The Federal Government has declined to extend the Channel 31/44 licence on free to air Community TV after June 30, 2017.
This means our Nu Country TV show on Saturday June 24, with repeats early next week, will be our last appearances on that frequency.
Channel 31/44 General Manager Matthew Field delivered the sad tidings that leave the frequency vacant.
“The reality is that the spectrum we currently occupy is valuable and there is no doubt that in the future demand for spectrum will be driven by the data and digital economy,” Field revealed.
“But we have not been able to establish why there is such a rushed determination to kick us off air in the absence of any planned alternative use of our spectrum before 2019. In the context of the explosion of shopping and racing channels on free-to-air TV, the instability of Network Ten, and concerns around the lack of diverse Australian voices in mainstream media, it is particularly puzzling that Community TV should be so readily kicked off free-to-air.”
Nu Country TV is considering options offered by Channel 31/44 to broadcast shows online later in 2017.
We will keep you updated on those options when they become available.
When they do we would love you to let us know your thoughts on online broadcasting.
We value your loyalty and support dating back to our Nu Country FM radio debut in 1994 and appreciate your input on our future.
CHART-TOPPERS CHRIS AND BRAD HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Kentucky coal-miner's son Chris Stapleton and West Virginian Brad Paisley headlines Nu Country TV Saturday June 24 at 9 pm on Channel 31/Digital 44.
Hank Williams Jr also returns to the show hosted by Mid Pacific Bob Olson and repeated Sunday 1 am and Monday 8 am.
Late Georgian comedian Tim Wilson appears in Behind Bars with a satirical double shot in the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Texan Rodney Carrington also adds a dash of humour to the historic show.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Meanwhile viewers can continue to access new and previous Nu Country TV shows on the Channel 31/44 web page at this link - http://www.c31.org.au/series/487
Grammy winning Georgians the Zac Brown Band topped the U.S. Billboard charts with their eighth album Welcome Home shortly after their third Australian tour in April.
The eclectic octet is joined by Texan Kacey Musgraves and Pharrell Williams on the 10 track album produced by Dave Cobb at two Nashville studios.
Brown, 38 and father of five, reached back to his rural roots for inspiration for the acclaimed disc.
Melbourne roots country band Raised By Eagles exercise strident social comment on their third album I Must Be Somewhere that they will promote on a winter tour.
Major singer-songwriters Luke Sinclair and Nick O'Mara wrote 10 new tunes for the disc.
The cream of American nouveau outlaws and stone country icons combine on the 21 track CD-DVD compilation Outlaw - Celebrating The Music Of Waylon Jennings .
They include Octogenarians Willie Nelson, Bobby Bare and Kris Kristofferson, Texans Lee Ann Womack and Robert Earl Keen and young guns diverse as Chris Stapleton, Jamey Johnson, Kacey Musgraves, Sturgill Simpson and Alison Krauss.
Waylon's widow Jessi Colter and their son Shooter Jennings also perform.
BRAD PAISLEY AND JOHN FOGERTY COMBINE FOR LOVE AND WAR
West Virginian guitar-slinger Brad Paisley has out-gunned Shotgun Willie Nelson with the number of video clips released to promote his 11th album Love And War .
All 15 songs by Paisley , 44, are available as streaming videos.
Brad wrote the powerful Vietnam War social comment title track with former Creedence Clearwater singer and duet partner John Fogerty.
Paisley also collaborated with Whispering Bill Anderson, Mick Jagger and hip hop honcho Timbaland on other songs and revamped an historic Johnny Cash poem.
The singer also includes a timely Internet warning satire selfie#theinternetisforever .
CLICK HERE for our Brad CD feature in The Diary.
OCTOGENARIAN WILLIE NELSON STILL NOT DEAD YET
Texan singing actor Shotgun Willie Nelson enlisted a punchy posse of peers for his latest album God's Problem Child that has been promoted with five new video clips on Nu Country TV .
Willie, now 84, honours late duet partners Merle Haggard and Leon Russell with a little help from Tony Joe White and Jamey Johnson.
