Television
- 1 January – Australia's first Digital commercial free-to-air channel, Tasmanian Digital Television begins broadcasting in Hobart as a supplementary broadcaster to existing broadcasters Southern Cross Tasmania & WIN Television. On the same day, WIN TEN goes on air in the Mount Gambier & Riverland regions of South Australia as a supplementary broadcaster to existing solus broadcaster WIN Television.
- February – Deal or No Deal debuts its 5.30pm timeslot on Seven.
- February – Top-rating game show Wheel Of Fortune makes a super international revamp and a super new-look over to continue its long-run on Seven Local TV.
- 15 March – Foxtel launches its new digital service, Foxtel Digital.
- April – After 18 years at SBS, Margaret Pomeranz & David Stratton announce their resignation from the station to move to the ABC to present a new program, At the Movies. Four younger presenters replace them on The Movie Show – Megan Spencer, Fenella Kernebone & Jaimie Leonarder with Marc Fennell presenting a segment on newly released DVDs.
- 26 July – Broken Hill resident Trevor Butler proposes to his girlfriend immediately after winning A$1,000,000 on Big Brother
- 21 November – 16 year old Casey Donovan wins the second series of Australian Idol defeating 21 year old favourite, Anthony Callea
- 11 December – The Network Ten is the next Australian television network to introduce a watermark on its programs, although the watermark was broadcast on Ten News. It was located on the bottom left of the screens by TEN-10 Sydney before switching to bottom right in 2006.
Ending this year:
- November – Burke's Backyard (1987–2004)
- November – Australia's Funniest Home Video Show (1990–1999, 2000–2004) (program comes back as Australia's Funniest Home Videos and revamps a new-look and new theme in 2005.)
Read more about this topic: 2004 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.”
—Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)