basic idea of an EPG is to provide a programme listing that is automatically generated from the station’s real-time playout schedule, and dynamically updates itself as (or if) the log changes. It, along with Captioning (immediately below) is considered 'metadata' for programme content, which is data about data. Captions and Programme Guides have become more essential to viewers than ever due to both the large amount of content on tap, and to technologies developed to use them, many of which those with disability have grown dependent upon.

Electronic programme guides were available since the 1980s. You will recall them as Teletext, for interactive transmission and reception of text-based news and information (weather, sport, racing results, etc.). After long trials and evaluation it was approved by the Postal and Telecommunications Department, a government body responsible for regulating telecommunications and broadcasting. Minister for Communications, Neil Brown, made the announcement on 26th September, 1982.

As of the few Australian channels approved to trial Teletext, NBN ran the service from a Digital PDP computer and a 10 megabyte 5.25 inch hard disk in 1980 while awaiting a government decision. It would be a long wait. Telecom wanted a system like the British Prestel, but minister Ian Sinclair said private sector should handle it. Confusion reigned as stations chose their favoured system and went ahead while viewers asked shop staff which teletext TV set should they buy. Come March 1983 with the election of the ALP, Telecom’s favoured Viatel was approved.

But a guide for DTV was a much trickier matter for TV stations due to the existing workload of the rollout, rapidly expanding technology, growing demands for interactivity with the viewer, and the unavoidable government regulation.

In 2008 ACMA wrote to Freeview, reminding the organisation that EPG implementation by the major broadcasters should not put associated services (community TV, etc.) at a disadvantage:

ACMA's starting position with regard to regulatory intervention has not changed from that position articulated in its December 2007 Digital Television Codes and Standards discussion paper, namely, that it will only consider the exercise of its regulatory powers when it believes that the market has failed or is discernibly moving down a path that will lead to market failure. However, ACMA believes that the development and promulgation of these thresholds, in consultation with industry and preferably prior to proposals being solidified, will give greater certainty to broadcasters, confidence to suppliers of digital equipment and generally inform industry endeavours in developing an appropriate and effective EPG model.”

Those thresholds were: EPG is unavailable (because the broadcaster does not transmit EPG data); EPG is not FREELY available (part of the free-to-air broadcast); EPG fails to contain ‘appropriate’ data (accurate, complete, etc.). Some at NBN took umbrage at what they saw as onerous oversight, that ACMA seemed “hell bent on regulating it (EPG)” and expressed suspicions about manufacturer’s “getting in the ear of ACMA.”

At first, for NBN, there was no easy way to add its programme listing to the service, other than have an operator type it out every day. It was possible and might even have been trialled, but unlikely because NBN’s ‘traffic’ system (scheduling of the station output) was on a text-based Unix system that had one function: print the station log on paper for humans to follow, minute by second, in all three of the station's on-air departments: Videotape (VTR), Telecine, and Presentation (playout).

By year 2000 it was being mentioned regularly in NBN's executive meetings, and from that time would occupy the station’s engineering staff until Nine controlled the programme feed entirely. By 2001 year-end, Florical Systems (designers of NBN’s 1996 computerised break-away system) were developing an XML format interface for integration with NBN’s website. Florical programmers also worked on an EPG at Newcastle studios in July, 2000. The software called “Airguide” - a module of its Airboss playout automation software - generated an EPG for NBN’s broadcast of the ABC’s Asia Pacific satellite feeds. A promotional article is still online at: EPG updates from automation at ABC Asia Pacific | TV Tech

While by 2013 NBN had the processes in place for transmitting an EPG on all its signals and to ancillary outlets (websites, etc.), it was of necessity feeding them with, and hence dependent up, data from Nine, in the form of XML files. Cisco’s ROSA SI server was the core component. But, being a semi-manual system that imported discrete files from Nine, there were still frequent snafus, which brought the station unwanted attention from ACMA. As harried IT staff explained to executives on one typical occasion: “Following on Nine’s failure to be consistent these are the changes I have made… EPG not updated since 01/12/2013… These were the last ‘good-for-NBN’ xml files Nine sent to us on the 1st Dec 2am… Until Nine provide us with a xml that includes ‘TODAY’ + forward looking.”