The Redheaded Stranger wrote seven of the 13 new songs with long-time producer Buddy Cannon including his parody of Internet trolls announcing his premature death in Still Not Dead Yet .
Melbourne bluegrass band Mustered Courage suffered a great bluegrass CD train robbery on the eve of their performance at the Powercorp Country Music festival at Yarra Park as a curtain raiser for the Essendon-Geelong country game at the MCG.
“We had all these CDS but they were stolen on the train,” guitarist Julian Abrahams told the huge crowd, “it was bad luck for the thieves, all they got in the case were bluegrass CDS.”
Mustered Courage , Lee Kernaghan, Sara Storer, Shannon Noll and Michelle Gardiner performed in Yarra Park with former country music singing Geelong footballer and latter day Federal National Party MP Damian Drum representing his Victorian electorate at the concert.
Drum inspected the SES, CFA, Food Bank, VFF, Case, Deni Ute Muster and local farm produce stalls before 2008 Australian Of The Year Kernaghan OAM and Storer's trio performed inside the MCG.
Grammy winning Georgian born Zac Brown and East Ringwood bred duo The Pierce Brothers raised the roof of Melbourne 's Margaret Court Arena with a marathon concert on April 19.
Brown's dynamic octet performed 25 songs in the mid-week musical soiree to an enthusiastic audience including Melbourne Storm NRL star Billy Slater.
Zac's show followed his appearance with septuagenarian singing sailor, pilot and duet partner Jimmy Buffett at the 28 th Byron Bay Blues festival at Easter.
Brown and band also previewed their seventh studio album Welcome Home , due for release on May 12.
Cronulla singer-songwriter school-teacher Luke O'Shea and long-time mate John Krsulja turned ashes into gold when they wrote Old Man's Shed about paternal pride.
Their song about a proud fix-it father whose craft was perfected in his backyard shed won 2017 Heritage Song Golden Guitar at the 44th Australian country music awards in Tamworth in January.
It was the seventh Golden Guitar for O'Shea, 47 and father of three, who shared the award with Krsulja - host of song-writing workshops and concerts at his DAG Sheep Station retreat at Nundle near Tamworth .
The song is on Luke's sixth album Caught Up In The Dreaming.
Texan troubadour Miranda Lambert is indebted to songwriter dad Rick, new beau Anderson East and vast cast of fellow singer-songwriters for igniting her seventh album The Weight Of These Wings - a 24 track double disc.
They include Waylon Payne, Brent Cobb, Adam Hood, Jack Ingram, fellow Pistol Annies singer Ashley Monroe and Natalie Hemby with whom Miranda wrote 10 songs here.
Texan Waylon - son of the late Sammi Smith and Willie Nelson guitarist Jody Payne - and Ashley penned vitriolic kiss-off tune To Learn Her.
Miranda, 33, says the album is not a heartbreak disc despite divorce from fellow singer Blake Shelton in July 2015 after their four year marriage.
The album has already produced two videos - Vice and We Should Be Friends - featured on Nu Country TV .
Veteran band The Bushwackers celebrates its 46th anniversary with release of 24 th album The Hungry Mile.
The eclectic roots music band that has featured 90 members in its colourful career joins Harmony James and Luke O'Shea by including a coal fracking protest song Leave It In The Ground .
It also pays homage to late Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in Giant Of A Man , pioneer bush band songwriter John Meredith in Dennis O'Reilly and The Backblock Shearer , post war migrants in Dirt Under My Nails and depression era dock workers in the title track.
They also feature a 25 member celebrity choir on Waltzing Australia , dream of a Republic Day and inject folksy humour into Another Trip To Bunnings .
Warner Music promo wizard Karen Black has given us country music icon Kasey Chambers 11th album Dragonfly - a double CD as a reward for new and renewing Nu Country members.
Kasey's new video Satellite was featured in the Series #32 premiere on February 4 in our new timeslot - 9 p.m.
Guests on the album include Vika and Linda Bull, Keith Urban, Paul Kelly, Foy Vance, Harry Hookey, Ed Sheeran and Grizzlee Train.
