Just days away from the plug being pulled on community television broadcasters across Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, the federal government has granted a six-month reprieve to Channel 31's free-to-air operations.
Amid much outcry, the communications minister Mitch Fifield announced earlier this month that the free-to-air broadcaster would cease airing on June 30.
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Careers launched on Channel 31
Responsible for some classic on-air moments and launching the careers of many broadcasters, Melbourne's Channel 31 will close at the end of June.
But now the operators have been granted a licence extension to December 31 to give them further time to "transition their services to online streaming", said a government statement.
Services in Brisbane and Sydney have already ceased operating.
Some of Australia's best-known faces on television have been mourning Channel 31's demise, praising the broadcaster for being a vital training ground for radio and television personalities.
Hamish Blake and Andy Lee both got their start at the channel in the early 2000s. The Project's Waleed Aly said it provided a vital platform for talent to "play, spaces to go out and make mistakes".
The federal government said it had already granted 18 months extension and $450,000 in funding to the broadcasters after notifying them in 2014 that they were to vacate their broadcast space by the end of 2015.
It said ratings had shown that the broadcaster's prime-time audience had dropped from 9000 viewers in the period 2009-2013 to 4000 in 2016.
In the statement, the government said it was "considering a variety of options for using the vacated broadcast spectrum, including for the trialling of next-generation broadcasting technologies that could enable new services for viewers, such as the terrestrial broadcast of ultra-high definition 4K television."
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