… er the real truth is that Murdoch outbid the Sydney stations for US product because they had purchased Australian rights and were refusing to on-sell any of it to WIN 4 to try to drive them off the air because it was the Sydney stations who had tried to stop WIN (and NBN) from being established in the first place because they saw them as being competitors that would take some of the audience that they (wrongly) believed was rightfully theirs. If Murdoch had not done so, WIN (and probably NBN) would have gone broke and off the air.
While a 1978 guide may show a lack of local content, when I was programming WIN 4 we had a local weekly Tonight Show, a local weekday afternoon kids program, local weekday evening hostings and community announcements, a local weekday news, local movie hostings by Bill Collins and regular other local programming like The Gong Show … in addition, “localism” as I defined in our submission to the Jim Oswin enquiry also included local program promos and, very importantly, local advertising for local retailers … none of which was done to “chase a Sydney audience” …
You mentioned earlier (or perhaps in another thread) that people had placed calls saying they preferred receiving Sydney channels because they didn’t want to see local ads. How was the wide range of local programming regarded by residents at the time? Were people appreciative of the fact they had a local alternative they could watch, or did you find yourself having to justify WIN’s existence to people in Wollongong who wanted to tune in to the Sydney stations?
… interesting and valid question … what you refer to was a review into diary ratings where we discovered that one lady had watched the afternoon soaps on 9 rather than WIN because of her claim that it was “better quality” which, after further review, meant that she preferred the Sydney commercials … yes, it was often a toss-up between Sydney and local … for example, when we put a local Tonight Show on Monday nights, we got complaints that we had removed Don Lane … but equally, when we started running the full day of Sydney cricket when TCN was only allowed to play the first two hours, we had people falling over themselves to congratulate us and calls from southern Sydney households, pubs and clubs wanting to know how they could tune in … the saying “you can’t please all the people all of the time” applies particularly to programming a television station … again with the local kids show Ace and The Gong Show which gave local people the opportunity to appear or be in the studio audience, those things mattered to the people involved and their friends and families which can’t be replaced by taking a network program and we were always oversubscribed by people wanting to join in … so the answer is some people appreciated having a local station, others preferred to watch Sydney and this was demonstrated by a survey conducted by DoTaC when aggregation was first suggested that claimed that 93% of regional viewers would prefer to have the three networks rather than a single local station … unfortunately the survey didn’t mention that localism would disappear so we only have the later reactions of dismay and disappointment from local audiences to give us some indication that they missed us …
My childhood family home was located on a hill that overlooked the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of Lake Illawarra from where we received fortuitous reception of the Sydney stations. I went to school with kids who lived in low lying areas where they could only receive the local ABC 5A channel and WIN4. We’d get a lot of interference and it wasn’t uncommon for Dad to be around the side of the house twisting the antenna mast to improve the reception. I could get passable, though very snowy, Sydney reception on an old black and white set in my room.
Our household preferred the Sydney stations but we appreciated the value of the local channel in our lives. If Dad was home at 6pm he’d insist on watching the local news because it was a reliable source of information about what was happening at the steelworks. Retrenchments and industrial disputes were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. There were weeks where the family didn’t have an income and were desperately hanging on for news of when work would resume. The kids would watch Seven’s American sitcoms or The Young Doctors on Nine if dad wasn’t home. We’d always be excited if the local kids show, Bernard King or Joe The Gadget Man was holding a promotional event at the biggest shopping centre in the area (Warrawong) and want to be involved. I was even in a story on Steve Jacobs’ Kids News show in the mid 1980s.
It was handy to have another option for movies on a Friday and Saturday night or to watch shows time shifted if you missed them on Sydney channels but Mum would always watch Mike Walsh and the daytime soaps on Nine and you’d usually get to see the best shows first via Seven, Nine or Ten if WIN4 didn’t simulcast them.
The NRN11 video someone posted a few weeks ago reminded me of just how much local content and engagement was lost through aggregation.
It’s interesting what you both say about how the loss of the local service to aggregation has affected the community. I grew up in the post-aggregation Illawarra in the 90s, and could never put my finger on why WIN was so highly regarded when I was growing up. In hindsight, I thought it was solely due to the strong programming lineup that WIN was broadcasting from Nine at the time. But I think you’ve pointed to something else here, specifically the legacy that WIN had built for itself in the days prior to aggregation.
