It’s been advertised since mid Jan, covers WIN, NBN and Nine Darwin
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There might be a flip of the agreement that means NBN might need to keep running Extra for a while if Nine’s sold it as having a certain amount of reach.
Given the regional operations would be a massive increase in scale for Ten, I’m sure they are happy with the current arrangements of keeping the existing playout for the regional channels - even if it means oddities like SBN or Gold.
WIN amusingly probably helped set the value for NBN’s sale by how much they sold NRN for - helps make the cost writedown argument for Nine…
Do we know anything about when and how the sale vote to sell NBN3 will be executed?
Mail out vote I assume
Its unclear at the moment, it doesnt appear Nine have released any indication yet.
I would imagine it would require some kind of shareholder meeting (maybe they’ll try and piggy back it on a future meeting)
Really Pat? A bit late for that now…how long have you and those came before you had the opportunity to put greater protections in for regional viewers? But noooooooo…you suckled at Nine’s teat for years.
If you had any guts, prove it. You and your boofhead mate Repacholi (and others) would strong arm Nine and WIN to either scupper the deal or put some decent provisions in to protect the local content and quality of said product.
Here’s some ideas for decent legislation, free of charge…
- Legally mandate dedicated local content blocks every single day.
- Legally mandate a local presence and jobs in the market.
- Tell WIN to decentralise everything out of Wollongong - and legally make them do it. Call it a trigger condition.
- Here’s a fun one - Threaten to take the ABC playout business out of MediaHub and make WIN pay the ABC for the 50% they don’t own if they don’t comply. And overstate the price. ABC gets more funds and Bruce gets his
with a inserted up his good long hard and indifferent. - Here’s even a funnier one - remove metro and broad regional branding from regional networks. None of them actually transmit on LCN 7, 9 or 10 in country areas, and they won’t change the specs to allow it. Either change the specs or revert brands to something not based on a metro number.
but we know Labor et al won’t do it. They’ve been up Nine’s bloated since Hawkey was up Packer’s clacker in the 80s.
Rant/comedy schtick over. 
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So Pat Conroy only want 6 to 12 minutes of local news each night. Well I dont think that will change under the proposed sale to WIN. I would say there would be a “Northern Region” version of WIN News from 5:30 with Hunter region stories entangled with New England and North Coast - much like the late WIN All Australian News was structured.
I agree more needs to be done, but its too little to late - this needed to be done before NRTV was devoured by TNQ because then we might have had all 3 regional commercial networks being more than just a metro relay station. The bean counters don’t always look at what is drawing viewers to the regionals. Its only a matter of time before the tradition of 6pm local news is gone forever
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Pat doesn’t seem to realise that a local content “points” system already exists.
I don’t think any of them know. If you’re not a kid and we’re telling you these things, you have more issues than a newsagency in their peak years.
The problem has always been the definition of local content. The fact a 2 minute news update read from a script without any video footage relating to it can be considered local content is an insult to viewers intelligence.
I have thought for a very long time that to be counted as content a program MUST be at least 5 minutes long and local news be a minimum of 15 minutes long. I also think repeating the same content should NOT be counted. The legislation should also have a subregion rule where as an example, Hunter news stories cannot be counted as content for New England or North Coast and vice versa. A remote link to an adjacent area should not count eg FNC surfer competing at Surfest in Newcastle should not be counted for North Coast.
At one point NRTV had 5 minute filler programs like Bushtracks and Backpacks pre-aggregation as well as local information windows (Social Calendar and Community Billboards). NBN and NEN as well as most other regionals had similar short format local content on top of local news and some even had programs primarily targeting women such as NBN’s This Morning/Today Extra and NRTV had Roundabout/Midweek. This is the type of programming that regionals needed to maintain, even if it meant we had an extra hour a day in daytime with the shit stain they call infomercials to fund local content and with secondaries these days you could “hide” infomercials in amongst secondary channel fodder.
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Those days are long gone. Even the metros had various local programs in the mornings too before networking. The money is not there anymore, sad to say. More and more are just bypassing the local regional (and metro) FTA transmission over time with many going the way of streaming with the metro feed only available. Regional TV is dead as we knew/know it. Nine just getting rid of boat anchor regionals before they become worthless with no ability to cash in on their sale.
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Morning television died the day Bert left Ten to head back to Nine and ended GMA…. It’s been gone for years now
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NBN special Surfest 40th anniversary was reviewed on Gogglebox Australia this week. I believe it is the first time a NBN produced program featured on Gogglebox.
General meeting seeking shareholders approval of NBN TV is on Thursday 21 Msy 2026
I assume the ACCC approval will be sought sometime thereafter.
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NBN covering the Newcastle dawn service again after skipping last year. Some of the supers were blocked
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And probably the last time they’ll cover that now too.
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Probably the last year we see it on the Nine regional station.
IMO it would be the perfect opportunity for someone else to take it over next year for Newcastle. Sadly it wont happen
Few interesting points from that document
- WIN are excluded from voting on the sale (unsurprising)
- NBN being sold for $14.8m and Nine Darwin $500k
- There is some complexity around sale price for NBN if the broadcast tax is revoked or the suspension is continued, WIN pays an additional $2.6m/year for a maximum 3 years
- Nine get a capital loss cash benefit of nearly $100 million through the sale (goes some way to explain why they’re selling)
- Both NBN & Nine Darwin will have a 5 year exclusive content agreement with Nine
- Worth 50% of NBN’s ad revenue and 10% of Nine Darwin
- NBN’s can reduce to 45% if Nine lose the NRL, and lower if revenue drops after year 3
- NBN must provide $750k worth of airtime to Nine for sports promotions
- WIN must provide $1m worth of airtime (TV and Radio) for Nine promotions (including Stan)
- Independent assessment values the two entities at between $13.4 and $20m - the agreed sale amount is considered reasonable to meet ASX rules
Profitable, but affiliate fees have a significant impact:
Northern NSW is Nine’s strongest regional market:
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Exclusive because the other NNSW stations are already network O&O, same for Seven Darwin 
Maybe they are now, but if Seven/Ten decide to sell to who knows, maybe they won’t be by 2031.
I can’t see 10 or 7 selling in that time IMO