David Dixon

When regional television was in its prime, it was far more than just a pale corporate copy of Sydney-based networks with a few “local” news stories tacked on.

Channel CBN-8 — as the Orange-based station on the Bathurst Road was known — used to produce locally-made dramas, quiz shows, children’s television, current affairs, sport, religious broadcasts, as well as an in-house broadcast news service.

Orange Regional Museum is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first local television broadcast at a special ORM Talks event this week. Titled, Welcome to Television: the 60th anniversary of Channel 8, the event will be held at 6pm this Friday, March 18.

Commemorating the first full-length television broadcast in Orange on March 17, 1962, it will feature highlights of Channel 8 news, current affairs and sport footage, which was donated as 16mm film in 2021.

Journalists and film crew who worked at the then-bustling Bathurst Road studio, say that “aggregation” in the late 1980s, which forced often locally-owned stations to triple their broadcast area so that there were three commercial networks for country areas of Australia, was the death of real regional television.

Former reporter and news chief, John Lloyd-Green, recalls working in Orange in the late 1970s with Peter Andren; who fought for decades to retain local content on regional television before becoming the Independent Member for Calare in 1996.

“I started under Peter in 1979, we were journalistic foot-soldiers who covered everything and anything in the broadcast area, visiting politicians, events, courts, tragedies, we went everywhere and anywhere,” he recalls.

“Every day of the year there was something, flower shows, Mother’s Day, if there was no news, Peter would send us out on what he called ‘Parish Pump’ stories… we were very much a televised country newspaper,” he remembers.

“We had televised sports events on the weekends, rugby union grand finals, Group 10, whatever was happening locally,” he recalls.

“There was a kids’ show, a household show, we even had a tea lady, we were doing much more live TV, and we filled in the holes with whatever we brought from the stations in Sydney,” he said.

For an instance of the extent of local broadcasting, a 30-minute documentary on the 1978 National Rodeo Titles, called Goin' Down The Road, won the station the “Outstanding Contribution by a Regional Station” Logie Award in 1979.

Local programming in the 1980s included Focus, Rural Roundup, Early Shift, Weekend Report, Time to Live, Around The Schools, and coverage of local special events.

Local sports coverage, especially of tennis and rugby, formed a major part of the schedule in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From 1979, the station sponsored and telecast the United Permanent Tennis Tournament, the only tournament of its kind in Australia.

“Regional TV was expected to do what regional TV was supposed to do, and that was report on the region… and Peter Andren was the biggest advocate of us remaining regional… but aggregation was the beginning of the end,” John said.

Cameraman Phil McLellan was based in Dubbo in the mid-1980s. He recalls that all major towns in the central west had not just a news reporter and camera-operator, but also a couple of advertising representatives; so profitable was television during its golden age.

“We filmed all the stories on pneumatic tape and then sent the video from the Telecom Tower in Dubbo… the reporter would then have to voice it over,” he remembers.

Senior camera operator Brendan Cooper worked for Prime for 12 years from the mid-1990s after having come from the MTM-9 at Griffith.

“I was part of the news section with Peter Andren. In those days, they had a million-dollar-plus budget and made use of it. Peter produced a show called the ‘Andren Report.’ There was ‘Focus’, a half-hour show on Sunday night and the station could pick and choose what it wanted from the Sydney stations.

“Peter was a noble man who had integrity and believed in journalistic ethics… it was nothing for us to be sending Channel Seven in Sydney two or three stories a week that they would be picking-up... but when Peter left, everything went down to budgets and money,” he said.

Orange City Council’s Services Policy Committee Chair, Councillor Mel McDonell, said: “The television station made such an important contribution to the region, not only by telling the stories of the time, but also with the role it played in the daily lives of local families watching at home.”