The licence areas remain different so that won’t be happening and their SL numbers will be different too.
WIN only own C91.3 and i98. They lost no station to SCA.
SCA had an initial proposal to swap NRN for i98 and less total sale price but thankfully WIN rejected that and i98 wasn’t gobbled up by SCA and doesn’t have a scrap of networked programming.
Exactly, @Aurora gets it, pity some others didn’t here.
Good god, you must be the clear leading candidate for most bizarre, irritating and false contributions to Mediaspy for 2025 and perhaps the entire previous decade.
No one need pay any respect to SCA or predecessor SCB for the cuts over decades they made to local staff and local news bulletins. They have been disgraceful custodians of these TV licences and I and many will be glad to see the back of such inexperienced and inept people.
This is why I usually stick to the radio/print/online sub forum, TV appears to be a magnet for absolute rubbish opinions, ill informed/uneducated speculation and generally content better left not typed and published. Save your keystrokes and brush up on history.
Thankfully a handful here have a brain to the realities.
Presumably the 10 sale taken effect as of today, based on SCA’s half year announcement?
SCA is all about Audio – the sale of the 3-Agg-Market TV Licences to Network 10 has satisfied all regulatory conditions and will complete on 1 March 2025
Will there be a transition period where SCA maintains control until 10 can fully take over, like when WIN purchased NRN?
Hey, he’s stealing my bit.
Why would they revert to Southern Cross? That’s essentially the name of the business that has just sold their TV assets to ADH
Will there be a transition period where SCA maintains control until 10 can fully take over, like when WIN purchased NRN?
Sky News Regional and SBN will see out existing contracts, when they expire who knows? 10 metros don’t carry these channels, there may be a chance they will be all gone.
Yep, that’s what I’m referring to.
SCA don’t have any radio stations operating in the Illawarra/South Coast. The commercial radio stations broadcasting in the Illawarra/South Coast area are operated by ARN, and the closest SCA radio stations are in Sydney. Overtime, SCA offices in areas without a SCA radio station (particularly Wollongong, Ballarat, Darwin and the Spencer Gulf) may be transferred to Network 10, eliminating the need for SCA offices in those areas.
Not really the question I asked. What I meant was are SCA maintaining control over the day-to-day running of the stations such as advertising, news updates, etc until 10 is able to assume full responsibility? Or have those been transferred over today?
There was a 3-month transition period for NRN where WIN owned the station but SCA continued running the station, playout, making news updates, managing advertising, etc until full control and branding was transferred over to WIN.
I assume they would centralise it. They don’t really have the money to throw around.
I had thought about it but those SCA TV stations would have been nothing but trouble except for perhaps the TAS 7’s. The transmitters are all owned by BAI who are a monopoly in the regional areas and program supply is controlled by 7,9,WIN, 10 who are all not known for their ease of being dealt with.
$6M worth of commercial or residential property would be far less of a headache.
Right then, if you don’t wish to appreciate such tribute videos that I try to provide, then I’m done. You win. I’ve taken down the video.
I’m absolutely certain they will - which is what makes this a scary acquisition.
They are a company that only exists because their financial backers saw existing right leaning media, like 2GB and Sky News and thought they aren’t far enough to the right, and now will be in a position to potentially be a monopoly television media operator for ~150k households in regional SA and Broken Hill, plus operate the highest rating television service in Tasmania, and perhaps the only news service for the remote markets.
There being no money in normal TV means there’s no competition, so what’s left is having owners with deep enough pockets to run news operations to skew public opinion. This playbook took over US local news.
I would suggest the Southern Cross brand is still very strong in Tasmania, and if 7WM aren’t comfortable with their brand (especially news) being associated with potentially Newsmax, I would have thought Southern Cross is a brand worth considering…
Unless they have to I doubt there would be any changes to the name even though I would love to see the old Southern Cross logo on air.
The name southern cross won’t come back on TV. More than likely the 7 brand will be retained in Darwin, mount isa, Tasmania and other SA and remote areas
Most affiliation agreements give the metro “network” a share of the revenue (ie. Before expenses), the % left for the affiliate has to cover local staff, transmission etc.
There would be a similar transition period.
Today (assuming the deal has actually finalised) any assets and contracts will have transferred to 10. The main part of that is the licences are now owned by 10, and whatever staff are moving to 10 are now employed by 10. If any holding companies are included, the shares in those will have transferred to.
Any contracts will third parties may need additional time to transfer, such as the playout contracts with NPC, broadcast/tower contracts with BAI, Indara and any other tower owners they deal with, office leases for areas where SCA don’t have radio stations (Canberra, Wollongong, Ballarat, Sunshine Coast). If these were held by a holding company that has changed hands, then these have moved to 10 automatically. If the licences are moved to a new holding company owned by 10, there will be some work to do with the third parties to alter which company is on the contract. No doubt a lot of work has already gone into preparing those documents, but they won’t be able to be executed until at least today, but realistically more like Monday or even later if the third party drags their feet.
While in the transition phase, 10 won’t have the personnel setup to do everything (news is a great example - but also things where the roles were shared with radio staff like local sales). There will also be some contract (discussed above) which will take some time to fully transfer. For all that stuff, the sale agreement will have SCA provide that for a determined period (ie the transition period). Some things may be included in the sale contract and therefore have no additional cost, but others might be provided by SCA for a fee.
Unless there has been a late change, SCA told their results event this week that the sale was to close on March 1st
Not sure what the breakdown is with ADH but SCA office leases aren’t changing hands for the 10 stations - they’re retaining local sales teams, including in areas not served by radio AFAIK (e.g. Ballarat, NNSW)