2009 in Australia - Television

Television

• 10 January – Peter Overton takes over as the anchorman of Sydney's 6pm Nine News on weeknights after Mark Ferguson is suspended indefinitely after poor ratings, losing to Seven News.
• 7–14 February – All three commercial networks in Australia take extensive news coverage of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, in which 181 people lost their lives, including former Nine newsreader Brian Naylor and actor Reg Evans.
• 9 February – The premiere of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities sets the ratings record of the highest-rating Australian television series launch since the introduction of the OzTAM people meter system in 2001. The launch attracted 2.58 million viewers, and is also the highest rating non-sporting program in television history.
• 26 March – One HD launches.
• 26 April – Talia Fowler wins the second season of So You Think You Can Dance Australia.
• 3 May – Rebecca Gibney wins the Gold Logie Award for the Most Popular Personality on Australian Television at the 2009 Logie Awards.
• 12 May – The ABC receives an extra $136.4 million over three years from the 2009 federal budget to develop an advertising-free digital children's channel (ABC3), and increase its production of local drama to 90 hours a year, a similar level to the amount required by the commercial networks. The budget also allocated SBS an extra $20 million over the same period to produce up tp 50 hours of new Australian content each year. This figure is significantly below the extra $70 million SBS were seeking per year.
• 13 May – Former rugby league football player and The NRL Footy Show presenter, Matthew Johns, is suspended indefinitely from the program by the Nine Network following reports of his involvement in a group sex act with other Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks players in 2002. The incident was first reported on ABC1's current affairs program, Four Corners, on 11 May 2009.
• 3 June – A skit involving terminally ill children and the fictional 'Make a Realistic Wish Foundation' (a parody of the Make-a-Wish Foundation) causes public outrage after airing on an episode of The Chaser's War on Everything on ABC1. The skit involved The Chaser members Chris Taylor (as the foundation spokesperson) and Andrew Hansen (as a doctor). The premise of the skit was that if the terminally ill children are only going to live for a few more months before dying, it is not worth spending money on lavish gifts for them. It portrayed the children requesting extravagant items such as a trip to Disneyland and the chance to meet Zac Efron, with Taylor and Hansen instead giving them a pencil case and a stick respectively. The skit concluded with Taylor stating "Why go to any trouble, when they're only gonna die anyway". Following public criticism of the skit, both The Chaser and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation issued statements of apology. The ABC subsequently suspended the series for two weeks following the controversy. The series returned on 24 June.
• 8 June – Gordon Ramsay called Tracy Grimshaw a "pig" in an interview for A Current Affair.
• 10 June – The Nine Network announces the third series of Underbelly will be titled Underbelly: The Golden Mile, and will focus on Kings Cross in Sydney, beginning in 1989, and also include the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption.
• 19 July – Julie Goodwin wins the first series of MasterChef Australia, beating Poh Ling Yeow.
• 9 August – The Nine Network launches a new free-to-air digital channel named Go!, with the expansion of programing launched on 4 October.
• 7 October – The Jackson Jive, one of the acts in the Red Faces segment in the second of two Hey Hey It's Saturday reunion specials, causes international outrage when they appear in blackface parodying the Jackson Five.
• 1 November – The Seven Network launches a new free-to-air digital channel named 7Two.
• 22 November – Stan Walker wins the grand final of Australian Idol 2009.
• 4 December – The Australian Broadcasting Corporation launches ABC3, a digital television channel aimed at children.