Good news for Doctor Who fans Down Under – ABC will air the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas Special on Boxing Day.
From the Doctor Who News Site:
The episode will be shown on ABC1 on Boxing Day (26 December), repeating last year’s schedule when the episode was fast tracked to the Commonwealth just a few hours after its UK début.
Daybreak, one of the UK’s highest rating breakfast television programmes, is heading to Australia with 100 lucky viewers. The ITV1 show has launched Daybreak Down Under inviting their audience to win a place on an incredible Aussie adventure, courtesy of Tourism Australia and Qantas Airways.
The show, which airs Monday to Friday in the UK and has an average daily reach of 4.1million viewers, launched the promotion on 29 August with a series of pre-recorded trails that ran for five days. The presenters have also got behind Daybreak Down Under encouraging viewers to tune in to find out more about thecompetition opens on 5 September 2011.
It is anticipated that thousands of viewers will enter to win one of the 100 places on a Qantas A380 flight departing London for Sydney on 4 November 2011. Each entrant is asked to select one of five amazing Aussie holiday options they wish to enjoy. Entry is via a dedicated area of the Daybreak website.
One option is to stay on in Sydney, experiencing the city and surrounds. The second is to fly on from Sydney to experience Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road. The third is to fly on from Sydney to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. Group four will fly from Sydney to experience the Great Barrier Reef and the final option is to fly on from Sydney to enjoy Perth and the Margaret River. Each group will be made up of 20 viewers and all will fly in comfort and style with Qantas.
Daybreak will announce the lucky winners on-air over the course of a week in October, and will then send a presenter and crew to Australia with the groups to film their adventures. The footage will be shown on Daybreak in the week commencing 7 November and the producers have also decided to feature one of their presenters coming live from some of the locations.
The State Tourism Offices for New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia are all working with Tourism Australia to arrange ground arrangements for viewers and crew.
Tourism Australia Regional General Manager (UK & Northern Europe), Rodney Harrex believes that Daybreak Down Under will inspire viewers to find out more about holiday options in Australia:
“Daybreak has a huge audience reach and we’re delighted that the team has decided to run this promotion, filming their viewers enjoying incredible experiences in iconic locations across Australia. Building the emotional appeal to travel to Australia is crucial in a long haul market like the UK, and we know that programmes like this that beam Aussie sunshine in to wintery British homes go down really well with Brits.” Mr Harrex said.
Whether Australians like to admit it or not – many still have a big connection to the ‘Mother Country’ of Britain – whether it’s expat Brits making a life for themselves down under or the descendants of recent British settlers. That said, the easiest way to stay connected to Britain is through it’s excellent television – a global export that people around the world appreciate.
So, how go you get British TV in Australia?
First – I should let you know that currently you can’t access the BBC iPlayer in Australia or anywhere else for that matter. This may change as the BBC has plans to launch a global version of the iPlayer. But until then, even if you’re British paying the license free, you can’t access the iPlayer outside of the UK unless you cheat and use a UK based British TV Proxy.
Besides that, you have a couple options. The first is that many newer and popular British shows, like Doctor Who, will air on Australia’s main networks.
If they don’t air there – they’ll end up on a channel called UKTV – which specializes in airing the best of British TV for Australians.
You can get more information on UKTV at their website here.
There’s also a dedicated BBC Knowledge channel that airs a lot of great British Telly in Australia. The BBC World News Channel is also readily available on satellite providers.
If waiting for your favorite shows is taking too long – then you still have options.
You can use a service like The Telly, which will use Slingbox technology to stream your own private British TV stream live from the UK. I’ve used these services myself and they’re great. The only problem is dealing with the time difference between the UK and Australia.
Another option is to download British TV in Australia using bittorrent on a service like TheBox.bz – which specializes in sharing pretty much everything that airs on all the British TV networks. If you can’t get the show there, you can’t get it anywhere.
So, there you have it – if you’re down under and hungry for British TV, you have many options to watch live British TV in Australia.
Good luck!
Do you have any tips for British Expats on getting British TV in Australia? Let us know in the comments!