The EPG was equally a headache for the transmitter crews. An example of one exchange, which is above my understanding…

Q: “…some blackspot sites are being converted from RABs input and we want to know if the ABE “transmitter” (which has an L band Rx input) will work with a Vast CA card or if it needs a dedicated Vast IRD?
A: “NBN will need to comply with the chosen master site in the Imparja Southern market, which is some town that I can’t remember at the moment. Basically, one must have the correct EPG, parental locks, etc., the same as in some town that Imparja nominate.”

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Captioning, Codes and Complaints

When it came to captions, NBN Television was on a hiding to nothing. For when dealing with subtitle grievances on programme largely relayed from Nine, upon enquiring of Nine how they handled the matter, typically there had been no censure by viewers.

"Clearly one of the key problems for NBN is the presence of a strong deaf lobby in the market. Newcastle appears to be the origin of a lot of caption complaints." ~ PBL Media executive.

Although subtitles were embedded in many (mostly foreign language) movies from the very start, dynamic captioning effectively began with Teletext in 1981. They were transmitted in the PAL television waveform along with other data such as a vertical interval test signal (VITS). Defined as "closed captions" they could be enabled or hidden by a Teletext-capable TV set remote control devices. It's speculative but reasonable to think that Teletext inspired disability lobbies to become active after seeing future possibilities in the way Teletext itself worked.

The 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons spurred the Australian Deafness Council to press the government to legislate subtitles on television. In October, 1982, the government ordered an inquiry by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) which would consult with commercial broadcasters, the government-funded Caption Centre, and consumer organisations.

The Broadcasting Services Act of 1992 introduced regulations that required captions for programmes on a broadcaster's main channel from 6am until midnight. Even though the established method for analogue television was to use line 21 of the PAL waveform, in the complex chain of devices from source to transmitter things could go missing. Late in 1999 programme manager Wayne Hampton advised that commercials to air lacked subtitles, violating obligations. It was an intermittent problem and though there was a system to monitor for this, commercials lacked any external mention of subtitling, or lack of it. Studio technicians eventually found the subtitles (in the vertical interval) went missing when dubbing into Ampex ACR tape library, a solution for which was sought from the vendor. By March, still unresolved, NBN reached out to other stations with similar setups, one of which was GTV who had no issue and yet were handling material identically. Eventually it was a technical issue between NBN's tape machines, but was a harbinger of the station's struggle with captions that would drag on for decades.

Automated captioning was still a difficult proposition in the late 1990s. In May of 2000 representatives from the Australian Captioning Centre visited NBN's Newcastle studio to review what the station could offer as source material. They met with news editor Jim Sullivan and managing director Denis Ledbury to suggest that the station could take Nine's feed. When Ledbury balked at the cost from Nine, who would treat it as yet another opportunity to extract affiliate fees, Sullivan pinned his hopes on the promise of speech to text software.

Closed captions became mandatory on news and current affairs with an amendment to the act that directed metropolitan licensees to caption news starting 1st January, 2001. For regionals, however, it was linked to their conversion to digital broadcasting, which in NBN's case was 1st May, 2002 when their newly-commissioned Channel 36 UHF transmitter went 24x7 with programme. At the time it was quite still quite a challenge for live programmes to be subtitled. Despite the promise of speech-to-text technologies, for several more decades it would depend on old-school stenography.

Since the 1980s, the news studio used a system to feed camera-mounted teleprompter hardware to scroll the newsreaders' script as it was spoken. It was sourced, hilariously at first, by a long conveyor belt upon which the pre-typed script on A4-sized sheets was placed in sequence to be read. The progression of paper moved along until it passed beneath a small camera, the output of which appeared on the studio camera's teleprompter. Speed was controlled by an operator - one selected for their talent of being able to coordinate what they heard the newsreader speak whilst anticipating how quickly to drive the next-to-be-spoken printed sheet to the scanning camera. An additional skill was to never place a sheet upside down. This operation became computerised using Australian Cueword software to replace the paper chase with computer-generated print. Image at right above shows operator's screen.

