Nine (WIN)

That is what happens when revenues drop and costs increase (read affiliation). Something needs to give before the whole place has to be shut down.

Can the same be said for former Prime & SC Ten staff as well?

No doubt.

Pres, tapes and MCR, especially at the regionals, were always treated as a loss leading department - despite the fact that without those operators there’s be no broadcast to sell ads in.

When they discovered that they could outsource and save millions they leapt at the chance, despite never actually investing in the technology properly.

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SBS of course learned the hard way when the mob they subbed their playout to went bust and they had to put in $150k quickly to keep the staff turning up and the lights on there. End game for a TV broadcaster will eventually be a payment default to a playout, transmission or telco provider then going dark. ACMA will then ask for the licence back.

Will anyone really miss some of these broadcasters when it happens??

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Sadly, yes, before they were centralised to their respective playout hubs in Canberra. Was amazing how many of those former solus stations and their technology kept plugging away until the technology changed to a level where it made economic sense to centralise when they did. Prime Tamworth was still running ACR 25’s for NEN and ECN up until as late as 1995 with a separately staffed Prime Newcastle Pres Suite running off a Betacart in the same Tamworth playout facility. They really got their bang for their buck back then not to mention how poor the pay was on TVI Schedule B. So even after centralising to Prime Canberra with the addition of GWN, the staff and technology costs were still too high when taking into account increased affiliation fees and declining revenue. Something had to give, and bingo, it was Pres. With all now outsourced sadly.

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OT but I was amazed places like Prime Gold Coast had its own Presentation department in the early 90s while NRTV Coffs Harbour and NBN in Newcastle could do all of their Northern NSW markets from a single base.

Surely this seemed like excessive unneccessary costs even for a fledging broadcaster back then?

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Personally I think if WIN wants to save costs as well as launch 9GemHD/9Rush/10 Shake, I reckon they have to do this:

  1. Move 9Gem and 9Go! To MPEG-4 like 9Life is currently, that makes it line up with Tasmania. If I am correct, MPEG-4 is a cheaper way to deliver channels than MPEG-2. Ten, 7QLD, SCA7, TDT10 and SBS are already doing this with most multis on MPEG-4 rather than MPEG-2. It allows more multis to be launched without bandwidth issues, as MPEG-2 takes up more bandwidth than MPEG-4.

  2. Move 9Gem, 9Go, 10 Bold and 10 Peach to statewide feeds like how Seven Queensland already does. I have done the math (not including Seven and Ten in SA/Griffith, but Nine in SA/Griffith and Ten in NNSW) and have come to the conclusion that WIN has 121 feeds of Nine/Ten. Currently they have:

  • 28 Feeds of Nine/Ten
  • 28 Feeds of 9HD/10 HD
  • 28 Feeds of 9Gem/10 Bold
  • 28 Feeds of 9Go!/10 Peach
  • 7 Feeds of 9Life/Sky News Regional
  • 1 Feed of TVSN
  • 1 Feed of GOLD

If you dropped the separate localised feed of 9Gem and 9Go as well as 10 Peach and 10 BOLD in all WIN regions, they will both go down to 7 feeds across Australia each for all the multis. Then this will equal:

  • 28 feeds of Nine/Ten
  • 28 feeds of 9HD/10 HD
  • 7 feeds of 9Gem/10 Bold
  • 7 feeds of 9Go!/10 Peach
  • 7 feeds of 9Life/Sky News Regional
  • 1 feed of TVSN
  • 1 feed of GOLD

If you take away 42 localised feeds to merge into statewide ones, then there would be 79 feeds. If WIN also decided to use the 42 feeds to launch 9GemHD/9Rush/10 Shake in all regions, then there would be 92 feeds (10 Bold HD could be on same channel as 10 Bold SD and take away the SD feed like metro areas). Still would be a good cost saving not having to have 29 feeds while getting to launch all remaining metro channels.

Who says they want to launch these? Especially the last one, but also, would they even be able to launch Rush? Given it’s a channel licensing agreement Discovery has with Nine.

