C31 Melbourne is a free-to-air community television channel in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its name is derived from UHF 31, the frequency and channel number reserved for analogue broadcasts by metropolitan community television stations in Australia. History The station began broadcasting officially on 6 October 1994. The Australian Broadcasting Authority had granted Melbourne Community Television Consortium (MCTC) with a temporary open-narrowcast licence on 5 March 1993. The framework of community television in Australia can be traced back to 1992, when the Government asked the ABA to conduct a trial of community television using the vacant sixth television channel 31. On 30 July 2004, the Australian Broadcasting Authority granted the station a full-time community broadcasting licence. C31 began broadcasting in digital during June 2010. C31 is primarily funded through sponsorship, grants, sale of airtime and member donations. The station does not receive any regular Government funding. The annual revenue of C31 is approximately (AUD) $1.3 million per year. For comparison, the Nine Network, an Australian commercial station, has $907 million annual revenue. The station claims that "1.4 million Melburnians tune in each month" this figure is supplied by the ratings company OzTam. Individual programs can have ratings of up to 180,000 viewers. The C31 website was completely remodelled in 2009, offering streaming of every program they broadcast (if the producer consents). C31 Melbourne was the only community television broadcast in Australia which offered this. A new website, ctvplus.org.au, was released in 2016 and offers livestreaming of both C31 Melbourne, C44 Adelaide, and catch up viewing of over 80 programs. C31 announced to its digital service provider and officially began simulcasting from 2010 on logical channel number 44. C31 officially started broadcasting in Digital on 28 May 2010 with the official launch date on 11 June. On 27 June 2010, the community TV programming was rebranded "C31" with new logo, identities, schedule and watermark. On 1 March 2012, C31 ceased broadcasting its analogue signal, and became available only as logical digital channel 44. In September 2014, Australian federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that licensing for community television stations would end in December 2015. In September 2015, Turnbull, then Prime Minister, announced an extension of the deadline to 31 December 2016. C31, like other community television stations, started moving operations online, and began streaming its channel live from ctvplus.org.au, allowing access to viewers outside of its traditional broadcast area. In April 2016, C31