Station management agonised in particular about how news story content available as scripted text from the BASYS news software during the 1990s could be converted to subtitles that would overlay vision as news stories went to air. It was not feasible to pre-record them through devices like the Chyron that did just that, but was limited to single static pre-entered lines. Jim Sullivan pinned his hopes on voice recognition software. NBN already ran Nine-relayed programmes along with their captioning, but for Nine-supplied news items (national and international stories) Denis Ledbury was concerned at the cost, because Nine would want (yet another!) affiliate fee for it.

With live news subtitling now a mandatory requirement, in 2002, the Cueword computer was used to generate a captions feed via RS232 serial data sent to the station's closed caption inserter in the digital programme stream. NBN news had, a year earlier, moved to AP's Electronic News Production System (ENPS) that could supply the Cueword system directly with scripts, eliminating all physical handling between journalists' keyboards, newsreaders' teleprompt, and viewers' subtitles.

But there were to be many failures in the following years. And failures, no matter how minor, brought censure from the hearing impaired community, whereupon the station was sure to be set upon by ACMA. Like any technology, the moment it becomes a physical or operational reality, the consumer expects it to be effectively perfected. So the appearance of captions on the household TV screen was quite reasonably expected to represent what was being said. This was far from possible at the time.

NBN, as a regional broadcaster with a massive network of transmitters and offices to maintain, was always constrained by technical infrastructure costs and staffing limitations. Even if the company, like the deep-pocketed metros, could just throw money at captioning, it would not have solved the inherent difficulties of live subtitling, which for many years to come would still be suffering delays, missing lines, errors, spellings, and so forth. And unless a recorded interview was written into the script before airing, it too would be missed. Live interviews were almost impossible to caption.

The primary channel from 6am to midnight was at first roughly 70% captioned, while today it's 100%. Broadcasters' multi-channels had no obligation, nor did pay TV, but had to be captioned if they were previously. The quality of subtitling is now under an enforced standard. And the 'emergency' news, announcements, or government advertisements moved from the "industry code" to mandatory text and speech. But in 2005, when ACMA replaced the ABA, news and current affairs were still exempt from what mattered most after their actual appearance: performance metrics.

Subtitling became a constant headache for management, who saw the complaints but could do little more than seek resolution by those delegated to fix them - almost always the techs. Complainants were understandably vague, many having issues on all channels, others commonly unable to explain what their problem specifically was. Typical of these exchanges, this one from September 2006 from NBN's programme manager to the transmission team's manager:

[Name] from the Coffs area called complaining of the quality of NBN subtitles. The poor spelling and quality of our captions are her problems .. (even though she gets clear and accurate captions from all other telecasters). I explained that her difficulties may be caused by bad TV tuning, aerial feed and aerial problems , however I would appreciate a call to her, as she seemed very reasonable as her husband needs captions to better enjoy TV programs. Could you let me know the results of your follow-up.

When ACMA got on NBN's case, it was a bad day for staff and management. Another representative exchange, this from July 2007 and ACMA's investigative section:

I refer to your letter to ACMA dated 29 March 2007 and would appreciate if you could provide some additional information regarding the weather segments broadcast on 8, 9 and 12 February 2007, as follows:
1) was the NBN Evening News bulletin, previous to the specified dates, transmitted with captions?
2) was NBN Evening News bulletin, previous to the specified dates, transmitted on NBN's core/simulcast service? If so, what is/was the period for NBN's core/simulcast service (ie between what dates).
3) was the NBN Evening News bulletin televised on an SDTV or HDTV multi-channel during the simulcast period? If so, what is/was the period for NBN's simulcast period (ie between what dates) for programs televised on SDTV and HDTV multi-channels, respectively.

The company's response was a DVD recording of a 4-way split screen of the weather segment only, on which the subtitles were obscured by the feed's labelling, which prompted ACMA to persist. NBN took the 'so there' approach, explaining that's all we have, but we're installing a new six-channel recorder that will answer your needs should there be a next time. ACMA wanted a verbal assurance that subtitles were indeed broadcast, whereupon the station replied, yes, of course. And so it went on over the years.