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I am confident they already know the economics, also note by making channels statewide, that also impacts the monetisation of these channels with market-specific clients.

If I were them, I would resist launching any more channels that would do nothing but add to tech costs and further fragment the dwindling audience I have. IMO regionals are lucky to have Life, let alone Rush.

I am not sure that is correct, unless there is a situation where the MPEG-2 equipment is life-expired and therefore needing replacement anyway.

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Oh yeah. I think WIN might not choose to launch it, seeing as they would have to get a deal with both Nine and Warner Bros. Discovery. However, 10 Shake and 9GemHD could launch as the former is in SCA/TDT areas and SCA manage to get Shake/Sky and the latter is in Nine/NBN/Imparja ones (I know the last one is because they haven’t launched ImparjaHD)

My understanding even NINE do not carry 9Rush in fully O&O NBN regions, nor on NTD. With NINE possibly having done the maths to calculate revenue is not available in those areas to outweigh the licencing costs for Discovery content.

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Prime Gold Coast was mostly built with hand me down equipment from the rest of the then existing Prime network. The satellite dish to receive the clean network feed from Seven was relocated from CBN Orange. I kid you not, if Prime Gold Coast was missing commerical content which NEN may have had on station, Prime Gold Coast would record an off-air signal from the Prime Lismore transmitter so as to get missing content. Being Prime Gold Coast did not even have a direct microwave connection from NEN when it started. And nor did NEN have a microwave connection down to Dubbo to link into the existing Dubbo to Orange link. Those links were not established until around 1994. NEN did have an itinerant Telstra bearer connection, but was not fulltime, and was costly to use and limited to a couple feeds a day from Prime Canberra for the transfer of Prime branded promo feeds via Prime Wollongong and missing commercials. Prime Southern from Dubbo down through Orange, Canberra, Wagga Wagga, Albury and Ballarat and down to HSV was better served with links from the start than what Prime Northern was.

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That is correct as far as NBN goes.

A former colleague of mine worked at STW9 Perth when the lady from Melbourne who owned it sold it to WIN, had a similar sad story to tell: STW had a big earth station in its yard at Dianella which was used for program feeds from the east and otherwise was entirely stand alone with pres, news and pretty much everything else in house. Being taken over by WIN is never good news if you work in a TV studio but for quite a few months nothing adverse happened, no layoffs etc and they thought they were ok.

One day some Telstra techs turned up un-announced and wanted to know where to install a fibre CPE and run a fibre lead in. The service was ordered by WIN and nobody at STW was aware it was coming. Not long after that STW became a relay of WIN with just a newsroom and news studio. He has never worked in TV since.

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Oh I remember those days vividly.

Those were the dark ages of STW9. Thankfully since Nine bought the station, it has become up to the standard of QTQ/GTV/TCN and Nine have properly invested in Nine Perth like a new studio.

No, 9Rush is not in those areas. It is only available in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast and Brisbane as well as overlap regions. I think it would be due to cost and the licensing agreement. However if Nine broke away from Warner Bros Discovery and 9Rush had the same fate as 7 Food Network, I could see them launching a news channel. If they did launch one for news, I could 100% see it be launched in NBN/NTD land, and I would assume Nine would want WIN to launch it as well so Nine have the same reach as ABC News Channel/SBS WorldWatch.

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With due respect, until being fixed up by WIN, STW was haemorrhaging money in its last few years because of its outdated standalone model and an astronomical headcount well over a hundred.

Unfortunately, employment wise, those days have been well and truly gone since the 2000s. Efficiency is the name of the game to keep the lights on, particularly as the often number 3 station.

WIN did try with local news and even a local ACA at one point, weren’t able to make it work.

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I remember that. It was hosted by Louise Momber.

Here is the article on the celebrations of the 60th Birthday from the Illawarra Mercury last month. The paywalled version was originally posted here at the time, but I don’t think anyone ever posted the actual unlocked article.

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My view is that 9 made a big mistake to return to WIN. Had it not done so the regions could have been better served by news by SCA and I believe that Bruce Gordon should have bought 10 instead, and that regional television could have been the better for it

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