Mo Pitney, one of the young guns keeping the traditional country flame burning, scored wide exposure on Nu Country TV with his organic videos.
Now, aged 24, his debut album Behind This Guitar , has been released in Australia by Sony-Curb .
Pitney co-wrote 10 of the 12 songs with artists diverse as Whispering Bill Anderson and frequent Australian tourist David Lee Murphy and honours his late hero Merle Haggard.
Tennessean Kenny Chesney eulogised a tiny Texas bar adorned by the memories of a young soldier killed in the Vietnam War on his 17th album Cosmic Hallelujah.
Chesney, 48, performs Jesus And Elvis - a song that celebrates the serviceman’s memorial created by his mother Frances Lala in her small Austin bar - Lala’s Little Nugget.
The song - written by Matraca Berg, Allison Moorer and Hayes Carll - is a highlight of the album that also features his Grammy nominated 29 th #1 hit with Pink on Setting The World On Fire.
NU COUNTRY TV HOST AND BENEFACTOR KACEY JONES RIP AT 66
Acclaimed singer-songwriter, comedienne, producer, Nu Country TV host and showcase headliner Kacey Jones has died at 66 on the first day of spring in Nashville.
In 2014 Kacey was diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer - instead of chemo, radiation and surgery she opted for alternative, holistic therapies.
She launched a Go-Fund-Me account to pay for these and entered hospice care early in August.
Despite chronic pain she was well enough in 2015 to compete on TV's America's Got Talent where she performed her timely parody Donald Trump's Hair - title track of her 2009 album - that we also featured on Nu Country TV .
Kacey and fellow singer-songwriter Becky Hobbs performed our showcase at the Noise Bar at the historic Railway Hotel , in Brunswick on February 1, 2008, with local artists the Bona Fide Travellers .
Their concert was featured on Nu Country TV just two years after she hosted our TV show from Austin, Texas, in 2006 while performing the annual Mickey Newbury festival with singing actor Waylon Payne.
Expatriate Australasian superstar Keith Urban's appearance with John Mellencamp at the 49th CMA Awards in Nashville on November 4 last year was tinged with sadness.
It was just a month before his major musical influence - his father Robert - died on December 5 after a long battle with cancer while he was making his 10th album Ripcord .
The Urban patriarch, who died at Mountain Creek near Caloundra on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, moved to Australia from Whangarei in New Zealand with his wife Marienne and their two sons Shane and Keith and settled in Caboolture.
“My dad is the catalyst for me living in America,” revealed Urban, 48, who honoured his dad in new song Blue Ain't Your Colour.
< Keith & Bob Urban
Keith will perform the song from Ripcord when he headlines the Deni Ute Muster on September 30 and returns in December for a national tour with Carrie Underwood.
Expat South Londoner Mark Lucas & The Dead Setters return to Nu Country TV during Series #33 that returns to Channel 31/ Digital 44 in spring.
Lucas has release his seventh album The Continental Drift that features a hefty dose of social comment tunes about adoptive home city Sydney and way beyond.
If
you miss Nu Country TV live on C 31 Saturday 10.30 pm or Monday
2.30 pm and midnight and Thursday at midnight there is another
way to see the show at your leisure.
Visit the Channel 31 programs web page and Click on the Nu Country
logo and follow the link to Catch-Up TV.
You
can also follow Nu Country TV on Facebook - courtesy of gig guide
collator Annie Christophers and our loyal public officer Denise
Kuhl.
They will post photos of their overseas festival tours and local
concerts they attend.
You can interact live with them at Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NuCountryTV
The
Nu Country TV show has been added to the C 31 streaming list.
Nu Country TV also returned to C 31 - Digital 44 - in South Australia
on Thursday October 11.
The far-reaching Adelaide station screens Series #18 at 9.30 pm
each Thursday.
OUR
THANKS - HOW TO WIN TIM MCGRAW CDS
Thanks
to all our new members and renewing members who supported
us with our free Tim McGraw and Faith Hill tickets.
Promoters Chugg Entertainment and Rob Potts Entertainment
Edge gave us special ticket packages - each worth more than
$400 - as sponsors of our TV show.