In 2005 the Deafness Forum of Australia had sent FreeTV their marked-up copy of Captioning Quality Guidelines but the matter lapsed. Two years later, in September of 2007, the document arrived again at FreeTV. Attention was drawn to "a viable, robust complaints mechanism where [members] feel their concerns are heard and acted upon." FreeTV's director of legal and broadcasting policy redistributed the document for review both to member broadcasters and to the ABC and SBS - making clear that the push was on to get captioning settled industry-wide so that technologies could be trialled, bought, and deployed.

Free-to-air broadcasters agreed largely with Deafness forum's requests, such as captioning of live events and news, matters of public importance and emergencies, and government advertising. They were unable to agree to recaptioning overseas material - that might not be in natural English or poorly translated - due to complexity, cost, and copyright. They could not agree to a prescribed minimum level of accuracy. In this case it wasn't the broadcasters being stubborn, it was them saying that the demanded level of, say, perfection would have to wait for technology and methodology to catch up.

As for complaints, broadcasters did not want to be unduly pinned down by prescriptive language in the agreement and thereby subject to enforcement beyond that covered by Codes of Practice. For back in 2007, captioning was largely industry-led under 'Codes of Practice' with government yet to become the strict enforcer. The industry had agreed to handle complaints voluntarily by responding to written complaints, ensuring company receptionists understood caption enquiries were serious, and that phone calls must be properly directed within the company.

Hearing-impaired were by now well-informed and proactive, a group of viewers the station would ignore at its peril. In response to a minor snafu with a news story in 2008, the news director composed his response with care:

Thanks for your letter dated the 29th December regarding our captions. NBN News makes every effort to caption every news story. At times we rely on other newsrooms, from where the story is sourced, to get these captions to air. Unfortunately sometimes we do not get access to their scripts. In this instance we then make every effort to caption the story after it is sent to us. The problem arises when there is not enough time to caption the story, between it being sent to us, and putting it to air, sometimes a matter of seconds. It it an issue we are trying to address. Let me assure you, we take the captioning of our news very seriously.

From March, 2010, broadcasters had to accept such complaints submitted to FreeTV's website. ACMA also received captioning complaints directly via their online form (or post) and had a strict timeline for handling them. As legislation tightened, and would clearly continue to, NBN knew - from the many skirmishes to date - that more reprimands lay in the future if this obligation was not gotten on top of. Compliance to the letter would, it was now accepted, be placed in the hands of captioning specialists. Enough time and expense had been consumed by staff to barely meet requirements.

Mid-2008 Red Bee Media was approached by NBN's Group Media Digital Services Manager, Stephen Brown, to propose live captioning of NBN's evening news bulletin. Competing proposals were offered by Magna Systems' Sysmedia to use a Wincaps system, and Caption It P/L. "Remote stenocaptioning" presented as the most interesting and least technological, at least from NBN's viewpoint.

News captioning once more reached executive level, pressing NBN's CEO Deborah Wright to assure ACMA an effort was underway:

NBN is evaluating technical solutions to integrate secondary separate ‘live’ captioning into its current ENPS News captioning software. This will ensure that any late breaking News being fed from any source is captioned.[We will] evaluate these options versus a more traditional ‘stenographer’ approach. In the interim any late breaking stories from the Network or any source are either being delayed to air and captioned through our ENPS News software or are not going to air in the bulletin but potentially later as a News Update. NBN will update ACMA on its solution as soon as it has received all the information it requires.

On 11th February 2009 NBN apparently failed to have captions on its evening news, causing ACMA to investigate. The reason was procedural during the news, when news items queued too quickly and a leading item went captionless. News were directed thereafter to hold important breaking stories until they could be subtitled, even if it meant burying them later in the bulletin. After investigating the incident for five months, ACMA declared that each news item was a "programme" and that therefore NBN had committed multiple breaches. As ACMA's report landed, AAP wasreporting that Network TEN failed to caption Barack Obama's inauguration because... "it didn't consider it news."

By not capturing this event Ten has not only breached its regulatory obligations but deprived its hearing impaired audience of fully participating in this historic moment. The one-off broadcast, filled with five hours of political commentary and analysis, was well within the definition of news.
~ ACMA chairman Chris Chapman

For its February, 2010, launch of live captioning for NBN evening news, NBN chose to deploy RedBee's service, with which Nine was already under contract. Perfection was still to come, even from this global specialist. Red Bee's quality control review of NBN’s evening news: "This particular bulletin was stenocaptioned and the accuracy is a very pleasing 98.2% textual accuracy. The most important thing is that captions read well to the viewer, so the guidelines are based on readability. The main types of errors are: Word errors; Capital letters; Numbers; Standard errors; Punctuation errors; and Corrections using a double dash."

