Seven (Regional)

Still seeing Prime7 sponsor billboards too. There was no rebrand as at midnight. They still had Prime7 watermark during the infomercials.

I grew up watching Prime TV and their “This is Where we Live” id’s with each region having their own ids featuring local people. This started roughly in 1995 and continued until about 2000 it was a pity when the campaign stopped. I would have loved to be regularly travelling with a VCR so i could record the Ids in each region. Prime was the only station that did it with regular ids with jingles such as “personality plus” summertime Prime and others. Here are some from my collection.

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I agree. What is going on Seven?

The two articles that reported about the change stated that it’s a transition that begins on 6th June and will be completed in time for the Comm Games.

It is members of Media Spy that are assuming channel names will change today.

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Clearly 35-40% wasn’t agreeable to the networks, who seem to feel that their content really is worth more than that (in Seven’s case it seems worth it just to buy Prime and keep 100%)

The price of something is worth what people will pay for it

If you’re asking for someone to lower the price only out of the goodness of their heart it’s just not a good way to run a company

If Nine wasn’t worth 50% of a station’s revenue, then SCA wouldn’t have gladly paid that much when WIN wasn’t interested (and WIN would not have paid that much to get it back)

At some point (beyond 50% somewhere) then it really isn’t agreeable and the regionals can go buy content from someone else and make some of their own content (just like Bruce Gordon kept threatening to do for years with WIN).

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Why shouldn’t they? it’s their content and unlike television, they don’t need to buy someone’s television licence or sign a contract with Bruce Gordon to broadcast it online.

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My gut feeling is that we won’t see on screen changes until closer to the Commonwealth games judging by looking at Prime7/GWN7 TV guides.

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It’s arguable if Imparja is paying Nine anywhere near 50%, SCA paying Seven whatever they want for Darwin and Central Australia and all the solus and joint venture stations. It’s hard to pay anything if your station is making a loss.

All Seven has to do now is buy the Seven affiliated SCA stations and collect the small amounts from GTS/BKN, WIN SA and Griffith like they’re doing.

Because it ends up devaluing the strong partnership and revenue source they have with their affiliates on the ground?

I enjoyed it too.

When I first gained an interest in the media 2 years ago, I loved seeing how WIN, Imparja etc. branded themselves, and I always loved how they were different. When the affiliation deal between Nine and WIN was signed, I hoped WIN would still brand themselves differently, but unfortunately Nine mandated the Nine brand for WIN. In fact, the reason half of the regional affiliates are branded the same is due to Nine forcing them to use the Nine brand.

If the regional networks branded themselves as the metros when Aggregation happened, I don’t think Mediaspy would be as popular as it is now. The only thing I like about metro branding is that it means more channels, although that is only true for O&O. It will be a sad day today for regional media.

RIP Prime7 (1988-2022)

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as a kid on prime i remember binging it home to me prime tv from kindy to year4 as in Anzac day 2008 i moved from central coast to Sydney and in Sydney we have 7 Sydney hope the new branding starts tonight in 7 reginal prime 7 1988/2022 rip

Okay but what changes will be happening and what dates.? What changes have occurred today? Channel 7 needs to give us a clear plan.

Well clearly WIN tried to lean on that argument in their negotiations with Nine and it did not end well

The thing about revenue is that a station could keep 100% of its revenue and still make a loss.

The question is whether you would make more revenue having an affiliation partnership or less revenue (they could just as well program the station themselves with no affiliation agreement)

If you can’t make enough revenue to break even it’s not really the job of the networks to fix that (if they really can’t afford to pay it they threaten to walk and see if they would get a reduction)

They really don’t. Channel 7 doesn’t owe anyone anything

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Yes. It’s interesting to know if there’s regional Seven QLD/Prime7 individual sub market stations which make negative figures year after year. If Seven can’t make coin, then the SCA 10 stations really aren’t making anything (which I imagine is mostly radio bonus filler - buy $15k on radio ads and we’ll throw in tv commercial production and $5k worth of tv ads).

I suspect Nine, Seven and Ten want their programming in certain parts of Australia and are happy to accept less or no affiliation fees as a result.

Stations like Central Digital Television couldn’t generate enough content to sustain themselves unless they rebroadcast ICTV possibly.

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There has been no public announcement from Seven about their plans. The only reason we know today has been flagged as the date regional viewers will be migrated to the Seven brand is because somebody leaked an internal memo. On air changes that have occurred already would suggest Seven has been easing regional viewers into the removal of the Prime brand for some months.

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A clear plan for a rebrand? Yeah that won’t happen.

Everything will be aligned under the 7 brand by the time the Commonwealth Games kicks off. Given that’s not until the end of July, expect the Prime morphing into 7 campaign to continue this month, and they’ll likely pull the trigger EOFY.

I always wondered why Prime veered away from Seven’s on air presentation template after using it for years after aggregation started in southern NSW.

I had moved to Sydney when those “This is Where We Live” idents started and it used to annoy me to come home and see Prime’s variations when Seven was producing “The One to Watch” campaign with the Police’s “I’ll Be Watching You” and the brilliant TV Man idents. I still have a pathological hate for that “Streets of Your Town” song Prime overused for years. I get they were trying to add localism by adding local faces and scenery but they were so hokey.

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Maybe the changes will happen at 6pm tonight, bring 6th day of the 6th month on LCN 6?