NRN

NRN
Northern New South Wales
Branding	Southern Cross Ten
Slogan	Seriously Ten
Channels	Analog: see table below Digital: see table below
Affiliations	Ten
Network	Southern Cross Ten
Owner	Macquarie Media Group (Northern Rivers Television Pty Ltd)
First air date	23 January 1965
Call letters' meaning	Northern Rivers New South Wales
Former affiliations	independent (1965-1991)
Transmitter power	see table below
Height	see table below
Transmitter coordinates	see table below

NRN is a television station originating in Coffs Harbour, Australia as part of the Southern Cross Ten network. The station was formally a partnership between NRN-11 Coffs Harbour (launched 23 January 1965) and RTN-8 Lismore (launched 12 May 1962).

1 History
- 1.1 Origins
- 1.2 1990s to 2000s
2 Main Transmitters
3 Programming
- 3.1 News and Current Affairs
4 References
5 See also

History

Origins

NRN11 Coffs Harbour had merged with ECN8 Taree, but later demerged. Around 1971, RTN8 and NRN11 merged to form Northern Rivers Television (NRTV), but was known on-air originally as 11-8. The merged stations served the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers areas of Northern New South Wales. During the mid 1970s, the station was known as Great Eastland Television, when the partnership shared programming and advertising with NEN-9 Tamworth and DDQ-10 Toowoomba/SDQ-4 Warwick, but they soon reverted back to the NRTV brand.

In 1983, NRTV was relayed into the Gold Coast after a lobbying campaign from residents, although they could also watch the commercial television stations from Brisbane. NRTV's Gold Coast studios and offices were constructed in Ashmore on Southport Nerang Road. The Gold Coast facilities didn't contain a newsroom, although relayed local news from the Coffs Harbour studios. News crews from Lismore travelled to the Gold Coast for stories of importance.

NRTV was at the forefront of local production during its heyday (1975 to 1990), each week pumping out five half hours of local news, three hours of live women's variety "Round About", 5 half hours of live children's variety "Get Set" and "Razzamataz" weekly, holiday specials "Summerthon", and a half hour daily exercise program "Jazzacize". Live sports specials including the annual "Grafton Cup" Racing Carnival and the pre-taped Grafton to Inverell Cycling Classic were among the many sports telecast across Australia. Not bad for a regional TV network.

Live programs mainly originated from the Coffs Harbour Studios with programs being recorded at both the networks other studios located at Lismore and Gold Coast.

Some of the memorable names from that era were:

Ron Lawrence - Ron passed away in 2008. He was the driving force behind the network's local production. He began his career as booth announcer at the Lismore Radio and TV Studios of Northern Star Holdings (RTN 8) and (Radio 2LM) after graduating from Jim Illife's AIR-TV College in Brisbane. He moved to Coffs Harbour TV studios in the early 70s after the merge between NRN11 and RTN 8 and became the station announcer–news reader. Later in his career he became Program Manager then later Station Manager and finally General Manager before retiring in the 90s
Wayne Magee, also a diploma graduate from the Brisbane College AIR-TV (formally with Radio 4GY Gympie, BCV TV Victoria and National Nine News Adelaide) started with the network in 1976. During his time with the network he hosted Get Set, network specials and telethons and read local TV news. He eventually moved into management before leaving the network to become a minister.
Chris Wordsworth who hailed from Townsville QLD and who had worked previously in radio. Chris hosted the children's show for a period and read main bulletin news Monday to Friday. He later joined CH7 Sydney as late edition news reader – journalist, was briefly a Chief of Staff for a QLD Politician and later assumed the role of Director of ABC QLD/NT.

> Greg Hughes who succeeded Wordsworth as News Reader and station announcer. He formally had worked for the Mike Walsh owned Penrith radio station. He left the network to work for the Army PR Dept.

1990s to 2000s

On 31 December 1991, Northern New South Wales became the third area to be aggregated, and NRTV, via links to Network Ten (it was part of Northern Star Holdings, owned by Westfield Group chairman Frank Lowy), became its affiliate in the region. At one stage, NRTV was the subject of a bid from WIN Television. Nothing came of it, although if WIN had gone through with the bid, it would have made NRTV the Nine Network's affiliate and left an unhappy NBN as Network Ten's affiliate instead.

NRTV was later sold to Telecasters Australia, who also owned the Queensland affiliate of Network Ten. In 1994, the station was renamed Ten Northern NSW, and its station identification was changed to that of Network Ten. The station stopped producing regional news for Coffs Harbour, Lismore and Gold Coast. They had previously produced a licence-wide bulletin, but that too was axed due to poor ratings.

Main Transmitters

Region served	City	Channels (Analog/ Digital)	First air date	ERP (Analog/ Digital)	HAAT (Analog/ Digital)¹	Transmitter Coordinates	Transmitter Location
Grafton/Kempsey	Coffs Harbour	11 (VHF) 38 (UHF)	23 January 1965	250 kW 250 kW	706 m 730 m		Mount Moombil
Manning River	Taree	65 (UHF) 44 (UHF)	31 December 1991	600 kW 320 kW	633 m 633 m		Middle Brother
Newcastle/Hunter River	Newcastle	57 (UHF) 51 (UHF)	31 December 1991	1200 kW 500 kW	439 m 439 m		Mount Sugarloaf
Richmond and Tweed²	Lismore	8 (VHF) 32 (UHF)	12 May 1962	200 kW 200 kW	612 m 648 m	(analog) (digital)	Mount Nardi
Upper Namoi	Tamworth	34 (UHF) 40 (UHF)	31 December 1991	600 kW 330 kW	844 m 874 m		Mount Dowe

1. HAAT estimated from http://www.itu.int/SRTM3/ using EHAAT.
2. The Richmond and Tweed station was an independent station with the callsign RTN from its 1962 sign-on until aggregation in 1991.

Programming

News and Current Affairs

Local news was reintroduced to the station in 2004 in the form of three-minute updates at various times of the day.

Elyce Kolder presents the short bulletins for Gold Coast, Coffs Harbour, Newcastle and Tamworth. ^[1]

A local current affairs program, State Focus, is shown at 8.30am on Sundays , presented by Amy Bainbridge from the network's Canberra-based studios.^[2]

References

^ "Local content on regional TV". Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. 11 April 2007. http://archive.dcita.gov.au/2005/04/issue_8/local_content_on_regional_tv. Retrieved 15 July 2007.
^ "State Focus". Southern Cross Ten. 2007. Archived from the original on 2 July 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070702065654/http://www.mytalk.com.au/Stations/TV/SCTEN/Pages/StateFocus.aspx. Retrieved 15 July 2007.

NRN

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