It's remarkable to note that throughout the year (2010) captioning incidents continued during the evening news, for each of which CEO Deborah Wright must explain to ACMA the reasons. They were mostly human errors, as often the fault of Red Bee as of NBN. They were mostly procedural rules being ignored, not through negligence but due to timeliness of pre-checks, or to staffing scarcity at this busy news preparation period. And sometimes it was technical issues, like telecom link outages, equipment needing a reboot, and even devilishly obscure ones, such as caption line timing during SD to HD conversion.

Captions were still eating precious staff and management hours, in addition to risking reprimands or fines from the regulator..

A final word for this brief snippet of captioning history, drawing attention in 2011 to a rapid uptake of subtitled programme content by the general population, in addition to hearing impaired.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) and Media Access Australia (MAA) are calling on the major television networks to include comprehensive captioning on digital free-to-air multichannels after new research has found a high level of awareness and use of closed captions – even among those who aren’t hearing impaired. Research into the use of closed captioning, conducted by The Australia Institute, found 30% of the population say they sometimes use captions and 3% always use them. Hearing loss is an age-related condition, with 2.6 million people aged over 60 affected to some degree. But the study found that younger people aged 18-24 years of age were the group that most often reported using captions “sometimes”.

Under the current rules, programs which previously screened on one network don’t need to be captioned if screened on another network’s multichannels, even though captions would be available,” said Mr Hawkins. “So some networks are choosing not to caption them. It’s infuriating for viewers when they turn on a series that they used to watch with captions and the captions aren’t there. We’d like to see all programs captioned as standard practice.

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OB & ENG

Outside broadcasts (OBs) are planned but temporary events, usually associated with sport. Electronic news gathering (ENG) are unscheduled deployments of a news team to a location from which it would 'go live.' A third type of external broadcast is a studio style production remote from the studio site intended to go direct to air, as opposed to being recorded on site. In effect it's an outside broadcast, but categorically different. All use the same technology - microwave links (or satellite relay). This discussion is concerned with the use of microwave links (mobile microwave radios and antennae) to connect with the studio.

Just as the broadcast industry complied with federal government regulations, the international community guided decisions of Australia's telecom regulatory bodies. On occasion we went our own way, such as placing NBN's television signal within the internationally-agreed FM radio band, or the ad-hoc use of channel "5A" for Newcastle's ABHN (ABC) television rebroadcast.

But, signatory to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Australia adhered to membership and treaty obligations, despite the temptations offered by continental isolation.

As the mobile (cellular) telephone industry 'exploded' at the turn of the millennium, it was evident that phones would demand more and more spectrum. When the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC-2000) reaffirmed frequencies around 2.5GHz for satellite and mobile use, broadcasters feared the loss of their near-free use of the band for outside broadcast and news gathering microwave links. Their concern extended to being kicked off the band completely, despite heavy investment in those transportable antennae and links that were ideal for point-to-point functionality.

By 2006 ACMA sought industry consultation, forcing broadcasters to take the threat of loss seriously:

[Per] consultation processes on the frequency range 2500–2690 MHz (the 2.5 GHz band) since 2006, the ACMA has reached a preliminary view that the current planning, licensing, and pricing arrangements for this band may not support its future efficient allocation and use.

The free-to-air (FTA) broadcast industry at this time was paying under $1million a year for its 190 MHz of spectrum access. With Telstra wanting to trial services in their space, broadcasters quite reasonably feared the government would sell it off, tempted by an income of tens to hundreds the value of the broadcasters almost free ride. The FTA proposed standing firm - in particular that the government keep the current cost structure and that it must cover the cost of moving to a new band.

While the issue was critical to the industry in general, NBN was at a fortuitous moment in not having recently invested in ENG equipment. The lightly-used 1994 Pajero with its equipment rack, telescopic tower, and microwave rod antennae had not been replaced. It had doubled as a news live-feed unit and as an income earner linking Hunter horse race events to Sky via Mt. Sugarloaf.

