There are five main television stations in Australia:
- Channel 2 aka the ABC: A government-owned television station (of course, this doesn't mean that the government controls it. In fact, it's normal that the ruling party accuses the ABC of being biased against it). Known for showing television that would not get an airing on the other television stations, but should exist anyway.
- Channel 7, Channel 9 and 10: These are the commercial television stations. Pretty much like American TV stations, except that they have to abide by local content laws that mean they have to show some Australian content.
- SBS (formerly Channel 0 and now Channel 28): The "ethnic" broadcaster. Shows foreign movies and other unusual material. Also known for bizarre shows like Eat Carpet.
There are also a number of
regional television stations like
NBN and
WIN but these tend to rebroadcast material off the other TV stations. Also, just recently (i.e. 1999) we got
cable television. This is still fairly
unusual in Australia.
There are some unique aspects of Australian television ... even on free-to-air TV, people can say bad words (including the f-word, the c-word, the s-word), especially on SBS (which has different rules to the other TV shows). Breasts can be shown and sometimes the ads are embarassingly explicit (e.g. a Toyota ad that features a man running naked down the street -- try watching THAT one with your parents)! Nudity is semi-acceptable.
Can you believe this was a nodeshell?