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Book Review: "Networking : commercial television in Australia : a history" -- Nick Herd
Review   Open access

Book Review: "Networking : commercial television in Australia : a history" -- Nick Herd

Ben Goldsmith
Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol.8(5), pp.1-2
2014
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http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/ras/article/view/3554/4167View
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Abstract

Film, Television and Digital Media Australian commercial television history free to air television broadcasting history
Nick Herd begins his institutional history of Australian commercial television in the early 1890s, when an amateur inventor named Henry Sutton designed the 'telephane' with the intent of watching the Melbourne Cup in his home town of Ballarat. The 'race that stops a nation' was not broadcast live on television until 1960, but Sutton's initiative indicates how closely sport and television were aligned in Australia even before the medium existed. The first licensed commercial stations to begin regular broadcasting went on air in Sydney and Melbourne shortly before the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, although Herd claims that this was 'almost accidental' rather than planned. (49) Only Melbourne viewers were able to see some events live, many via television sets in Ampol service stations following the company's last minute sponsorship of coverage on Melbourne station GTV-9.

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