For those of you who haven't heard of community TV, they are small TV stations run by members of the community instead of big corporations.
Adelaide has had at least four main groups involved in community TV, though only the most recent group is left now (C31). There were a few other groups involved in producing video programs, but we only ever heard of them on the grapevine (I gather they were some of the ethnic communities that either produced programs for broadcasting, or just straight to tape), and only one group was ever broadcasting at any one time.
The three main community TV groups were:
ACE TV. Which used to mean: Adelaide and Community Educational Television, though they dropped the “community” and “education” aspects to themselves shortly after getting a narrowcasting license, and eventually had their license revoked for numerous breaches. They were the first group to try for a license, did a few test broadcasts, actually got a license, and shot themselves in the foot several times over, as well as pissing off nearly everyone else.
LIFE TV. Backed by the religious sector. They were the second group to try for a license and run a test broadcast (which I was involved with), for a couple of weeks in December, 1988; but the group seemed to disappear shortly afterwards.
SCAT, an acronym for Student and Community Access TV, mainly formed by university arts students. I was involved in their second test broadcast.
They each conducted test broadcasts, then ACE finally managed to get a license by joining with SCAT (all the groups were considered too much of “self-interest” groups, not representative of the wider community, until then), and immediately kicked SCAT out as soon as they'd secured the license. That sort of nasty behaviour was the general way that ACE treated everyone, and only those in ACE's little clique had any kind words for them. ACE eventually losing the license for their anti-community stance.
I had minimal involvement with ACE TV (getting caught between ACE and SCAT during their joint test broadcast, and a couple of visits to ACE, convinced me to stay well clear of them), and significant involvement with the other two: With LIFE TV, I was involved with their studio productions (which was a lot of fun) during Life TV's only test broadcast in 1988. And with SCAT, I provided complete studio production equipment during SCAT's second community TV test broadcast in 1993, and was involved in the production of Space Trash (a science-fiction parody pilot episode). Both Life and SCAT were quite enthusiastic about community television, towards anyone with an interest in it, ACE had quite the opposite effect on most who had any sort of dealings with them.
The current (2004) license holder is “C31 Real Community TV,” as they're calling themselves (that's a link to their own website). They got the license some time near the end of 2003, and started broadcasting in April 2004. From what I can gather they have members from the media industry (retired and current) involved in the station. Interestingly, they seem to have some common origins with the SCAT mob (the Underdale University; most likely the arts departments again). I've not attempted to become involved with them, because my enthusiasm for it is slipping, and I'd like to find out what their real intentions are before I even consider approaching them. But, anyway, congratulations to them for becoming the new license holders, and here's hoping that they do manage to be the “real community TV”.
NB: A cut and paste error struck while writing this page, long ago. Part of it used to erroneously put the Life TV broadcast as being during 1991 instead of 1988.