I would contend that most of that hard work has been eroded, especially since the affiliation swap and through the usual generational change, which is a shame. Mary Franks, Geoff Phillips and Nathan Wood were absolute powerhouses in the community when they were on the air, and I just don’t see the same sort of regard with the current crop of WIN News personalities.
My parents sold it to build a bigger house in the late 1980s for about $80,000. Wish they’d extended or hung onto it. It’s worth north of a million dollars now.
They gave massive support to local community initiatives and local sport comps. Basketball was huge in the Illawarra in the 1980s because of the coverage WIN gave the Illawarra Hawks. They were always at the Snakepit televising games. Players became local celebrities. This was the era before people had easy access to American basketball and the sport was considered so niche it barely got any coverage in metro media.
… then Prime bought the rights in 1988 for the launch of aggregation … I spent many of my evenings together with Paul Ramsay in the Snakepit watching our crew in action
… no, not really … the article starts with the words “The Wollongong television station WIN-4 is unlikely to proceed with plans to beam top-rated American programmes to Sydney” … the “real truth” was told to me by Bill Lean who Murdoch moved to Wollongong to be MD of WIN and who conducted the negotiations on his behalf … and from an interview on the ABC? … a bit of sabre-rattling and sticking his tongue out at the Sydney commercial stations by Murdoch I suspect …
My point on this is that WIN-4 has not always been focused on “Suburban Wollongong” as you noted - and even if there were a few local shows produced over the years (as with many local stations at the time), the station has always been very aware of its Sydney audience.
Its ability to broadcast cricket when TCN cannot has already been mentioned here.
Rupert was successful (for a time) in outbidding Sydney stations for top rating US shows.
My dad grew up in Marrickville in the 1960s and my mother in Bega. They both watched Channel 4. Neither were in suburban Wollongong.
… you can’t seem to grasp why he did that so I’ll have to explain it again … the two Sydney stations objected to licences being established in Wollongong and Newcastle because they felt that such licences would encroach on “their” territory … the licences were established anyway and the Sydney stations got together, bought all-Australian rights to US programs and refused to sell them to WIN … WIN was to the point of only having a few hours of content on the shelf and were about to go under when Murdoch rode in on his white steed, bought the station, supplied it with local programming from his other station, NWS 9 in Adelaide as an interim measure and then went and outbid the Sydney stations for all-Australian rights and did exactly as they had done and refused to sell them any content … the Sydney stations at first baulked and refused to deal, so Murdoch taunted them by saying that if they wouldn’t buy the product from him, he would instead beam the programs into Sydney in competition … as everyone knows, it was a nonsense threat because the WIN 4 licence wouldn’t allow it to happen, but it caught the imagination of some journalists and members of the public and the Sydney stations were ultimately forced into buying the product from Murdoch … the resulting agreement was that the Sydney stations would only buy capital city rights and a consortium of regional stations, first under the name ATF (Australian Television Facilities) and then RTA (Regional Television Australia) would buy the regional rights … this is what happened from then right up until aggregation … the idea of WIN 4 actually competing with Sydney channels was a bit of nonsense, but it seems that some people still prefer to believe that rather than the truth… so be it … and as for the cricket, I was the program manager that did that … up until then, WIN had taken all of its programs off-air … when I joined the station I was very unhappy with that arrangement for a number of reasons including technical quality and the fact that we had to cover up supers and get around voiceovers … the cricket contract with 9 specified that the city where the match was played could only take the first two hours and, as WIN was taking off-air signals, it was forced into the same situation … I checked our contract with 9 against other regional stations and determined that there was nothing stopping us from taking the whole match, then asked our chief engineer if he could come up with a direct link solution and how much it would cost … having established the cost, I went to our national sales manager and asked him if he could cover it with additional revenue … his answer was hell yes … so I proceeded with full coverage of Sydney matches … I made the decision for the benefit of our local audience in Wollongong, Nowra, Bega and all the way down the coast and into the mountains and not because people in Marrickville could watch it too …
A polite request. Your post are generally quite informative, but could you try a little punctuation?
