History
The licence to operate Melbourne's third commercial television station was awarded to transport magnate Sir Reginald Ansett's Austarama Television in April 1963. The new channel, ATV-0 (pronounced as the letter o, never the number zero), began transmission on 1 August 1964 from a large modern studio complex located in the then-outer eastern suburb of Nunawading, in the locality now known as Forest Hill, but referred to at the time as East Burwood.
The new station opened with a preview program hosted by news presenters Barry McQueen and Nancy Cato. Reception difficulties in parts of the city resulted in the station's third position in the television ratings.
ATV had been experimenting with colour transmissions from 1967, when the station was the first to mount a colour outside broadcast in Australia, from the Pakenham races. Many other colour test transmissions occurred subsequently. Full-time colour transmission was introduced to ATV-0 in March 1975 in line with other stations around the country.
Rupert Murdoch gained a controlling interest in ATV-0 and Sydney television station TEN-10 in 1979. As a result of interference and falling ratings, the station moved frequency and call-sign from ATV-0 to ATV-10 by January the next year, but had to obtain agreement from neighbouring Gippsland station GLV-10 to change its frequency to become GLV-8.
On 20 January 1980, the new ATV-10 was launched with a jingle campaign ("You're on Top With Ten"), Graham Kennedy's introductory presentation and a 30-minute Eyewitness News, then presented by Jana Wendt. By May, David Johnston became the new co-presenter and Eyewitness News went back to its one-hour duration, claiming that it was "First in Melbourne" due to its many innovations and historic moments and the fact of this ATV being the first of the now Network Ten stations to adopt the Eyewitness News brand and the one-hour newscast in the 1970s.
The 1986 transfer of Neighbours to ATV and the entire Network Ten (from the Seven Network) proved to be a success. ATV's Nunawading studios, aside from its suburban sets in Melbourne itself, were used to produce it. These venues still do this today.
On 7 September 1992, ATV-10 relocated from the station's famous Nunawading studios to the Como Centre in inner suburban South Yarra. The Nunawading complex is now operated by Global Television, Network Ten leases the facility for production of programs such as Neighbours while the Como Centre studios in South Yarra are used for The Project and The Circle as well as news, current affairs, entertainment and sport programs.
Read more about this topic: ATV (Australia)
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