And how would Geelong bulletins be paid for?
Same as Gold Coast, there is no extra revenue for the 7 and 9 in Brisbane on their Gold Coast splits. The same ad content appears on both the Brisbane and Gold Coast feeds for their respective 5.30pm slots when Gold Coast breaks away for local news. Gold Coast is still lucky to have these bulletins on weekdays with the weekend ones axed long ago.
Never going to happen for Geelong.
Sorry- I donāt recall saying anything to suggest that Geelong bulletins would be a viable commercial proposal in the current market?
I only said that it might have been a viable proposal in the past (such as a couple of decades ago as part of the digital TV transition). Clearly that ship has long sailed now.
Steering this back towards the topic- I would have to think that the Gold Coast and Central Coast dual metro/regional relay setup would have to be on borrowed time- surely they are getting to a point where itās not cost effective to run 99% identical programming on two different transmitters. I do wonder how many actually watch the regional relays vs the metro relays.
Turning the Central Coast transmitter into just a Sydney tower wouldnāt help, as the Central Coast is part of NBN Televisionās coverage area for news. A lot of headlines from the Central Coast make it to NBN News there, so it would be silly to go full on Sydney on the Central Coast. I mean, in any case, you could keep NBN Central Coast on the TV channel list and then have all other channels beaming from Sydney on the Central Coast transmitter, the Channel 5 (WIN-10) and Channel 6 (PRIME7) transmissions are just dirty feeds of 10 and 7 Sydney respectively with very few local ad insertions. Nine does a better job at managing this as they own and operate NBN Television (Northern NSW) network as a whole.
Watch the Gold Coast (regional) channels if you love watching local ads and the Sydney news, but other than that, what else is there to love about regional Gold Coast relays? But then again, you do realise that NBN Northern NSW also serves the Gold Coast in an hour-long bulletin, but then again, thereās barely any Gold Coast headlines on there anyway, hence why the metro variants dominate TV screens, the regionals are only there mostly for the sake of regional advertising, although one benefit of a regional relay on the Gold Coast is having some form of localism on the weekend during the news (if any) when Seven and Nine (metros) are away, and NBN News is still on-air on the weekends for the full hour. Even then, you have Gold Coast radio (and even the local cinemas there) to place your ads on.
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The only scenario whereby i see a removal of duplication on the three Coasts is if/when 10 take ownership the SCA and WIN 10 regional licences, and 9 owns the WIN QLD licence.
That would mean all 7, 9, 10 licences each come under common ownership and they could then all agree to switch off one each.
I imagine theyād all elect to keep the regional licences for the ad revenue, move local bulletins to that and air Sydney/Brisbane program feeds as they see fit.
I agree with you. I should have replied to the person you replied to, apologies.
Totally agree, the Gold Coast and Central Coast duplication is on borrowed time. Maybe when NRN is ever sold to TEN, and all the metro parents will own the Northern NSW stations may all come to an agreement to close the regional transmitters off in the regions which duplicate the metro service.
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But that would also spell the end of local news coverage and advertising for the Central Coast on NBN. No longer would local advertisers be able to place their ads on NBN, as these regional stations, including the Nine-owned NBN, would be shut off in areas where the metros are broadcast on, i.e: Sydney being broadcast on the Central Coast transmitters.
They should at least keep NBN there if theyāre going to remove all the other regional channels from PRIME7 and SC10, but as for the Gold Coast, who needs the regional channels? Regardless of what many believe and think, the Gold Coast is (once and for all) a semi-capital city. The regional channels are only there because some people love watching local ads on the Gold Coast, it is essentially a historical anomalyā¦ 
The only way thatāll happen is if they insert local (regional) advertising to the Central Coast & Gold Coast markets on the metro service & thatāll never happen, itāll actually cost them money to do & the metro advertisers will then have less audience than they would have, so they arenāt going to want to pay what they were per 30 second spot, same for smaller Central Coast or Gold Coast businesses, wonāt pay to advertise on the metro channels at huge cost, to have 80% or more of the viewers not caring & never using the business, especially with the internet & social media, advertising is now all about target audience, & bang for buck, the dual station setup on the Central Coast & Gold Coast have for a long time now, really only been there for the advertising revenue.
Seven Regional & NBN Northern NSW do some different advertising spots on the Central Coast to what they have in Newcastle & the 7 & 9 metro channels & I assume itās similar on the Gold Coast?
WIN 10 Newcastle have never done separate Central Coast advertising, businesses on that channel got bonus audience of both Newcastle & Central Coast for the same price, & WIN 10 only has ever had a transmitter at the Northern Central Coast translator site, which a lot of the signal from there gets back into the Newcastle market, & it used to be fed off air from Mt Sugarloaf Newcastle so couldnāt have separate ads or news programming anyway, but itās now got itās own separate, microwave feed, so could potentially now be split from Newcastle if WIN wanted to do it.
Also as discussed elsewhere those regional channels are now better quality picture than the metros, with being mostly or entirely MPEG 4 & HD, so anyone on the Central Coast & Gold Coast who care about picture quality &/or have good home theater setups are probably watching the regional channels instead of the metro ones now, given the same programming at better quality on the regional, IMO, you be pretty stupid not to be when youāve got the option available to you.