This was the first time the two singing actors-superstars
played concerts together including Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne
and CMC Rocks The Hunter Festival.
Meanwhile we still have Tim's acclaimed 11th album Emotional
Traffic for new members and renewing members.
We
have even more exciting news - Dierks Bentley's seventh album
Home on the eve of his second Australian tour.
EMI promotions ace Bianca O'Neill gave us Dierks huge selling
album prizes shortly before it debuted at #1 on Billboard
on its U.S. release
The album features the Bentley hits Am I The Only One,
Gonna Die Young and his duet with Karen Fairchild of Little
Big Town on When You Gonna Come Around.
Bentley
wrote the title song with Brett Beavers and Dan Wilson about
the shooting of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords by a mass murderer
in their home state Arizona.
U.S.
President Barack Obama has also adopted Home - featuring
expat Adelaide guitarist Jedd Hughes - as a personal song
in his new campaign.
Bentley, 36, arrived in Nashville at 19 and had big hits before
releasing his acclaimed bluegrass album Up On The Ridge.
All you have to do to win Home is become a member of
Nu Country TV or renew your membership.
EMI Records Promotions ace Bianca O'Neill has donated copies of the hot albums by North Carolina young gun Eric Church.
Eric, 37, topped the all genre Billboard Top 200 on debut with his third album Chief and 5th album The Outsiders that we feature in Series #25 of Nu Country TV .
You can help Nu Country TV survive and triumph on C 31 and win the Chief CD as a token of our appreciation
Nu
Country TV beams into Phillip Island, West Gippsland, Geelong &
the Surf Coast, Bellarine Peninsula, north to Mt Macedon and east
to the Dandenongs.
We're
also featured on C 31 in South Australia - home state of expatriate
Greencards multi-instrumentalist Kym Warner and Nashville recording
artist Jedd Hughes.
Golden
Guitar winner Beccy Cole, Jake Nickolai and 2000 Star Maker winner
Cat Southern also earned their stripes in home state South Australia.
This
means 750,000 viewers plus for videos, interviews and live gig footage
weekly.
Please
send your video clips in mini-DV or DVD-R format to Nu Country -
45 Ferndale Rd, Glen Iris 3146
We'll
keep you up to date on country music through our concert reviews,
features in our Diary and tours in TonkGirl's Gig Guide.
The
ABC has added Dig Country to its on-line jazz and roots radio
stations.
Adelaide bluegrass and roots country expert Richard Porteous
and peers have created a joyous sound that is reminiscent
of Nu Country FM in its halcyon days.
Midweek
Country INRFM 96.5FM Wednesday between 7pm & 9pm.
The presenters alternate each week, they are Mike Pealing
& John Worth. Now
streaming live
COLIN
WEIDNER
Texas Time Travellin North West FM Glenroy 98.9 Saturday
6 p m - 8 p m
FRANK MCHUGH
That's Country
North West FM Glenroy 98.9 Sunday
12pm - 3 p m
IAN
EDWARDS
playing a mix of Oz, US, Bluegrass Western swing & everything
in between, on the Double Clutchin Weasel Show On 88.6FM
Wednesday night
@ 10.00PM - 12.00pm
GEELONG
COUNTRY 89.3 FM - 24 hours non-stop country
Stereo
974 FM - Bob Taylor 9 am - 6 pm week days. Truck Stop Country Rod Boyd - midnight to dawn. Now
streaming live
BIG
PETE WINDLE FRIDAY
3MDR 97.1FM
9.30 pm to midnight
[full on country] Now streaming live
5
Foot High And Rising with Myles O'Neil Shaw PBS - 106.7
FM - Monday 1-3 p m.
3RPP
Mornington Peninsula Radio
Monday 7-9pm Country Mix with Ken Brown
Saturday 7-9pm Kool Country
Barbara Kuhl
Tuesday & Thursday Breakfast 6-9am Wild Western Swing and Wicked Wacky Country - Steve Burley
Sunday 4am-7am BJs Country Music John Burrows
WELCOME TO NU COUNTRY TV 
