Didn’t the office flood after the updates were cancelled?
Imparja is also in the dog house as they are one of the 12 broadcasters who failed to meet “Non-primary Channel Transmission Quota['s]” - which the ACMA themselves have said is caused by Nine moving content to 9LIFE and these licencees not carrying the channel. Imparja had the second worst compliance rate on terrestrial and VAST.
Unless Imparja do major reshuffling of what programs are carried on Imparja, GEM and GO, I don’t think they will be able to continue operating long term - they would need to put up the funds to carry 9LIFE; lets not even think about HD at this point.
If they were to sell I’m sure WIN would be fronting up the cash so they could become the only commercial FTA network that operates in every Australian state and territory… could also mean that there is one region where WIN’s primary affiliation is with Nine!
#WINPARJA2K18
Late edit: Imparja had the second worst compliance rate on FTA and the worst on VAST. VAST isn’t counted in the 12 licencees who failed to meet the quotas however
They would do business if they had to… WIN SA’s main channel has been affiliated with Nine (main affiliation when it was ONE channel), then Seven, then Nine again, now Ten… anything goes!
If Imparja sold and WIN bought they could re-neg with SCA so that the Ten affiliation goes to WIN, the Nine affiliation goes to SCA and Seven is a JV or SCA gets Seven and Nine goes JV.
Alternatively NEC could buy Imparja if up for grabs, but would they want to?
You may very well be right. There’d be zero difference in programming on the Nine affiliate anyway if Central became a solus market, so no visible impact from the viewers’ perspectives other than Nine branding. The Central noodle updates can also be carried on all main channels.
By the most recent population determination by ACMA in 2016, Central only has 412k viewers compared to WA-wide with 572k. Does Central really have the population or density to support two broadcasters, one of which is confirmed to be struggling with money. It may be time to create a solus market.
It could happen. WIN’s got centralised playout so it would be easy to slap their brand on Nine instead of Ten in some markets. But I don’t think WIN would be keen on such a low profit venture with huge overheads like Imparja. Plenty of digital transmitters in literally the middle of nowhere with 8 years on the clock and counting! Huge satellite costs. Extremely small advertising base. This would be a big deterrent for a new player whether it’s WIN or Nine.
I think SCA are in the best position to just do the lot under a solus license. They already operate sales and broadcast for both SC and Ten, so they’ve got property, infrastructure, a presence already. Plus they administer the whole VAST authorisation process and run VAST Regional News from Canberra. They’re the most equipped at dealing with a complex market like this one.
All sounds good, but currently under the Broadcasting Services Act it would be impossible for Southern Cross Austereo to own all three remote central and eastern licences. The government would need to change the legislation for it to happen. Would they? Probably not I think, as I doubt that it would be a priority if it was put to the minister.
Because those markets are licensed as solus markets by ACMA. In order to change Central from a two-company market to a solus market it would need to go through ACMA and parliament. And that’s if by some miracle it makes it that far.
If it does, while they’re at it, they should do the same for Mildura/Sunraysia TV1; currently a two-company market that has a smaller population than the solus Griffith/MIA TV1, and a significantly smaller population than the two SA markets.
The BSA specifies how many licences are available. Those solus markets originally only had one licence and were not aggregated, so the existing licencees were allowed to launch additional channels of supplementary licences to increase the options available on the basis that it wasn’t commercially viable for another operator in the market.
So for the remote central to change from having 2 operators to being a solus market, the BSA needs to be updated - which means it MUST be passed by parliament, which means that the politicians MUST see it as something worthy of their time and effort. Realistically the politicians won’t see it as a high enough priority to spend any time on, therefore it can’t be changed.
They should be aggregated into the Vic and NSW licence areas respectively - WIN, SCA and Prime each broadcast their existing signals, possibly with no requirement for local content (as is currently the case). There’s no good reason for them to be separate these days with everything under common ownership, and arguably should have been aggregated originally anyway.
Though you’d have the incumbent operators crying foul that they effectively have to give up a licence to Prime, which doesn’t currently broadcast in those regions (even for a price).
Prime have a licence in Mildura, with 9 being a JV between WIN and Prime, but yes, the incumbents would be outraged. Realisitically it’s not going to happen though - same case as remote central, no one would care enough to even try.
Griffith/MIA and Mildura/Sunraysia have three alternative paths to the status quo:
Mildura/Sunraysia is turned into a solus market (population is equivalent to Griffith; each approx. half the size of the largest solus market in Spencer Gulf), likely WIN-owned.
Both markets are merged into SNSW and RVIC respectively. Would cost a lot of money for SCA to establish expensive new transmitters in both areas, same for Prime in Griffith.
Both markets could just be merged into Remote Central. Populations are similar to the “regional” areas of WA that GWN7 caters to alongside the “remote western zone”. Most of Sunraysia is alreacy covered, and existing Griffith Prime and WIN can be merged into SCA and IMP respectively.
Both Griffith/MIA and Mildura/Sunraysia have populations between 60-63k. Realistically, they would have to be integrated into existing local areas instead of becoming a new local area within SNSW and RVIC as their populations are so tiny relative to the current local areas.
Due to the significant costs to integrate them with SNSW and RVIC, it would simply be easier to turn Mildura/Sunraysia into a solus market or integrate them into Remote Central. That’s if anybody comes to care enough. They might care about Imparja enough when it eventually goes bankrupt or saps too much money from the government.
Edit: Third option: integration into Remote Central.
Aside from maybe the SCA Nine stations in Regional QLD, SNSW/ACT and Victoria (and even then, only at the right price), I doubt any of the regional affiliates would make an appealing purchase for the network.
The transmitters already exist under the current arrangement, so would most likely be sold with the licence. However, links to get the signal to the transmitter would need to be established for SCA (Prime already use DDA which owned and used by WIN, so no real change there).
I’d be surprised if any duopoly market is converted to solus given that it would reduce competition - we have significant laws in place around maintaining a competition, so even if the government were able to over rule them, any move would undermine those laws. More likely measures would be merging existing licence areas and reducing regulation to reduce the costs for broadcasters. Imparja is already a few steps behind SCA by being independent - all their overheads need to be covered by revenue from just one market, whereas SCA have it spread over many more - the cost of them broadcasting into the remote licence areas is really just transmission costs and a small amount of sales/traffic costs - everything else is offset by their other operations.
That’s it. The pollies will only care once a broadcaster places enough pressure on them, which will really onto be when they’re about to go belly up.
A cheap solution, but unlikely since it kicks out all incumbents.
Pre-aggregation, Imparja covered NT, remote SA and border regions of NSW and VIC. QQQ/ITQ seems to have covered Queensland only. In all areas, aggregation allowed solus cherry-pick operators to expand into each other’s markets and take on a primary affiliation. Unless IMP or QQQ had bought the other out before aggregation, they would’ve always expanded as they eventually did.
A solus operator in Remote Central would more than likely would be coasting at present. Not thriving, but not embodying economic death either. Presuming that it were QQQ that consumed Imparja, Southern Cross would be able to use revenue from their other stations to prop Central up if needed.
I love how cricket is still featured in the Promo/Ident when they won’t be airing it this Summer…unless it’s an old one which hasn’t been updated of course.