Television
- 8 January – Australia Unites: Reach Out To Asia raises $20 million for the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami relief effort. It is also the first time that Australia's three major commercial television stations have co-operated to broadcast such an event.
- 25 May – Graham Kennedy dies at age 71. The network on which most of his shows aired, the Nine Network, passes up the offer to broadcast his funeral & the Seven Network arrives, axes Nine's coverage and Seven picks it up and wins it. Nine does eventually show parts of the funeral live.
- 26 June – Douglas Wood is interviewed by Sandra Sully about his time as a captive after Network Ten pays a reported $400,000 for an exclusive interview.
- 15 August: Big Brother: Greg Mathew, along with twin brother David Mathew, also known as "The Logan Twins" is announced the winner of the fifth series.
- 20 November – Madonna's Warner Bros. single "Hung Up" defeats Gold Digger by Kanye West and Jamie Foxx to be crowned the title of the ARIA single debuting at #1. This was the last Top 50 ARIA charts on ABC TV's Rage to be shown on the Seven Network. Only Seven Local TV and ABC TV will continue the Rage's Top 50 Charts until the end of July 2006, when it launches jtv.
- 16 December: Good Morning Australia finishes its 12 year run on Network Ten from the studios of ATV-10. Host Bert Newton leaves Ten and signs with the Nine Network to host the game show Bert's Family Feud.
Read more about this topic: 2005 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)