In 2007, as uncertainty grew, SPTel's engineering manager Steve Legge asked about potentially affected licences for the SPT group in 2007. The reply from George Hird, Manager NBN DTV Transmission:

The 2.5GHz band, currently used for Electronic News Gathering (ENG), Television outside Broadcast (TVOB) and Electronic Field Production (EFP) is embargoed by ACMA and may be reassigned in favour of Wireless Access Services (WAS) in the future. Currently Free TV Australia has submitted objections to ACMA regarding the possible reallocation of this band to WAS. NBN used this band extensively until recent years for ENG and OB’s but the equipment is now obsolete and requires replacement. Purchasing of new equipment should be delayed until the outcomes of the 2.5GHz band are resolved and/or a new band is available.

Circa April 2004, though outside the scope of this article: "The Nine network have concluded that their equipment is too old to facilitate a frequency shift and change in bandwidth so they have elected to convert their entire ENG operation in TCN, QTQ and GTV to digital." Being so early in the 'digital' era, that probably meant a move to digital satellite news-gathering, employing a vehicular satellite earth station to transmit directly to studio.

By 2013 NBN was experimenting with mobile (cellphone) backpack kits from Dejero, thus bypassing need of a dedicated vehicle that would use expensive and cumbersome multi-hop microwave links and attendant spectrum licensing. This technology is detailed at: Live Shots – Writing for Electronic Media

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Digital In Review

The digital television changeover discussion was succinctly described by ACMA’s Giles Tanner in 2013:

The re-farming of spectrum (i.e. its reassignment to services with a higher value), triggered by free-to-air television digitisation and the switch-off of analogue TV, represents a significant microeconomic reform. This unprecedented government intervention in the way Australians inform and entertain themselves is the most visible part of a larger process of micro-economic reform of spectrum use, designed to strengthen the television industry and enable world-class wireless broadband services.”

Over 18 years, Tanner wrote, Australia’s approach involved three steps. In phase one, from 1993 to year 2000, the PAL analogue service was ‘digitised’ in preparation for the next 13 years of simulcasting. In the second, from 2001 to 2007, most areas gained a UHF service.

During phase three, from 2007, “the focus turned to how analogue television might be switched off. It was only at this stage that the nature of any digital dividend resulting from the return of so many television channels received detailed attention, and analogue switch-off came to be recognised as a means to an end and not simply a goal in itself.”

Political lessons learned are not easily forgotten. As early as 1998 the parliament showed a keen sensitivity to one risk in particular ‘ that an ostensibly superior standard might leave many viewers without services because of coverage shortfalls. At the time, the government was already grappling with migration of regional mobile phone subscribers from the analogue (‘AMPS’) platform to digital, which had created exactly this problem in regional electorates. AMPS closure may help to explain the ‘same coverage’ requirement for digital TV, also why the ACMA was later funded to develop a signal measurement program of unprecedented scale. In the end, the decision to fund the VAST satellite has largely if not entirely addressed this issue, by ensuring everyone is able to obtain the same choice and quality of services.”

With the DTV rollout completed, old analogue channels switched off and the restack finished, viewers were never to have it so good. Huge high-resolution flat screen TVs were in the shops demonstrating 4K videos that looked like moving photographs, even up close. Blu ray DVD were impressive enough, but now the local traditional TV stations were broadcasting in HD (2K) which looked fine on a 4K screen. In fact, on the low-end size range (commonly 100cm) there was, to the casual eye, barely any difference between 2K and 4K video.

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Last Word

Along with our notes pertaining to NBN Television and its interactions with the government, our station's story effectively dwindles at this point. For, as you will read (in a future ***innovation article), the slow shutdown of local television progressed as operations and decision-making passed to Nine in preparation for final assimilation.

