Seven Regional

Stuff of nightmares right there :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth: :see_no_evil:
Got to love the quality of that costume… https://www.bigw.com.au/product/ansell-silverlined-pink-gloves-large/p/57706 :joy:

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Walking past Seven’s Bendigo office today and it still has the PRIME7 signage. Has it been updated elsewhere?

Highly unlikely

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Slow down friend. It’s gonna take a fair while for all to be updated. Even then, they may be waiting on whether they are relocating any bureaus or studios before spending money on new signage.

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This isnt particularly unusual - there will be a lot of duplication (possibly even triplication) that will have to be worked through - some will be reasonably easy to resolve, some will have to wait for the completion of contracts etc.

Seven may choose to retain some duplication - where there is little value in deduplicating, or where they want to operate Seven Regional separately to Seven

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I’ve always thought a heavy metal version of this (with the same video etc.) would be a fitting tribute.

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Nah, Coffs Harbour still has the Prime7 signage. Updating signage is probably not on the highest priority. There are some exceptions. SCA were very quick updating signage for the Hit/Triple M rebrands, as was 10 when they rebranded.

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I walked past Prime7 in Watson (Canberra) a few days ago and it still said Prime7 on the building

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I wonder when Seven will get around to removing the GWN7 name in WA? What’s the hold up?

Terrestrial:

GWN7 on DVB-T

Satellite:

GWN7 on VAST

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The provider on the program streams on VAST are still “GWN” too, even for the multichannels. Just a matter of updating their encoder settings.

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I think it may be due to 7Regional WA not using location names. However it would good to see this for example on LCN 6, with 3 variants for the different sub-markets:

6 7 Bunbury
6 7 North West
6 7 Kalgoorlie or 7 Albany

However, this is what I would like to see:

6 7 Bunbury (MPEG-2 HD)
60 7 Bunbury (simulcast of 6)
61 7 Bunbury (simulcast of 6)
62 7two
63 7mate
65 ishoptv
66 7flix
68 RACING. COM

Seven could do the same thing they do in Queensland and have 1 MPEG-2 HD main channel, with it being on x, x0 and x1. I would want 7mate to be in HD with 7, but it would probably have to be made SD only due to VAST.

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Or just “7 Regional WA” or “7 WA”.

“7 Regional” would be better I think, but I guess we’ll see soon enough.

I feel the networks have the freedom to do what they like at their retransmission sites, but VAST changes are seemingly hard to get through. I’ve had an insider tell me the process of getting Optus to change settings is long and expensive, and requires a lot of tedious approvals and consultations with all parties involved including government agencies.

The recent WIN->Nine swap shows this, with delays every time a national change is rolled out, to simple things like channel number changes not being done at all. 10Bold, for example, is still on LCN 5 (wtf?) and they never shifted 9Gem, 9Go! and 9Life to LCN 81-83. Seems to me like that would have cost WIN time and/or money to get done.

Having said that, channel name changes don’t seem to be a problem for any of the networks using VAST. It only seems to be the LCNs or placements within the bouquets that have essentially been left untouched since 2011.

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Are the transmitters that are fed off VAST programmed based on data that’s broadcast or is it fed in via a different means (or even hard coded)?

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After witnessing two affiliate swaps and various other launches/changes, the transmitters are programmed by a different means. I’d say they’re able to be manually remotely changed. I say manually because I’ve seen differences between transmitters too. Combine that with self-helps also doing their own thing, it’s a right mess.

Think of regional WA’s television market as a bunch of hotel MATV systems all broadcasting over-the-air :joy:

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From an Optus customer (i.e. broadcaster) perspective, changing settings for things like the program and provider names are trivial, provided they have remote access to the encoder or whatever is creating the transport stream they’re sending to Optus, and everything fits in the bandwidth they’re paying for.
Changes to the bouquets and LCNs are not possible by customers. The channel number that the customer supplies in the TS is not the LCN. Optus uses it as a service ID number and then apply their own LCN to that. Changes to those require testing in the lab and work permits, with notifications to go to all customers about changes happening that affect the mux that they’re on. Can’t be done randomly at any time.

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Not to mention that VAST wasn’t initially going to be the means of transport for the network transmitter sites in the first place.

I sense that Seven is in the process of working out what to do with Regional WA and probably won’t initiate any changes, trivial or otherwise, until they find a long term solution. They’re going to struggle getting 7HD and 7flix (and a potential future 7twoHD) on terrestrial here with the technology they currently have and their reliance on VAST.

I would love to see Seven purchase satellite space on D1 and go the ABC/SBS approach to fix all their issues. Reduce to just the North-West services on VAST to save costs. But VAST is so intertwined with the mix of network and self help sites and custom MATV systems it would take a long transitional process to avoid service interruption.

Will Seven invest in these sorts of upgrades? I don’t think Seven would be OK having a market with really outdated services based on the early 2010 era, particularly in their beloved home state. Time will tell…

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I would go as far as doing a WIN and WDT and making one whole statewide feed so all channels can get on the air. The news is already statewide, so what is the point? Not to mention there already being lots of ads from towns lots of kilometres away.

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Yeah, WIN doesn’t see the point in doing more than one feed for the state. I’d say GWN7 having the footy is what pushed them to keep the splits for digital. Explains why they also split 7mate too.

I have this population breakdown which I got around 2016. Not sure if it was an insider who sent it to me or someone here, but thanks to whoever it was.

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Would shifting to a single region allow enough reconfiguration of GWN’s VAST services to deliver a consistent channel set?