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Currently 7 owns both channels in both markets but has not closed down one of them.
Also, the Sunshine Coast is different to the Gold Coast so I donāt think anything will change on the Sunshine Coast. This is why.
The Gold Coast transmitter sites have two complete sets of commercial stations covering the entire areas equally. On the other hand, the Sunshine Coast has two sets of commercial station transmitters in the middle, but the Brisbane commercial stations focus their transmission power to the south while the regional commercial stations focus their transmitter power north. Thereās an area in the middle where people can receive both sets of channels well but outside that area one drops off more than the other. Go further north and there are no more local transmitters for the Brisbane commercial stations serving your local area. The only option would be to try to receive them long distance from somewhere, e.g. direct from Brisbane.
The situation is similar around Mandurah with respect to commercial stations serving Bunbury and Perth.
The Central Coast is different again, but could someone else please explain it as Iād probably get it wrong.
Yes, but 7 wonāt shut one of them down until either the QTQ/RTQ and TVQ/TNQ services are also closed down, so that they all only have 1 service each.
Not too different, there are 3 sites (Wyong, Gosford, Bouddi) - only Wyong has all 6 commercial licensees there, WIN10 is the only one not operating from Gosford and Bouddi.
Also at Bouddi, the metroās transmit North & South, the regionals (NBN & 7 Regional) only transmit North back towards Gosford.
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Think you will find viewers in those areas would prefer the direct metro feeds. I would. As to why the regionals (albeit not NRN) transmits from Gosford along with the metro stations is beyond me.
If the Central Coast of NSW is anything lie the Gold Coast of Qld, itād be due to history.
Once upon a time, before repeaters and aggregation, people would have two antennas so that they could receive TV stations directly from Sydney and Newcastle and have extra choice of what to watch. Then the local repeaters came so they replicated what was happening so now people could get all the channels including the extra choice without long distance reception. Then came aggregation and people had some extra channels, but not as much extra choice as the regional commercial stations largely replicated the capital city stationsā programming.
My in-laws live on the Central Coast and get their signals from the Gosford translator. They watch NBN instead of the relay of 9 Sydney, they even prefer NBN news to the 9 Sydney news.
Are they an exception, do more people on the Central Coast watch the metros over the regionals? I have even heard Star 104.5 advertise 9 Sydney news, and not the NBN local news.
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An exception, I think, particularly at the southern end of the Coast. At the northern end, some suburbs can only get the Newcastle signals as all of the Coast TXs are low powered.
Iāve seen Central Coast radio stations advertise on 9NBN too, but usually only around survey time.
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Iāve only seen a handful of Lookout Hill antennas in the Geelong region over the years, mainly at pubs and around the hilly parts of Ocean Grove where Melbourne channels couldnāt be received clearly. Most of these installations were for the purpose of watching the MCG cricket all day on ABC (for tests) and BTV (for World Series Cup). When Imparja Television began showing Nine programmes via satellite and QQQ/SCTV began showing Seven and Tenās AFL matches, it made those installations in pubs redundant. I donāt really see the point of Geelong having itās own set of channels seeing though Melbourneās ad inventory is 95% national buys, I can only remember twice seeing ads for local Geelong advertisers on Melbourne TV, in 1988 for radio station 3GL (on Hey Hey Itās Saturday on GTV9, this ad is on Youtube) and in 1993 for Winter and Taylor Holden (on a late night NBL basketball replay on ATV10). Also from my observations the regional networks show a lot of national buy ads, with only one or two truly local ads (including farm machinery) scattered around. Someone mentioned this in further detail in another thread.
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Thinking of experimenting to see if itās possible to get Newcastle UHF in southern Sydney. Has anyone ever had any luck with getting Mount Sugarloaf in Sydney?
MySwitch shows parts of my suburb with yellow āvariableā reception or grey ānoneā reception from Mount Sugarloaf (Same as for Knights Hill, which I am able to receive). If it wasnāt so hard to get onto the roof, Iād try rotating my 91-element UHF yagi to Mount Sugarloaf to see if anything can be picked up.
And I assume Mount Canobolas would be pretty much impossible? (Under normal conditions)
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The Newcastle and Illawarra stations are on the same frequencies (AFAIK). If Illawarra is coming in well that would suggest that Newcastle is too weak to receive. You would have to find a way to shield the antenna from picking up Illawarra off the back and destroying any signal.
One indication would be if people ever used to pick up NBN 3 in S Sydney (even on FM).
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I wish there was such a thing that could do thisā¦ block any signal from that direction whatsoever.
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I manage it at my place by putting the south facing antenna for the Gold Coast low down so it is has the roof blocking the signals from the north.
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Ah, yes, I remember getting WIN on 91.75 Mhz back in the analogue days.
Wollongong wasnāt receivable for me when I had just the VHF/UHF combo aerial pointing north. Only after I installed the UHF aerial pointing south did I get Wollongong. Iām thinking of having an additional UHF aerial thatās isolated from the duplexed Sydney/Wollongong aerial feed.
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