The lack of punctuation and the peculiar use of ellipses make for difficult reading of longer posts.
I grasp it very clearly, thank you. No need for the aggression.
I’m not disputing that Murdock bought up US shows as a big revenge FU to 7 and 9. However to suggest that he spent a fortune on TV rights and then in no way marketed WIN to Sydney viewers isn’t supported by the facts. There were no rules stopping Murdoch advertising Channel 4 in his Sydney newspaper the Daily Mirror (which he did).
I just don’t subscribe to your view that WIN has never NOT sold advertising nor adjusted its programming schedule knowing that Channel 4 was effectively competing with 7,9 and later 10.
Indeed CTC was mindful of overlap with RVN, given that half of Canberra could receive Wagga TV and the guides were published side-by-side in the Canberra Times.
I spent the first part of my life in Gerringong and I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have an aerial for Sydney TV. It would make complete sense to me that WIN would leverage Sydney viewers when they effectively had three commercial competitors beaming in to their own market. Apparently this never happened?
Perhaps it is true that WIN declined money from national advertisers who saw the potential in reaching Sydney during programming such as the cricket - but your evidence suggests the opposite. Unless your sales manager at the time had a geographically inaccurate coverage map in their proposals which redacted the Sydney suburbs that receive the main signal as clearly as Mollymook.
I’m not discounting your altruism in showing cricket for the residents of Bega - but I am suggesting that was paid for by advertisers and audiences further north.
it’s probably then no coincidence that the Sydney edition of TV Week (then owned by Murdoch IIRC) used to carry Wollongong TV listings on the same pages as the Sydney channels, and include ads for WIN4 (and The Australian)
… the “fortune” was recouped by then selling those rights to the metros and other regional stations … and of course WIN was advertised in the Sydney newspapers … they did circulate in Wollongong and the south coast as well …
… of course the programming schedule was “adjusted” to take account of what Sydney was running, I would have to be an idiot not to do so, but we didn’t have salespeople based in Sydney flogging advertising time to Sydney advertisers because of the overlap …
… what may make “complete sense” to someone who wasn’t involved in running a television station doesn’t necessarily make sense to someone who was …
… we never “declined money” from a national advertiser for any reason - again we’re not stupid - the map in the sales brochures of the time reflected the map defined by the ABCB as being our coverage area …
… it was paid for by national and local advertisers who took advantage of a prime time extended coverage that had not been available to them before … how you manage to include “audiences” paying for it eludes me …
I hope you now understand, or if you don’t, can just accept that your view doesn’t equate with the reality …
This would have been an expensive way to promote the station if there was no intention to influence Sydney readers. Plenty of South Coast media (outdoor, radio and local papers) would have been more economical. But interesting if that’s the way WIN did it. SMH and the Tele were widely read in Canberra when I was at CTC, but we would never have commanded the budget to advertise there.
I totally accept this, what I am getting at is Rupert was playing a game of blink with TCN & ATN. He has stated and the history shows his intention and early actions were to make 4 an effective Sydney competitor to force the hand of the big stations. It wasn’t until he actually did it that 7 & 9 took him seriously.
That’s what a number of us were getting at.
You didn’t have anyone responsible for national sales? Interesting.
So you took national ads - but how? If you didn’t have a rep responsible? We had national sales reps at CTC and Cap Net and 7 affiliate sales for CBN.
My first job was at CTC, then Capital Radio Network, then CBN Canberra. Now consult for ITN.
Ok, interesting. No radial schematics then. Is that how it was done in 1963?
As an aside, when I was working at GN/Eagle, we had a sizeable audience in Bateman’s Bay. To the point that management investigated having a permanent rep down there. In the end, they settled for a periodic ‘visit’ from the Goulburn reps.
Our transmitter for Eagle was a second hand bit of junk from Austereo (I think, but can’t be sure it was from Triple M). When it would regularly go down and divert to low power standby, the first complaint calls we got were from the Bay.
In media buying, we talk about ‘buying against an audience’. You can’t sell airtime without an audience - we tried at CTC and it didn’t work which is why the local news was ditched in 01.
