Correct me if I’m wrong, but since we last touched on this topic, wasn’t Prime 7 was smashing Nine and WIN in Central West and Riverina, while Seven outrated WIN and Nine in Canberra using Seven News Sydney (If only Seven can start a Canberra bulletin anytime soon, but let’s talk about this later), but ABC smashed all of them (unsurprisingly).
In Victoria I think Prime 7 is still beating Nine in Albury-Shepparton (border region), but I’m not so sure about everyone else.
In QLD, Seven will continue their dominance, and while I agree Rob Brough has had his day, the bulletin will probably continue to dominate because it’s such an established brand like Nine Gold Coast. If ‘Good Evening Folks, thanks for joining us’ guy was to ever move on, I think the bulletin is in very safe hands should they choose Joanne Desmond, Steve Titmus or Katie Toney as their anchors, while Nine and WIN will battle it out for 2nd place (Nine will probably win against WIN).
The interesting thing for me will be how will Nine regional news ratings compare to the Nine Brisbane bulletin. I wouldn’t be surprised if many regional viewers will be disappointed to lose the weekday Brisbane bulletin and may look elsewhere for a capital city bulletin. If Nine’s current 6pm audience wanted local news they would already be watching 7QLD or WIN.
While I understand that the exact ratings can’t be posted, I wonder if anyone might be able to give us a vague idea of where SCA Nine and WIN currently sit in the Regional Queensland ratings during the 6pm hour? How far are they really behind Seven? Is the gap between #2 and #3 a close or wide one?
SCA won’t sell their Seven affilate channels, they make too much money and are the “jewels in the crown” of their television empire. And SCTV is to Tasmania what TVW7 is to Perth.
But I’m sure in Shepparton alone WIN will beat SCA 9 News Border North East, Sheppartonians prefer a 100% Goulburn Valley bulletin (even though it is produced in the 'Gong) over a mostly Albury/NE Vic bulletin any day! Has Prime7got its Border North East local news bulletin in Shepparton? Does Shepparton SC 9 have Albury commercials now?
Nope. Never they have since Prime came to Victoria in the 90’s. They and WIN considered Shepparton and the Border as separate regional markets, unlike SC9’s combined Border North East feed.
The same television empire that they wanted to get rid of before signing affiliation with Nine?
Also, just how much money does SCTas make? It might rate very well, and make heaps more money than any other TV network in Tasmania, but Tasmania is still a very small market with a relatively low ad spend. I think the state of the infrastructure used to produce their news demonstrates that they might not have as much cash to splash as you may expect.
There’s also no guarantee that they will keep the SC9 stations one the media ownership laws change, so there’d be no TV empire then.
I get what you’re saying, and I agree that they probably have no intention of selling SCTV at the moment, but it’s an evolving market and things change.
It was reported that SCA management view their TV assets role as supporting their radio empire (SCA view radio as their core business, the ‘jewel in the crown’).
I won’t be surprised if SCA sell off more TV assets (just not to WIN, please!), and if whatever disagreement they have with Seven could be settled they’d even switch to pure 7 branding on their Seven-affiliate stations as they did with Nine.
Everything is for sale at the right price. Just look at Kerry Packer selling his ‘beloved’ Nine Network in 1987. SC would sell GTS/BKN, Darwin as Tas at the drop of a hat if they got a decent offer. However they are low population areas, requiring a high infrastructure level. GTS/BKN has 15 repeaters alone. I would be very surprised if they haven’t had (fruitless) conversations with Prime.
There are few buyers out there who’d be interested in these stations as they stand. None comes with any sort of playout (though you could outsource that to the sweatshop in Macarthur) and the projections for ad revenue aren’t great for television. Though I would love it if an independent media mogul snapped them up!
The sales would also include SCA’s 50% shares of the joint ventures in Darwin, Central and Tas, not to mention GTS/BKN’s supplementary services for Nine and Ten.
Realistically, regional affiliates will always remain in these ‘unaggregated’ markets, and in WA, Griffith and Mildura.
Having already spent eight years presenting regional news bulletins in Queensland, Ms Heathwood understood what the expansion would mean to locals.
“In those regional communities, they consider themselves to be as important as the big cities, so now they can have a voice on the national stage.”
[…]
During July and August the hour-long bulletins will be rolled out across Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Central Queensland, Wide Bay, Darling Downs and the Sunshine Coast.
Hopefully they’ve learnt a lot from the other bulletins and the head on competition with Seven will see them invest more in the Queensland bulletins. Ideally, reusing the current Brisbane news set once it gets replaced with a network look - they should have more than enough space in the studios to do that.
The presenters won’t be a problem - certainly better than what’s on the opposition.
I’m not familiar with the size or setup available at QTQ, is there definitely enough space/facilities available for them to use a full set for the Regional QLD bulletins?
I certainly hope they realise they need to do something better than NSW/VIC to compete against 7, and follow through with something better than we’ve seen!
They’ve certainly had plenty of time to learn from mistakes and adjust their strategies since the NSW/VIC bulletins were launched.
As i’ve said, the acquisition of Samantha & Paul as presenters is a brilliant move by Nine. Pity they don’t have them together as a dual-presenter setup, like they were in the days they presented together on WIN.
I thought the current news set for Nine Brisbane was moved into the larger production studio at QTQ while the main news studio gets upgraded for the new set and HD production?
