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 <[email protected]>
<http://www.ellwanger.tv>
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