1 January 1959: Graham Kennedy and Panda Lisner (In Melbourne Tonight)
1 January 1972: Bellbird
1 January 1977: Jacki Weaver
1 January 1994: Simon Baker-Denny and Lisa Lackey (Home And Away)
1 January 2000: Kimberley Cooper (Home And Away)
1 January 2005: Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Stefan Dennis (Neighbours)
1 January 1959: Newsreader Eric Pearce presents a one-hour special of highlights of the year 1958. All three Melbourne channels present live coverage of the last two hours of play of the Second Test Cricket from the MCG. All three channels also present film highlights of the Davis Cup tennis being played in Brisbane. ABV2 presents a one-hour variety special for New Year’s Day, and for GTV9’s In Melbourne Tonight, it’s business as usual despite the holiday season.
1 January 1972: The third episode of Nine’s experimental pop music series Fly, Wrinklys, Fly which ended up being its last — Fly Wrinklys Fly [2022]
1 January 1988: Australia Live, a combined effort between ABC, SBS, Nine and regional stations, goes to air simultaneously. A four-hour look at Australia and its people, broadcast live in prime time — Australia Live: The Celebration Of A Nation [2013]
1 January 1992: Aggregation arrives in regional Victoria with local commercial networks Prime, VICTV and Southern Cross Network — Aggregation anniversaries: NNSW and VIC [2011]
1 January 1995: Pay TV commences in Australia with Galaxy launching its first channel, Premier Sports Network, in Sydney and Melbourne — Paying for TV’s new Galaxy [2015]
1 January 1999: Foxtel and Austar launch Australia’s first 24-hour weather channel, Weather 21 (channel 21). It was later re-branded The Weather Channel and then Sky News Weather.
1 January 2000: Seven unveils its new “ribbon” style logo.
1 January 2001: Metropolitan TV stations commence full-scale digital transmission and simulcast with existing analogue transmissions — Digital TV turns 20 [2021]
1 January 2004: Tasmania’s third commercial station Tasmanian Digital Television (TDT) begins transmission in Hobart as Australia’s first digital-only commercial TV station — and WIN Ten begins transmission in the Riverland and Mt Gambier regions as a secondary licence to existing broadcaster WIN (RTS5A/SES8) — Ten years for Ten affiliates [2014]
1 January 2006: Mildura Digital Television, a joint venture between local broadcasters Prime and WIN, commences transmission as Ten Mildura — providing the region with a dedicated Network Ten signal for the first time, broadcasting in digital.
1 January 2007: Grundy Television and Crackerjack Productions are merged into their parent company Fremantle Media.
1 January 2014: Foxtel replaces ‘greatest hits’ channel TV1 with TVH!TS and sci-fi channel SF with SyFy — Goodbye from TV1 [2014]
1 January 2021: ABC Comedy re-brands as ABC TV Plus — ABC Comedy to become ABC TV Plus [2020]
