Ultimately it all goes to Seven West Media - SWM reports their financials as a consolidated entity, but the reality is that it’s a series of separate companies with shared ownership. These companies may also have complicated financial relationships with each other for tax or other accounting efficiency purposes, they quite possibly make inter-company payments for the provision of shared services (things like Payroll, IT, engineering etc) as well
Its in fact these separate companies that hold the broadcast licences - there are consequences (ie licence triggers) from changing the company that holds the licence - if you deep dive into ACMA’s ownership database you can see what company owns what licence (and subsequently what companies exercise control over that company) - in Seven’s case, each licence area they operate in has an individual company to hold the licence
Because SWM report a consolidated set of financials, we can see how much they’re paid in affiliate fees but no details as to whether that’s from external only entities (ie Prime (to now) and SCA) or both internal and external - for the financial year ending 2021, that figure was $91.3million. This also extends to things like ad revenue - a single number is reported, but it could be multiple companies who that revenue is being paid to
Internally they are. And I think you will find that for tax reasons, the same applies to BTQ, ATN, HSV, SAS and TVW as they are still listed as separate accounting entities and the holder of each separate broadcast licence. The parent company if I am not wrong being SNOL, Seven Network Operations Limited.
Where in my suggestion does it say remove advertising?
It would be a local window that is inserted either between first and second ad break or second and third ad break. I wouldnt do it at the start of the bulletin because thats the biggest news story of the day and intros would have to be re-filmed for the regional markets.
The presented of the 4pm and 6pm bulletins doing the intros mean not much tampering with what they have now and if it doesnt work there is no messing viewing around.
You say its unprecedented? How is it any different to regionals such as NBN TV or Southern Cross TV in NSW, Vic and QLD when they were a Nine affiliate inserting pre-recorded windows into the news hour?
In the Prime case, assets owned by PRT Company Limited as it is now known, will transfer and most likely pay affiliation fees to Seven as a business cost. They would also be liable for 50 percent of the affiliation fees for any joint ventures eg WA regional market etc.
Then being 100 per cent owned by Seven West Media would then transferred any balance to the SWM balance sheet as a profit (or loss).
The same would then apply to Seven Group Holdings which has an interest in SWM.
Ultimately Seven is owner and operator of the network, but its like any businesses with multiple divisions, they can be operated under the one board but have multiple sections. Imagine if Wesfarmers or Woolworths put all income under the one balance sheet instead of separate balance sheets where they assign profits and losses. Its easier to identify weaknesses in the business and easier to prove profits and losses to interested parties eg ATO, ASIC, shareholders etc
I don’t think Local news is a cash cow, but increasing your ratings share in primetime certainly leads to increased revenue. It’s about the whole night not just 6pm.
Guess what the highest rating station 6pm - midnight that Seven owns? It’s 7 Queensland. (#2 is 7 Perth) and guess what is the highest rating station 6pm - midnight that Nine owns? It’s NBN Northern NSW.
And what do these two stations have in common? A strong 6pm news that flows on and boosts the entire night.
Prime7 Northern NSW is the lowest rated station Seven owns in the entire network. By a considerable margin. Yet advertising market size is on par with Adelaide.
Nothing is sure, that’s a certainty. But I think Seven will be looking at the lowest rated station in the entire network in a market bigger than Adelaide and thinking about ways to boost that revenue - and then looking at the stations that do perform. 7 QLD, 7 Perth, 7 Tasmania
Remember 7 QLD kept adding bulletins over the year - adding toowoomba a few years ago - and growing to 7 bulletins.
PRT Company has no business or relationship with Seven or the Prime business anymore, outside any further items still required as part of last month’s transaction. Note Seven was a shareholder of the entity now called PRT Company.
“Affiliation fees” implies they are an independent broadcaster that is paying for program supply from a network. If they’re owned by the network, they don’t need to pay for program supply.
Like @WAtvVideos said, it might be a percentage of sales or revenue that all stations pay to their respective network, but “affiliation fees” is not the word for it.
The fees that SWM charge their own entities won’t be shown on their annual report under a meaningful description so you won’t know if entities charge one another for programming supply we are just making an assumption that is what they are doing.
I cannot see Seven doing a Local News half hour in Newcastle, Wollongong and Canberra any time soon and would be the most sensible way to provide continuity. As it was pointed out earlier, people wont sit down for up to 90 minutes of news. If someone say is watching Seven News with Mark Ferguson presenting, goes away from the TV for a few minutes and then see Daniel Gibson presenting the news, they may switch to another channel if they think Seven News is over and go to watch another program
The most sensible way to provide continuity would be to change nothing. Keep the bulletins in tact and continue to provide noodle updates.
If you are going to go to the effort of recording and producing stories, having the presenters pre-record intros, adjust how the bulletins are structured to allow for an opt-out and rejoin for some parts of the state and not others, and have someone ready to switch out, why wouldn’t you just produce a half-hour bulletin? It seems like a lot of hassle when there is a perfectly logical solution already being used in other areas.