Although it was NBN's "last gasp," its final day in the sun, it also was the start of what seemed like a boon for the viewing and consuming public, with high quality pictures and multiple channels. Pay TV had been stealing households from free-to-air even though early marketing figures for terrestrial DTV had reversed that trend. Subscribers to RSTV, unless specific content was their reason (sport) would commonly complain they were paying for an array of channels they never watched, after being forced to buy ‘bundles’ to get just the one they wanted. And for a while, post the 2013 switch off, NBN was - considering the technology climate and the coming tsunami of global streaming networks - doing quite well enough holding on to viewers.

In 2015 FreeTV research found 81% of people watch free-to-air television daily. And of all sources or devices (computer, tablet, DVD, Foxtel) the television set is used by 94% of people to watch their entertainment.

Online services like Netflix may be flavour of the month but we have been a valued part of the Australian community for decades and we continue to be the most important platform for the vast majority of Australian viewers.

There are a lot of doomsayers out there who will tell you TV is dead. Well, we decided to find out what Australians really think of their TV. This research shows that despite more ways than ever to view content and the unfair restrictions and fees that shackle our industry, free-to-air television is highly valued by Australian voters.

In order to continue to deliver quality Australian programming we need the Government to unshackle us and allow us to compete in this changing market place – to ignore this research would be at their peril.”

~ Free TV Australia Chairman, Harold Mitchell

But the party was over. Despite its post-DTV implementation success, tradition broadcast television that we grew up watching is dying before our eyes - a long, slow, and sad death of reality shows and advertorials, interrupted by increasingly hysterical and shamelessly sponsored ‘news’ breaks.

For the networks there just weren’t any other ways to reach so many viewers. Adjusted for inflation, commercial television network revenue had already been falling by an average of 5.6% per year between 2004-05 and 2015-16, which was Netflix’s first year in Australia. The commercial broadcasters’ share of Australian advertising spend plummeted from 43% to 17% between 2006 and 2022, as advertisers moved their spending online.”
~ Amanda Lotz, QUT.

At this point - both in the history of NBN and in this year of writing (2026) - whatever remains of the regulatory environment that tries to coerce commercial television broadcasters to serve their public is moot. NBN TV as an entity no longer exists, and the free-to-air networks are fading from the viewing public's mind.

Footnote: As this goes to press comes an announcement that the network formerly know as NBNTV has been sold the the regional giant WIN, that long coveted NBN and came close to acquiring it back in 2007 but was outbid by PBL.

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Editor's Note

There are many 'heroes' to this story. NBN grew, prospered, and dominated with a small staff of local people, rarely hiring from outside. It was unnecessary, because the turnover of core employees and managers was almost zero. They were all 'lifers.' The person with the most mentions above is George Hird. He arrived from Telstra to spend decades as resident Sugarloaf transmitter tech, overseeing the operation of the original RCA transmitters and two generations that replaced them. After a secondment to studio maintenance supervisor, aggregation arrived, followed by the DTV rollout, both consuming his time and expertise until retirement came upon him. It's one of life's reminders - to lose people with so much experience and knowledge.

George carried the weight of the digital television rollout. Planning, negotiating, and supervising the dozens of transmitters, translators, antennas, and towers across northern NSW. He was, it needs to be said, equally assisted by his younger colleague Greg Williams who superseded him as transmission boss. Along with the team in that montage of photos further above!

Notes

You are welcome to quote freely and use the above for derivative works. Do not however churn it through an artificial intelligence agent and rely on the outcome. An acknowledgement of anything mentioned is appreciated with a link to the article, or to this website.

Statements and quotations were taken verbatim from verified transcripts. Extracts of proceedings are from verified documents. Facts that don't accord with prior or subsequent mentions in the article are likely due to planning being in flux with many course corrections, especially in the period during conversion to digital television.

Citations are not given because this is not an academic exercise or a commercial enterprise. Nor are those sources publicly accessible.

Section headings are in an approximate timeline, and each section contains its own timeline, massaged into a meaningful dialogue. It is quite likely that insiders party to these events have a different account of history. That will be due to the author, an outsider, trying to merge a mass of disparate factoids into a coherent storyline. Facts were arranged by how they appeared to relate. Errors thereby are due to assumptions when gaps cannot be filled.

Kindly offer corrections to significant mistakes, either in the comments below (the editor will be notified) or if in depth, email for discussion: editor at newcastleonhunter dot org

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NBNTV ~ Policy and Regulation

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