Gold (TV Asahi)

Gold is an Australian television channel, jointly operated by ABS Television Australia, WIN Television, and TV Asahi.

History
On May 1, 2012, WIN Television launched Gold, a "datacasting" channel that, according to pre-launch advertising, would broadcast various types of lifestyle, educational and religious programmes. However, it was then seen broadcasting infomercials for virtually all of its airtime. This, however, was not a new practise in Australia; similar channels were run by Nine (eXtra) and the Seven Network (TV4ME). Only one of these channels, Network Ten's TVSN, was strictly branded as a shopping channel.

On the 11th of May, 2015, TV Asahi unexpectedly announced that Gold would be "given a complete overhaul, and will be relaunched as Australia's only free-to-air Japanese entertainment channel, starting tomorrow". ABS claimed responsibility for claiming the channel, and said;

"It seems wasteful to advertise a new channel showing lifestyle, educational, religious and other miscellaneous programmes, but then launch it, and use it for the sole purpose of showing ads 24/7. It's time for us to end this, and to allow ABS to expand into the free-to-air television market in Australia. Claiming the former Gold channel from WIN Television is the first step, the second being the removal of all the channel's teleshopping trash, and the third step being the transformation of the channel into a free-to-air outlet for TV Asahi and ABS in Australia."

On the 12th of that month, Gold was relaunched as a joint effort operated by Kabushiki Gaisha ABS, TV Asahi (through its Asahi Kokusai branch) and WIN Television. WIN Television welcomed the addition of the new channel to its lineup to the extent that WIN Television's affiliates, Nine (serving the major cities of Australia), NBN (serving parts of New South Wales) and Imparja (serving remote areas of Australia) were persuaded by WIN to carry the channel. These affiliates would all drop their "eXtra" datacasting channels to make way.

It was announced that Gold would not be carried on Australian Pay TV services; the market in question is already served by ABS International and Asahi Kokusai.

Programming
Most of Gold's output consists of programmes from TV Asahi. English subtitles are available on popular shows (examples including most TV Asahi terebi-doramas, Doraemon, and Music Station).

Reaction
Until Gold was acquired by TV Asahi Corporation, the channel was ridiculed as "Fool's Gold" and "hardly worthy of Bronze, yet alone Gold".

When the station was acquired, the country's television press noted this as being "a breath of fresh air for the Freeview TV market in Australia, with unique programming that its viewers can all relate to".

In response to this popular change of orientation for the channel, TV Asahi, ABS and WIN announced that the channel will "remain this way for the far future".