Sounds about right.
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GOLD 2? Where is that on air?
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Was broadcast from ~2013-2016, before briefly making way from Extra shortly before the affiliation swap.
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I wonder whether the news service is a sticking point
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10 will surely be looking for more than 40%, their network has dramatically increased share and their owners aren’t known for being soft touches with affiliates. WIN would also be out of options if 9 remains with SCA so 10 could play hardball.
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Im not sure. I know the 35% win pays now was up on the 30% SCA paid. Yes, 10 is the only network to have grown in 2020
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I disagree with this part. SCA may want it a bit cheaper, but will be largely happy with the status quo given the alternative.
This is key. Nine got burned by the news part of the deal, evidenced by the lack of effort they out in and the cuts they made. Nine will want a deal without news (which they get from WIN) or an even higher cut for producing the news. That would likely be why negotiations have failed so far.
SCA need Nine to produce news. They can’t do it themselves without huge investment - with their only TV news being ileum out of Tasmania they don’t even have the facilities to go back to doing noodle updates for every market now - and more importantly they don’t want the hassle. But they also don’t want to pay more.
Nine on the other hand don’t want the current arrangement. They can produce it, but it costs a lot so they’re probably currently doing worse than the previous WIN deal once the costs of news come out - so they need a bigger cut if they’re going to fork out for news that’s not really their responsibility. They’d also be happy to completely drop news in exchange for a slightly lower cut.
My prediction: SCA have the most to lose because of the inconvenience of producing news. Ten have demonstrated their interest in news is low so they’re unlikely to agree to produce it if they were to do a deal with SCA - so SCA will end up agreeing to pay Nine a little more - maybe 55% - to continue their current setup.
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Aren’t WIN and SCA screwed here anyway regardless of who they affiliate with?
Stan and possibly Paramount+ (and you could argue 9Now and 10Play) are just going to get bigger and bigger and take over more and more regional eyeballs cutting out WIN and SCA in terms of advertising and subscription revenue.
Nine and Ten want the affiliations due to the 35-50% revenue they bring from their regional partners but surely this will be less and less as each year brings.
WIN doesn’t seem to have any digital strategy apart from putting some local news stories on Facebook and Twitter. SCA seem to do OK promoting their radio but literally have no interest in TV.
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Yes. Perhaps SCA should be offering to sell their Nine-affiliated stations to Nine and Nine should buy them.
If Nine don’t want to buy, which they don’t, that suggests they want to have their cake & eat it too.
The current arrangement seemed really good to Nine, but of course TV audiences & revenue are down.
Perhaps if they could ensure a struggling SCA wouldn’t (again?) be tempted to downplay the TV part of any radio-and-TV advertising sales, they would most likely renew?
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That’s why Nine can’t justify a 50% share
Nine can justify whatever SCA or WIN is prepared to pay
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there are legendary stories about creative accounting with WIN to keep affiliate fees away from NINE, none that i will mention here in fear of being sued. i don’t think NINE has a short memory, and im sure the former WIN staff that pepper the SCA staff lists now would be reminding the network of those tales. I cant see it happening and will be shocked if it does.
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i agree with some points apart from the fact that NINE now have cameras and staff they can dictate to to go anywhere anytime to get pictures for their metro newsrooms based in regional areas, all over regional Australia. The relevant COS in each metro newsroom love the option of regional cameras, SEVEN and TEN don’t have those options without first asking their affiliates to get them to go and then sometimes they just don’t go. I know the 9 local staff don’t get paid overtime from the local budgets and with the Illawarra as an example, Sydney send crews out daily to do pickups for the Sydney metro, plus Today show crosses into regional markets. It may seem small but i know its a big deal for the metro newsrooms
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Nine got burned by the news part of the deal
Nine on the other hand don’t want the current arrangement.
They’d also be happy to completely drop news in exchange for a slightly lower cut.
There’s so many assumptions being presented as facts. We are all speculating here.
We will never know for sure, but I’m not quite sure how Nine would have “got burnt” by the news part of the deal. They would have run budgets and known how much news would cost them, and set the affiliation % rate accordingly. I’m not sure how anything would have come out of the blue for them with regards to news costs. I’m speculating, but I feel they would have budgeted the news, passed that cost onto SCA in the form on the % affiliate fee hike and also built some sort of profit margin in for themselves. Again, speculation - but tats how a business would tend to operate here.
My educated guess is Nine wants to retain the 50%, SCA wants to drop it and Nine are using tactics such as reports in Nine owned newspapers to help bump SCA along to signing the deal they want. And again, what company would not do that.
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100% Correct.
Stan, Paramount +, 9Now, 7+, 10Play - they are all day by day making the affiliates obsolete.
The same is true in the US. The huge difference is stations in the US have the massive cash cow that is local news, which just keeps on giving in terms of revenue on air and online.
But affiliates HATE the likes of Peacock (NBC) Paramount + (CBS) Disney + (ABC) as more and more of their viewers are leaving local stations to watch the parent networks streaming platforms for the same content that used to be exclusive to them
Selling your ads in other peoples content (the business that WIN, Prime7 and SCA are all in) is a rapidly declining business.
Yet year after year, they do nothing to try new revenue streams.
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If their budget was so good they wouldn’t have had to close their regional new rooms entirely for nearly half a year and then bring back the regional bulletins in a reduced capacity.
Five years is a long time. TV revenue has dropped and therefore so has Nine’s cut.
If Ten want a higher cut of revenue as is widely claimed as fact here, there’s no way Nine will be happy with the same cut of what is now a lower total revenue.
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That wasn’t being burnt by the news deal
That was being burnt by the sharp downtown in ad revenue
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No ones claimed fact. Speculation.
10 is the only network to have grown - and knowing WIN may be left with no partner when the music stops perhaps 10
Feels it can squeeze more out of WIN
I’m not sure Nine would be gunning for more than 50%, it would be ambitious. Nine knows the ad market as well as SCA
Nine’s own ad markets have also suffered a drop in revenue. I’m not sure Nine could go to SCA and ask for MORE of their revenue even though it is less
Anything is possible - but that ask wouldn’t make sense to me and Nine objectively possibly knows that’s a huge ask or a partner
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Well 50% doesn’t make sense, SCA were lucky to get news without an additional bump as Nine originally wanted 50% without even the thought of producing the news for the affiliate. That idea had been in their heads for a decade.
The news is quite a cost, as Nine have now realised.
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It never made sense to people other than Nine. SCA got fleeced. If WIN agrees to 50%, they’ll fall into the same trap.
I’m surprised Bruce hasn’t tried to get a pool of investors and use his existing shareholding as a launching pad for a full takeover of NEC and merge WIN into that.
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