The only ‘Ayers Rock’ in Prime’s broadcast area burnt down a couple of weeks ago. 
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And of course Ayr, near Townsville.
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Prime Media yesterday revealed a $12.28 million net loss after tax for the financial year ending June 30, after posting a $56 million profit in the previous period. EBITDA for the group was $45.2 million, down 29.5% from last year’s $64.1 million, while revenues fell 8.7% to $238.3 million.
^^^
Prime’s 50% share of Nine Mildura and Nine WA made a profit of $400,000 up from $280,000 the previous year, though that was calculated to break even, it appears, with value of the licences being written down. Nine Mildura does appear to be worth nothing.
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Mildura should just be turned into a permanent solus market, like Griffith and the two SA markets. Its population is comparable to those markets (when counting GTS/BKN and SES/RTS as four separate stations per their license areas) and its revenue would likely more valuable to a single owner than two split owners.
Prime Media heading down the same road as Ten.
Prime has 1 of 2 options to turn things around. Either reduce operating costs, possibly axing local news services OR negotiating for more advertorial content - perhaps replacing The Chase UK with infomercials on the main channel (or maybe some of the encores of secondary channels) - otherwise Prime might be on the verge of extinction.
The only organisation that may benefit from this is WIN Television who may try and claim the Seven affiliation
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so how like win provides both 9 and 7???
If Nine, Seven and Ten was their presence in areas such as Mildura, those metro stations should either take control of the respective stations or supply programming for free
Thats under 7QLD viewing area, not Prime7
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Exactly! So, for example, Prime7 and WIN come to an agreement for WIN to sell STV and their stake in the JV to Prime7 (or vice versa), ACMA does whatever it does to legislate a re-licensing of the region to create a solus market, and then Prime7 and WIN formalise a sale. End result, Mildura become a solus market under Prime7 or WIN only.
What would be the incentive for the networks to purchase the smaller stations, unless they bought out their affiliates in full? And while free programming would make things easier for the affiliate, it’s an impossibility.
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I highly doubt that Seven would let Prime7/GWN7 go completely under.
Don’t they already replace Seven’s late night/early morning programing (including the airing of an infomercial in place of Seven’s Early News at 5am) with infomercials AND have their own infomercial channel in the form of iShop TV?
If they need more revenue from informercials, I reckon Prime7/GWN7 would schedule them in off-peak timeslots on the multichannels.
WIN still have a bit under three years to go with their current program supply agreement with Network Ten, but Prime Media’s current agreement with Seven is for five years from July 1 this year.
Can’t really see any affiliation switches (maybe a very small chance that the WIN/SCA swap of July 2016 could be reversed in July 2021, but that’s about it) happening in the foreseeable future since most of these agreements probably refer to terms like “exclusive rights to broadcast Seven/Nine/Ten content” within major regional TV markets.
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I think the only way it could become a solid market is if Prime or WIN buys the other out and the appropriate LAP etc got changed.
Prime already airs the most infomercial content of any channel in the country. 5 hours overnight every night.
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Even discounted rates would be better for smaller areas. Its ok to say the networks are free to charge what they want, but if networks like Prime operate at a loss, it could very well end up in the same situation as Ten was 18 months ago, with a mountain of debt and the possibility of extinction - what happens if all non-metro owned stations go into bankruptcy ?
Not necessarily off-peak times, perhaps 8:30am to 9:30am weekdays on 7Two, 10:00am-11:00am on 7Mate weekdays and possibly 10:30am-midday or 3:00pm to 4:00pm weekdays on 7Flix could be times to explore for infomercials on secondary platforms
Mainly because Prime and WIN want it that way. Because all profits from Nine are split 50/50, it’s in their best interest to focus on directing advertisers to their main channels, and structures buys so that the revenue never goes near the books for the Nine licence.
The licences to broadcast will exist, so the existing regional broadcaster(s) will go under, the their assets (including the licences) will become available for anyone (including the metro networks) to buy at fire sale prices. It actually makes it better for the networks to keep increasing their affiliate fees…
Why? What do the networks get out of that?
Higher affiliate fees make them more money. By increasing the affiliate percentage, the regional licencess have to work harder to increase their revenue in order to cover their costs, and the metro networks then benefit two-fold from getting a larger cut of higher revenues.
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WIN will have to be patient. Haven’t Seven and Prime just agreed on a new contract?
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Literally!
I wonder if soon we see a Seven dirty feed coming through on Prime the same as SCA7 to save bucks. It will be kind of a sad day when that happens I love the Prime7 duel branding but I wonder for how long if they can save a dollar… And it would be sad for the current staff they have!
Personally, I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see that happen sometime in the next year or so.
Let’s be realistic here, what’s better for viewers: Making sure the Prime7 logo is still seen on-screen or ensuring that regional news bulletins are still produced?
As much as I’d personally prefer it if regional networks could maintain their own identity, I think we’re now at the point that it’s more important that local news services are kept on the air rather than unique TV brands because if we’re being honest, it was never really the same after Prime Television became Prime7 (and the same deal with GWN becoming GWN7) anyway.
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Coincidentally, around the same time that Prime became Prime7, the production of local news bulletins in Orange, Wagga & Albury shifted to Canberra, meaning that they no longer had a point-of-difference to WIN, by which Prime’s bulletins were locally produced as opposed to WIN’s bulletins being produced in Wollongong (Ballarat in Albury’s case, until it too shifted to Wollongong in 2016).
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