I can’t speak for all the sites, but Prime’s original sites in Albury and Wagga were quite small in comparison to other TV stations and would not have been big to allow for the expansion required for network operations.
I also imagine that either way they would have had to build studios in Canberra to serve that market, so it would have made sense to build it a bit bigger and to be able to house network operations in a new purpose built building. It was probably also a consideration that it was the largest city in their broadcast region, which would help in terms of sales and finding staff willing to work there.
The communications infrastructure available in Canberra is also far superior to their other regional markets.
That said, when did things start getting centralised away from the individual markets? I’m not sure how much network operations would have been required back when aggregation happened, with individual markets still running their own studios and playout. But even if the decision to base the network in Canberra didn’t happen until after aggregation, the geography of Canberra would still have been favourable.
It was probably also a tick in Canberra’s favour being relatively central to their entire broadcast area, as well as being the same city as Southern Cross (or Capital as it was) with staff more easily able to be poached from the competition and more willing to move into the area.
Canberra went across this morning in the wee hours. Other markets might have gone too (I would expect the rest of Southern NSW) but I don’t know about that. At a glance it looks like Seven’s style of graphics have been adopted.
23 sec when I timed it in Canberra! I would expect the delay to reduce, but I can’t check right now.
In regards to questions about Canberra being the central playout facility, I believe this started in the late 90s/early 2000s. As I understand it, before taking over completely, Canberra took over some markets overnight, and provided the program feed to some of the smaller pres facilities around the network during the day/evening. The Canberra building was originally about half the size it is now, and was expanded in the early 2000s as part of centralisation.
This was also present
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/e/e6e701287642ad5a4e2251ffca36a4c909039fbc.jpg" width=“300” height=>
7mate using the Seven-type graphics (watermark is adjusted, but still old style):
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/b/b9754cbe78c969d14e830e0201d08676b12037dd.jpg" width=“300” height=><img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/e/e9b1cca8a183384a047fd2cd23deaf099c5689b9.jpg" width=“300” height=>
They were part of the package designed for Seven which were never used:
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/0/0b3ec92dd1975487c9e687eaa4285980b5f97498.jpg" width=“300” height=><img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/d/daaa44bc2166f7ff50c8e941a9fb37eccf5fd087.jpg" width=“300” height=>
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/4/491b23aa56bc0a7fa91566c57895b7b2ce4e5332.jpg" width=“300” height=><img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/7/772815d119a8371b5462ebd69e81aa52e77adc76.jpg" width=“300” height=><img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/6/6eefc4d28c69cbe90a1192366cfe31c5d9307f77.jpg" width=“300” height=>
Gold Coast is their largest sub-market but probably their least watched. Ironically the station had their own Presentation department on opening in 1992 but a few years later became switched out of Tamworth, then later Canberra. Production wise it was also the home of ‘The Prime Possum Show’ for many years so it could of been the network hub at one stage but Canberra won out.
It’s also worth noting that the Prime7 logo now goes to full-colour on classification-only supers on programs which also have a Prime7 bug (for example, the G super on The Chase, but not the PG super on The Morning Show) whereas it didn’t on the previous graphics package, but did on the one before that.
And the delay seems to be down to 10 sec. The afternoon news started at 16:00:10 today, compared to 16:00:23 yesterday. Given there is a slight delay in Seven’s own broadcast as well, this probably puts Prime about 5 - 6 sec behind metro markets.
Prime’s use of dark watermarks is stupid and I can see why we don’t normally come across them on broadcast TV. It will be even more obvious when they show a movie in its original aspect ratio.
I think there’s the potential for confusion from less media savy viewers with that new 7TWO via Prime7/GWN7 watermark whenever 4.3 programs are on!
As far as the PRGs are concerned, they’re a decent upgrade. Yes, the font is different to the metro version but I can live with that. It’s also good to see the end of that PRG/watermark with the squished logo on 7mate!
I just noticed that they’re using the incorrect font for the Now title, but the correct font for Next. Still, it’s the closest to a 7 designed PRG we’ve ever seen from Prime. Well done to all involved.
