The most ghastly (over) branding that was only ever relevant to Wollongong, thankful it is mostly gone.
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Prime and GWN have been using on air graphics that include “7” for 20 years now. I think the phasing out bit has already been complete. I doubt there is a viewer who is confused about which metro Grime belongs to - I mean Sunrise is pretty much called “Sunrise on Seven”.
One reason we’ll see less and less Grime on screen is that it takes time and resource to re-badge. Less of an issue with a news intro that only need updating once a year or less. But it becomes harder to justify having production teams re-branding just for the sake of it - I worked for the “Primatising” team so was part of that factory.
A commercial reason to have a single brand is for integrated ad sales and network promotions. If you’re talking print/online and streaming bundles - it’s just a bit messy when it’s not called one thing everywhere. Look at Safeway, Purity and Grace Brothers.
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Might not mean much, but I did see this on a website (MW) which I thought was interesting, still using the Prime branding:
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It’s interesting to see progressively more 7-branded promos on the main Prime7 channel as well. Metro promos have been on the multichannels for a while now, but I’m not sure if I saw any Prime7 promos on the main channel at all last night?
I wonder if they’re going for a hybrid approach in the short term and an eventual soft transition, rather than a hard cutover on a certain date?
That’s why I was surprised to see the Prime7 sponsor boards on the Winter Olympics. I’ve seen a couple of other sponsor billboards during non Olympics programming with just the Seven branding.
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Same, but these seem to be for metro advertisers. It’s like they’ve hastily removed Prime branded idents/promos that would normally cover these up. I still see Prime summer sponsors.
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This.
It’s an industry aimed ad, which takes you to the Inside7 website, which is aimed at national sales.
The ad is just saying that with these brands we reach 90% of Australia. Obviously national sales for Prime can go through 7 now. Prime is included because that’s the brand in use at the moment, regardless of how long it is here to stay.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Prime branding to stick around for a while yet. It still means something to the regional audiences and differentiates the regional operation to others. Keeping it in a format like the ad above shows more clearly that Prime is now part of Seven than getting rid of the brand and simply displaying a 7 logo.
I think they’ll wait until advertisers are used to going to 7 being the one stop for what used to be 7 + Prime and regional audiences are settled knowing that nothing drastic has happened to their TV. At that point it will be easy to gradually remove some of the Prime branding leaving the still familiar 7 behind.
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But it would be somewhat inconsistent if they keep the Prime7 brand as is, given they got rid of the Sunshine brand in QLD years ago. Otherwise, that should be branded as Sunshine Seven.
Relax buddy, it’ll happen. Just not yet.
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once primes wound up as a business then things will change
It’s already been explained to you. PRT has nothing to do with it anymore. Seven own 100% of the rights to Prime and can do whatever they want with it.
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Is sort of was branded Sunshine Television with a small 7 logo.
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Ah yes, I remember that now.
Shame Prime never did that with their dotted “i” … but I guess it would have needed to be quite big to be noticeable in comparison.
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It’s not an equal comparison to look at what management did in 1995 to what it does now. The Prime brand has been indelibly linked to Seven for over 30 years, it’s a very different situation to what they did when they took over Sunshine back then.
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A key benefit of 7’s acquisition of Prime Media was increased efficiency, and maintaining multiple brands clearly goes against that.
It’s only a matter of time until Prime7 & GWN7 become just 7.
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Agree. As for on air promos and Olympics, I would be very surprised if Prime is updating many new promos. It’s likely what is on air now was already in the can.
The only thing 7 really has to do is migrate the website and give the local journalists new microphones.
It would be weird if 7 Tas were more closely on brand than their own stations. So we’ll see I guess. My money is on promos trickling out and news brand being last.
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Now Prime7 news is on 7Plus, it does look out of place.
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Anyone who thinks the Prime brand will stay either doesn’t understand the need/desire of TV networks to have a national singular brand like competitors (Nine, 10, ABC, Binge, Foxtel, Stan, Amazon, Netflix etc)
Or it’s wishful thinking
The Prime brand will go. The question is when
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I agree I feel like it’ll either be kept just for the local news, or they’ll brand them as “7 News North Coast” etc.
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Briefly at least, while Christopher Skase owned both. Sunshine and 7 were separated for a few years after Qintex went bust, and they eventually replaced the Seven logo with a map of Queensland, until Seven mopped them up again mid-90s.
The Prime7 brand will probably last a little longer off than on-air… changing logos on TV is one thing, assuring those people in your markets that “you’re still a part of the community”… whatever that means anymore in an aggregated and multi-channel world… but talking more about event sponsorships and so on, particularly in their pre-aggregation markets - might take a little longer.
Ad sales… dunno if it matters to the locals, they’ve been talking with “Seven Affiliate Sales” for so long. National folks now realising that they can sell to the Prime regions in one buy, is again a different thing.
At least with having had a dual-brand for so long, it will be easier to wean the stragglers who don’t already call them “channel 7” these days off it.
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