Channel Nine was Still the One, until the ratings said otherwise
Australia's Channel Nine put the first person on the nation's television screens in 1956 and later dominated so thoroughly that it won 77 of 80 ratings weeks across 2003 and 2004. Within three years a revived Seven Network was beating it 38 weeks to two.
Frank Packer, owner of the Daily Telegraph, launched TCN-9 in Sydney on 16 September 1956. After an introduction by John Godson, the former advertising man Bruce Gyngell hosted the opening programme, This Is Television, and so became the first face seen on Australian TV. A Melbourne sister station went on air later that year to show the Olympics, and by 1959 Brisbane and Adelaide had joined to form a national network. It paid $5,000 for the 1967 rugby league grand final, the first football final of any code broadcast live across Australia, and it screened colour programmes regularly from 1971, years before the national switch in 1975.
Kerry Packer inherited the business in 1974. The entrepreneur Alan Bond bought it for a billion dollars in 1987, but after Bond's bankruptcy in 1992 it returned to Packer. Nine's slogans told the story of its confidence: Let Us Be The One from 1977, when it became the top network, then Still the One from 1978, a line that lasted until ratings slipped in January 2006. Its news bulletin was long the country's most watched, and its peak came in the 1980s.
Packer's death in 2005 coincided with a Seven Network resurgence. Seven News overtook Nine's bulletin for the first time, and the breakfast show Today lost to the newcomer Sunrise. A 50th-anniversary logo dropping the famous nine dots, used since 1969, was poorly received and partly reversed within months. The crime drama Underbelly, which drew more than 2.5 million viewers in its first season, helped revive fortunes from 2008, as did new digital channels such as GO! and GEM.
Still, by 2011 Nine sat second on 19.6% of the audience. It later fought a debt above A$3.3 billion, and in 2025 it remained runner-up behind Seven.
Source: Nine Network
