| C31 Melbourne | |
|---|---|
| C31 Melbourne Logo | |
| Launched | 6 October 1994 |
| Owned by | Melbourne Community Television Consortium |
| Picture format | 576i 4:3 Analogue 576i 16:9 Digital |
| Slogan | Not your Average TV Station |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Broadcast area | Melbourne, Geelong, surrounding areas (regional areas) |
| Website | www.c31.org.au |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Analogue | UHF 31 Melbourne & Geelong UHF 64 South Yarra |
| SD Digital | Channel 44 |
C31 Melbourne, formally known as Channel 31 Melbourne (call letters MGV-31), is a public television station in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
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Its signal is transmitted from Mt. Dandenong and Como Centre, South Yarra, reaching much of the Greater Melbourne, Geelong and West Gippsland areas on free-to-air television [1].
The station began broadcasting officially on 6 October 1994. The Australian Broadcasting Authority had granted Melbourne Community Television Consortium (MCTC) with a temporary open-narrowcast license on 5 March 1993. The framework of community television in Australia can be traced back to 1992, when the Government asked the ABA to conduct a trial of community television using the vacant sixth television channel (Channel 31). On 30 July 2004, the Australian Broadcasting Authority granted the station a full-time community broadcasting licence.
C31 began broadcasting in digital during June 2010.[1]
C31 is primarily funded through sponsorship, grants, sale of airtime and member donations. The station does not receive any regular Government funding.[2] The annual revenue of C31 is approximately (AUD) $2 million per year. For comparison, the Nine Network, an Australian commercial station, has $907 million annual revenue.[3] The station claims that "1.4 million Melbournians tune in each month" [4] this figure is supplied by the ratings company OzTam. Individual programs can have ratings of up to 180,000 viewers.
The C31 website was completely remodelled in 2009, and now offers streaming of every program they broadcast (if the producer consents).[5] C31 Melbourne is the only community television broadcast in Australia which offers this.
C31 announced to its digital service provider and officially began simulcasting from 2010 on Logical Channel Number 44. C31 officially started broadcasting in Digital during June 2010[6] with the official launch date on 11 June.[7]
There are no plans for the expansion of community TV in Regional Victoria & Tasmania in the near future.
On 27 June 2010, the community TV programming was rebranded "C31" with new logo, identities, schedule and watermark.
The C31 program schedule is a program line-up is published on its website, in most Australian electronic program guides (EPG's) and in the newspapers.
C31's signal is broadcast in UHF only and at a lower power than Melbourne's other television stations (it is, for example, one quarter of SBS's output power). Nevertheless, viewers with good line-of-sight to the main transmitter on Mount Dandenong can receive a usable signal from as far away as Geelong, Castlemaine and Moe. There is also a translator transmitter on the Como building in South Yarra to provide in-fill for the St Kilda area; this operates on UHF 64.
Most TV sets are capable of receiving C31, although it is often not included in the factory settings. However, using a TV's automatic tuning function can tune the station in if it is able to be received. Often a signal amplifier attached to the antenna can provide a much better C31 reception.
C31 began a simulcast on digital from 28 May 2010, after being granted a digital television licence by the government. C31 is available on digital via UHF 32 in Melbourne & Geelong and UHF 66 in South Yarra.[8]
C31 transmits from the ABV-2 transmission tower on top of Mount Dandenong, Victoria, from a shared facility alongside ABC Television, SBS Television, ABC Classic FM, Triple J and others.
Channel 31 broadcasts a vast array of locally-produced content including news, sport, youth, arts, and entertainment programmes. The station also features a substantial amount of local multicultural programming, celebrating Melbourne's ethnic diversity.
Fishcam is arguably Channel 31's best-known programme. It was a pre-recorded broadcast of a fish tank located in the station's studios, set to music by independent artists.[9] It used to be live, but the station got complaints from the ACMA when there was a dead fish floating on the top of the tank for several days. It was originally shown in place of a test pattern when the station had no programming available for broadcast. After it was discovered that Fishcam was reasonably popular, Fishcam became a scheduled show and was even listed in the TV guide. Channel 31 has boasted that Fishcam is "very popular" [10] and is so widely recognized in the Melbourne community that "many people know Channel 31 as 'the fish station'." [11]
The station has previously made VHS tapes of Fishcam available for purchase. After having its timeslot continually cut back over the years to make room for more traditional programming, Fishcam finally ceased broadcasting on 4 March 2007.[12]
Many comedians, performing artists and producers worked at C31 before moving to mainstream television, these people include Rove McManus, Amy Parks, Greg Tingle, Hamish and Andy, Adam Richard, Jo Stanley, Darren Chau, Corinne Grant, Jamie McDonald and Kim Hope.
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