Seven did attempt to enter the Canberra market through its proposed merger with Prime late last year, but it didn’t went ahead, mainly due to Gordon & Catalano voting against it.
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Not without buying the whole Southern NSW licence
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Oh the ol[quote=“NQCQTV2, post:1671, topic:153”]
Given that Canberra is the capital of the country, I would have assumed that 7 would be interested to own the licence that broadcasts their channels in the city.
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I don’t think the fact it’s the national capital makes it particularly appealing. I can’t see Seven randomly buying one SNSW market station. The appeal comes from merging with Prime and owning a national network, but that failed
If it happened - I could see 7 launching a local Canberra news, more for political sway / influence reasons
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There is no separate TV licence for Prime Canberra.
Prime Canberra is part of the CBN Southern NSW TV1 licence area which also includes the long abolished RVN and CWN callsigns.
The Southern NSW TV1 licence area basically is an amalgamation of the old WIN, CBN, CWN, RVN and CTC pre-aggregation solus licence areas.
In other words, each commercial network has a single area wide Southern NSW TV1 licence, that being CBN, CTC and WIN. The Southern NSW TV1 licence plan fully includes the ACT. There are no sub-licences.
Each licence is able to operate sub-markets as they see fit (dependent on SFN/frequency stipulations), but they are not separately licensed.
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surely that could make an exception?
what for?
What’s so amazing about it? Nine and Ten don’t have O&O stations in Canberra, why is Seven deemed worthwhile or “interested” in it?
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If it’s to appeal to politicians, you’d have better success getting exclusive rights for the Qantas chairman’s lounge
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Ahhhh…I’ve been in MS for how long(???) and still Prime has no plans for a Hunter bulletin.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. Or words to that effect.
Welcome back @ElCapitanCranky
@ElCapitanCranky agree. It’s by far the largest market with just one source for local news: 820,000 people and just NBN News
NBN is a dominant force, but also not a great product
I think Prime7 would have to offer a product a bit slicker than the current Prime7 news bulletins, and they’d have to invest time and money. But there is market share there for the taking
…and people here think my posts are rather repetitive!
But aside from that observation, welcome back! 
The 2020 RegionalTAM Universe Estimates say the Newcastle sub-market has about 820k residents. I’m not too sure whether or not the Central Coast would be lumped in with that figure but if they are (because let’s face facts here - just about everyone who gets the Sydney channels would be watching those instead), then realistically the market size has about 480k.
From my experience NBN News is reasonably good in Newcastle, dreadful on the Central Coast and OK but nothing exciting from a North Coast perspective. In the latter market, Prime7 News was pretty good back in 2012-13. Fiona at 6pm followed by Bathie at 6.30pm, what a combo! 
But since the launch of Prime7 News at 6.30pm and the move of production from Tamworth to Canberra, things have gone downhill. NBN News actually seems relatively stable by comparison to post-2015 Prime7 News in Northern NSW, who’ve had more presenter teams than I can bother to count.
Don’t know what the recent ratings have been like in the North West & North Coast markets, but last I asked them my North Coast market-residing relatives seem to prefer NBN News.
Yeah, we can definitely agree about that.
As for your last bit - “they would have to invest time and money” - a few years ago when Nine News Regional was being launched I would’ve agreed that Prime7 should expand into new markets such as Newcastle & Canberra. But unfortunately with all the belt tightening currently happening across the entire media industry, I actually expect at least one or two of the existing Prime7 Local News bulletins to be axed (probably the North West and/or North Coast editions, if I was to guess) before new editions are launched.
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The Newcastle market does not include most of the central coast. Especially not the more populated areas. You can see via the post codes listed and the map
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It won’t happen, but I maintain there actually would be an opportunity to grow some market share there and thus revenue.
Whether or not the ad revenue would offset the required spend is up for debate
But we all know a strong local news acts as a halo and lifts a whole stations primetime (7 Perth, 7 Queensland, 7 Tasmania are all key examples)
Alone, Newcastle is the 6th biggest tv market in the country. With a good product very Newcastle centric (and perhaps a short sharp 30 minutes) there would be opportunity to really grow ratings and revenue
But I’ll be the first to say it won’t happen
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Do we think Prime7 could both save money and also gain some strength and benefit from ditching the Prime part of the brand and just becoming ‘7’?
The same way the QLD and TAS stations have (which are both DOMINANT) stations in their markets.
Perhaps localization could come in the form of localized watermarks like ‘7 Canberra’, ‘7 Illawarra’ , ‘7 Border’, ‘7 Wagga’, ‘7 Newcastle’ and ‘7 Far North Coast’ etc, and the local news opens.
Would Prime7 benefit from rebranding to simply 7?
- Yes
- No
0 voters
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I wonder what the magnitude of savings would be
Save money I’d doubt, especially in the short term. Changing a company’s branding is a massive undertaking from a cost and operations perspective.
Not worth the effort, especially considering Seven won’t let affiliates use Seven News branding for news production so they’d have to use a workaround like SCA did.
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Consensus is that Prime7 would benefit from dropping the Prime
Aside from local news, Possum and the occasional Community Service Announcement or Local Promo, the differences between the current branding of Prime7 and “the real” Channel Seven are minor to say the least. Infact I wouldn’t be overly surprised if the average viewer (who isn’t as in-tune with things like media ownership) actually thinks that Seven owns Prime7 these days!