G'day, mates. Got back today from a few days in Sydney and Melbourne. My hotel rooms were equipped with TVs. Some TV-related notes I scrawled while I wasn't out developing giant blisters on my feet. Didn't feel I could make this coherent enough for a blog post (and I may well be stating the obvious with some of this anyway):
* The three fully commercial over-the-air networks are named Seven, Nine, and Ten, because those are their channel numbers in Sydney. Imagine if CBS were named "Two." * "Fully commercial" because the other two over-the-air networks are government-funded: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (no commercials) and SBS (has commercials). Both of these have digital secondary channels, which means the primary channels have recently become known as "ABC 1" and "SBS One." * Picking up on the gap in the Seven, Nine, Ten sequence is a cable channel named "Fox 8." (Neither hotel I stayed in had it on Channel 8.) * There are plenty of American shows available, on both over-the-air and cable channels -- some run on one of each, even simultaneously ("The Simpsons" airs weeknights at 5:55 on Fox 8 and 6:00 on Ten). * Some shows air very shortly after they air in the U.S.: for example, "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon all air weeknights on The Comedy Channel, and David Letterman airs on Ten, all only a few hours after their American broadcast (because of the time zones, it's the next day). * Some shows are months or even years behind. "Days of Our Lives," "The Bold and the Beautiful," and "The Young and the Restless" all air months behind -- the TV magazine I picked up has a spoilery "Direct from the U.S." section that gives the current American goings-on for all three shows. * Coming out of commercial breaks back into the show, 5-second title graphic bumpers are fairly common. * TV rating levels are G, PG, M, MA-15+, and AV-15+ (the latter represents a special advisory for violence). That's almost identical to the Australian government's movie/video game rating system (which don't have AV-15+, and movies have an additional R-18+ classification). * And speaking of which, the equivalent of "this film is not yet rated" is "this film has advertising approval; check the classification closer to the release date." Fortunately, for movie trailers on TV, it only has to run as a graphic at the bottom of the screen, not as an announcement. * June 30 is the "end of financial year," as mentioned in plenty of commercials; similarly, some retailers were running "stocktake" sales (i.e., inventory clearance). * Australia does have 1-800 phone numbers, but more common in commercials are "13" numbers, which are "caller pays local rate regardless of distance" and can apparently be set up to connect to the caller's closest location, e.g., "call 13 JENNY for your nearest Jenny Craig weight loss center." * Australian "Deal or No Deal" is much, much, much, much, much more tolerable than the American version. I suspect all the game show fans on this list already knew this. * The most Australian thing I saw was the discussion on Nine's morning show "Today" of the forthcoming new variety of Vegemite, which contains butter and cream cheese, for easier spreading. -- Jim Ellwanger <train...@ellwanger.tv> <http://www.ellwanger.tv> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... Smart (TV) People on Ice! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---