“No magic pill” for regional broadcasters | TV Tonight
Continuing the discussion from Nine News Local:
While I don’t believe in necessarily having one broadcaster in regional markets (which would be a monopoly), I think having two would be a sound initiative as part of media reform package to remove the past its used-by-date voices test. The top two affiliations get the cream of the dollars. The third affiliation is then either provided by one of the affiliates, or they can install a jointly-owned station.
Ten would be the loser but again, their content mostly just doesn’t work to achieve 40+%. I would expect their affiliation to drop to around 20-25%. If Ten wants a top affiliation, they need to shape up.
The plan would have seen WIN buy Prime then become the Seven affiliate in RQLD, NNSW, SNSW, and VIC, then re-negotiate a lower affiliation with Ten to provide that content on the secondary station. WIN and Prime’s news divisions merge to produce at least 17 bulletins. Southern Cross continues its Nine affiliation, if it isn’t happy with Nine, it has the option of trying to negotiate a better deal with Ten, likewise with WIN. The one left at the alter gets stuck on the secondary agreement - and this is why you won’t get agreement from the metro networks for the plan.
Obviously it is too late now with the recent affiliation changes made, but government have been too slow as always to fix the vacuum of money being flushed out.