VICTV Television Victoria began as a network of several stations serving northern and western Victoria: •
GMV-6 Shepparton (launched on 23 December 1961) •
BTV-6 Ballarat (launched on 27 April 1962) •
STV-8 Mildura (launched on 27 November 1965). Television Victoria was owned and operated by
Examiner-Northern TV Ltd, a company which already owned
TVT-6 Hobart as well as GMV-6 and BTV-6. Shortly after they purchased STV-8 in 1990, the three
Victorian stations took on the on-air identity of
VIC TV - Television Victoria, providing a single programming service across all three stations with separate regional news services for each area. As each of the 3 stations aired mostly
Nine Network programming especially in the lead up to the VIC TV launch, the new network became, in preparation for the 1992 aggregation of broadcasts, the state level Nine affiliate. Until 1987 these stations aired
HSV's
Seven News and from that year onward these stations began to broadcast
Nine News from
GTV. On 1 January 1992, aggregation of regional television took place in Victoria. VIC Television extended their transmission area to incorporate the
Bendigo,
Albury and
Gippsland area markets and officially confirmed as the Nine Network affiliate for most of regional Victoria. However, the
Mildura market was not aggregated until 1997 when
Prime Television finally launched as a
Seven Network affiliate and WIN carried both Nine and
Network Ten affiliations. VIC Television had already entered into a program supply agreement with the Nine Network but continued to maintain news services in each of the six regional markets in which it now operated. The official callsigns of GMV and BTV were consolidated into a single callsign of VTV. STV-8 kept its own callsign as it was excluded from the area affected by aggregation. In October 1994, ENT Ltd. sold VIC Television to the WIN Corporation which already operated
WIN Television stations in
New South Wales,
Canberra and
Queensland and VIC became WIN Victoria. The stations are now part of the WIN Television network and on the day of its transition, the VIC logo was replaced to mark the change of ownership for the channels with the golden WIN logo used in the eastern states while the 9 dots from the Nine Network logo, which debuted in 1992 for VIC Television's aggregation, were retained until 2006. On 1 July 2016, as part of a wide national re-alignment of regional television, VTV swapped affiliations with
GLV/BCV switching from Nine Network to
Network Ten, but VTV rebroadcast a feed of
ATV-10 from
Melbourne with local ads. On 1 July 2021, as the reverse of the 2016 affiliation swap, VTV swapped affiliations again with
GLV/BCV from
Network 10 to the
Nine Network but VTV rebroadcasts a feed of
GTV-9 from Melbourne with local ads. The stations is affiliated with the metropolitan
Nine Network and also broadcasts most of Nine's sub-channels (
9Gem,
9Go! and
9Life) except it doesn't broadcast
9Rush.
BTV-6 Ballarat & Western Victoria BTV-6 opened at 7pm on Friday 27 April 1962 with the documentary
This is BTV Channel 6. The station produced a wide range of local and part-networked TV programming through its history, most notably the chat show
Six Tonight, which aired from 1971 to 1983, eventually also being carried on the Six (BTV6 Ballarat and GMV6 Shepparton) and TV8 (now Southern Cross) Networks across much of Victoria, as well as parts of South Australia and New South Wales. BTV placed a strong emphasis on local news, with the first news bulletin read by Arthur Scuffins on 27 April 1962. The nightly news program,
Six News, was extended to 30 minutes in 1980 in response to the ABC dropping their regional news service in the late 1970s. The bulletin was rebranded as
NewsCentre 6 in the mid-1980s. On-air talent included Arthur Scuffins, Eric Gracie, Val Sarah, Craig Campbell, Peter Gamble, Gary Rice, John Garland, Denis Walter, Glenn Ridge, Rob Gaylard, Glenn Driscoll and Fred Fargher. In late 2000, Ballarat's channel 6 moved to UHF channel 36, in order to allow neighbouring Melbourne station
HSV-7 to commence digital television transmissions on Channel 6 without interference.
GMV-6 Shepparton & Goulburn Valley GMV-6, one of the first regional television stations in
Australia, began transmission from
Shepparton on 23 December 1961 (the same launch date as
BCV-8 Bendigo), broadcasting from a transmitter at Mount Major. Originally, the station was owned in conjunction with local radio station
3SR. The callsign of GMV referred to its coverage area which included the
Goulburn River and
Murray River catchment areas. The 'V' refers to
Victoria as is the normal protocol for commercial TV station callsigns, where the third letter indicates the state in which the service is licensed. By the late 1960s, various low powered relay transmitters began operation in the fringes of the GMV region including GMV-3
Eildon, GMV-8
Jerilderie, GMV-10
Deniliquin and GMV-10
Alexandra (later changed to GMV-11). GMV-6 converted to full scale colour TV transmission on 1 March 1975. By the mid-1980s, transmission hours had extended to commence at 7.00am weekdays, broadcasting until around midnight. Programming included regional news and children's programmes, mixed with programs selected from the three commercial networks in Melbourne;
HSV-7 (
Seven),
GTV-9 (
Nine) and
ATV-10 (
Ten). The evening local news bulletin was supplemented by a relay of the nightly
Seven National News from
HSV-7 until 1987, and then
National Nine News from
GTV-9. ==Programming==