And also who’s to say Paramount and the other stations haven’t worked out yet to be announced tax concessions with the Governemnt either which is likely more palatable than the govt giving grants for the infrastructure etc.
I was thinking about this too…
In canada the govt is demanding Netflix pay to save canadian loacl tv news - which is pretty whack.
What would be an incentive actually - is if networks / station groups did not have to pay tax on revenues booked in local news. And if there was tax rebates on local news like we give to the Americans to come make movies here.
If we give tax breaks of 30% to Sony, Disney and Universal to encourage them to make movies here. Why cant we give tax breaks to Seven, SCA and WIN to encourage them to make more local news?
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Make local news a licence requirement and slash/remove any licencing taxes.
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No point forcing something on license holders which clearly the economics can’t support. You’ll have more stations like 10 Mildura going back
Then everyone looses.
Forcing cost prohibitive regulations onto companies is not the way to grow or foster investment. Tax incentives are.
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Sorry I didn’t mean hyper local markets more like a regional news updates or an opt out to large zones like Western Victoria, and obviously capital city news. So they have to provide some sort of local news service as a license requirement. I’m all in favour of state based licenses anyway.
Any license holder than doesn’t have to pay any taxes or fees to broadcast a signal but rather provide that service which they are mostly doing already.
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Culling huge swathes of terrestrial audience numbers (the WIN/SCA markets are still covering millions of people) and directing them to 10Play is going to see a lot of people just not bothering and viewer numbers will take a dive which is not going to help secure or maintain advertisers or things like sports rights. Despite Mildura, I don’t think the broader market is ready for a wholesale switching off of terrestrial services just yet.
Also, I am not a tech person, so someone might be able to clarify this. But to direct large audience numbers (i.e. millions) to 10Play, does Ten have the IT infrastructure to handle such a migration? No point directing millions of people to 10Play if it can’t support a mass migration and only going to crash.
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That is an issue they’d love to have and would absolutely be able to solve. The bigger issue is that they’re now competing with every digital service, not just other FTA networks.
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This is somewhat a simplification of the issue - Canada wants non-Canadian broadcaster streamers to pay into a fund that will be split into a number of streams to support the production of local content (especially French, Indigenous, and Black content), one of those streams is local news.
I’m not quite sure how this is a bad thing - streamers shouldn’t get a free run.
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Streamers like D+, Netflix and Prime are NOT in the news business - anywhere the world. It’s not their business model.
They should not be forced by govt into funding a commercially unviable industry such as local news - a space in which they don’t operate.
They should absolutely invest in canadian drama, series, docs, movies and reality as that is what their business is.
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I think if the longer term plan of Paramount/Skydance was to later sell its Australian network, it needs to make that offer compelling. If it only has 5 stations with the potential for affiliates to walk away, it doesn’t make it as strong a deal as selling a national audience.
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With SCA soon to sell its TV assets to Paramount Global. this could reunite the Canberra based SCA TV station CTC with Network 10, as the network owned the station (under Northern Star) from 1987 until 1989.
See: 28 Oct 1989 - Westfield backs Curran's TV takeover - Trove and 08 Aug 1987 - Business and investment Dust finally settles after TV shake-out - Trove
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That’s not been announced as part of their plan.
Paramount chiefs have always sighted Australia as a significant and important market for them
There has been talk however of P+ becoming only a US domestic player and exiting global markets altogether
Chatter. Nothing confirmed
If that is the case, why hasn’t SCA been able sell their SCA TEN TV assets? You assume there are actual buyers out there, even at near rock bottom prices?
Some of the other network multi-channels generate on some occasions larger audiences then the whole combined main channel and multi-channel TEN audiences.
Both SCA and WIN know what is coming ever-dwindling revenue wise and are trying to sell these assets while they seemingly still can.
When did I say there are buyers out there for sca’s tv stations?
No one wants them. I’m surprised 10 does tbh
When has that happened?
Are you saying there has been nights when 9GEM > 10/Bold/Peach/Nick for example?
When?
The flipside is they are sitting on those licenses in time to be the one to sell them back to the Government to do a second digital dividend, the issue is just being able to hold onto them for that time.
Ten themselves would be basically the only owner who could find significant enough efficiencies in broadcasting a regional Ten to make it worth it. It seems like they will be doing so for a nominal expense, which would already be somewhat offset by taking 100% of regional revenue rather than ~35%.
The only other buyer I could think of in television outside the metro networks is if Imparja tried to make a play. They are losing money as is, but scale might help them.
Everything pointed at SCA trying to sell their television division, not just the Ten stations, something I’m certain there is no buyer for, given how much the Ten affiliates weigh down the overall. This is seemingly the first time they’ve hinted at splitting it up.
It most commonly happens in regional WA when AFL on 7mate beats everything, even Nine. But those shares are upside down a lot of the time - 10 Bold beats 10 in some survey weeks, so it’s hard to believe. Review the regional tam Weekly Shares…
If as the report suggests the Ten regional stations come at a nominal cost, and most/all stations are running at a marginal profit, then it’s probably worth Ten’s while to do a deal.
WIN throwing NRN in for a small cost would no doubt make it all the sweeter.
Be interesting to see if SCA holds on to 7Tas and GTS/BKN given their affiliation with 7, and 7Tas likely being on the only truly profitable part of the network. I’m sure 7 would like to do a deal for 7Tas if the price is right.
And they’re not required to - what they are required to is to pay into a fund that will be used to fund Canadian Content
This isn’t a particularly revolutionary funding model - it’s used by governments in a range of other areas of society.
I know what the proposed law is.
Canada is asking entertainment companies to subsidise their local news as it’s dying.
Netflix is in the entertainment business, not the news business.
Important to note Netflix, Paramount etc support paying into the funds for Canadian drama and also indigenous and black content.
Just not local news.