History of Deaf Television in Australia

Australian television began in 1956 and it imported mostly American programs such Rescue 8, Silent Service, Rin Tin Tin and Mickey Mouse Club. Australian colour television was eventually established in 1975 - extremely late for the developed country - 25 years after first colour TV in USA. There were some hearing and deaf actors playing deaf characters in the American movies such as Johnny Belinda (1948) and Children of a Lesser God (1986) which were later shown on television and mostly one-off deaf characters in numerous TV soap operas including The Untouchables (1960s), Law & Order (2000s) and Australia's Homicide (early 1970s). There were several fund raising charity TV tele-a-thons in which hearing persons often took the speaking roles on behalf of deaf organisations. 

In the early 1970s, somewhere between classic Homicide series' episode 251 and 300, described Allen Mann, Melbourne's amateur Deaf actor, playing Doug Sanders, a Deaf character. Homicide which was run with 501 episodes in 1964-1977 was Australia's first locally and universally major TV series to be produced in Australia.

Dates	Achievements
15 April 1992	Melbourne's Deaf Children TV Workshop (DCTVW) was established by a group of four Deaf and three hearing adults in Petrie Street, Frankston. It was a first Deaf TV organisation in Australia.
15 October 1992	DCTVW was changed to Deaf TV Network (DTN) which became incorporated.
24 October 1993	Deaf TV Network (DTN) launched a first-ever Deaf TV program broadcasting in Australia. It was broadcasted from Northern Access TV studio on Channel 31.  Jolimont Square Social Club (Deaf Club at Jolimont) became a first paid sponsor to advertise its activity in a break in the program.
November 1993	DTN broadcasted the second program on Melbourne Channel 31.
December 1993	DTN's Christmas program became Australia's first Deaf program to be broadcasted in a foreign country when it was shown on BBC's See Hear in Britain.
28 December 1993	DTN's same Christmas program - the third - became Australia's first Deaf program to be broadcasted nationally when it was shown on SBS Channel 28 in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. Some of the participants in the 1993/1994 Australian Deaf Games in Adelaide watched this program in the motels.
February 1996	National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Lanuage Research (NIDS) at La Trobe University, Melbourne, became the second Deaf TV organisation in Australia to broadcast when they ran 26 programs of SIGN ON on SBS Channel 28.
27 February 1998	DTN was disbanded.
1998	National Deaf TV Project (NDTV) was established in Sydney and it was run by a sub-committee of Australian Association of the Deaf (AAD). It became the third Deaf Deaf TV organisation in Australia.
July 2002	Melbourne's Deaf TV was established by a young Deaf people group on the Jolimont premises of Victorian Deaf Society. It became the fourth organisation in Australia.
17 December 2002	Melbourne's Deaf TV (DTV) became the third Deaf organisation to broadcast in Australia when its first DEAF TV program was screened on Melbourne Channel 31.
24 December 2002	DTV ran its second DEAF TV program.
1 April 2003	DTV started its second DEAF TV series
30 June 2003	DTV's 2nd DEAF TV series ended.
3 October 2003	DTV resumed the third DEAF TV series.
31 December 2003	DTV's 3rd DEAF TV series ended.
3 January 2005	DTV launched its 4th DEAF TV series.
6-16 January 2005	DTV's three-man crew attended at the 2005 Melbourne Deaflympics every day from 7 am to 10 pm and, with their knowledge of who's who, they were able to film the elite athletes. It was the longest Deaf documentry assigment in history. The Deaflympics was later broadcasted for six weeks in February/March.
May 2005	Deaf TV's first Deaf foreign film - Japanese drama by a Deaf Australian director in Japan - was screened on TV - Australia's first-ever Deaf foreign segment on TV. Three Deaf Japanese segments followed it.
7 September 2005	DTV's first interstate programs were shown on Adelaide Channel 31. It ran the 1st DEAF TV series for twelve months.
8 April 2006	NDTV - now Signpost - became the fourth Deaf organisation to broadcast in Australia when it was shown on TV Sydney (TVS). It was the first of its six programs shown in 2006.
30 September 2006	DTV ended its 4th DEAF TV series.
1 January 2007	DTV resumed the 5th DEAF TV series.
8 June 2007	Sydney's Signpost became the first Deaf organisation to win Channel 31's Antenna Award - "Program of the Year".
19 October 2007	DTV's first assigment was recorded overseas when the DTV crew filmed New Zealand Deaf Games in Auckland, NZ.
October 2007	Melbourne Channel 31 (C31)'s website - www.c31.org.au - launched the screenings of many clients including Deaf TV. C31 ran three Deaf TV videos from previous weeks.
30 December 2007	Deaf TV announced a launch of our new website and the launch was embedded into YouTube in which 900 hits were scored in next two weeks.
31 December 2007	DTV ended the 5th DEAF TV series.
7 January 2008	DTV begins its 6th DEAF TV series
2 September 2008	DTV resumed its 2nd DEAF TV series in Adelaide.
29 September 2008	Deaf TV screened its first European deaf sequence import - Finnish Deaf Opera.