This is a very important point - people in regional areas are always suspicious that the cities have it in for them, and even the best intentioned changes can raise that suspicion to dangerous levels.
In the media, locals have very little appreciation for what is already done out of their local area. Plenty of people in Albury for instance still think that Prime news is done out of their tiny office on Dean St, despite it moving to Canberra years ago when Prime were still in their original studios in Lavington.
For Southern Cross, thereās a danger that some inexperienced journo will find out that presentation etc are done out of Canberra, and write a fake news story that all of this has recently moved as part of the name change, despite that having been the case for a long time now. The locals, most of whom donāt know any better, would believe it and hate Seven for taking away local jobs.
The same thing happened when hit and Triple M changed names throughout regional Australia - there was mass hysteria about local jobs being lost. While there might have been some shifting of responsibilities, no local jobs have been lost as a direct result of the change - in fact some offices have increased local employment.
Yes - but would 7 have let them without it being part of an agreed deal? Back in the day the rumours were that Ten wanted the SC brand to be more ādistinctly differentā when they got rid of āCapitalā āVictoriaā and āNorthernā. For a time, SC just used the Ten logo at will for things like CSAs - so you couldnāt really tell the difference between CTC Ten Wollongong, for example and TEN 10. Occasionally Ten would throw out itās own ID (below), but that was about it. So, Ten instructed SC to create something distinctive.
I imagine using the 7 brand for news and sales comes with some conditions - I wouldnāt mind betting improving the news quality was in there. Knowing some of the players at Watson - I would say itās a matter of āwhatās good for the goose is good for the ganderā as the realised the 9 agreement had streamlined their business considerably - even with the shared āburdenā of an improved news service.
Exceptionally patronising webguy. āRegional peopleā are not idiots the closure of local newsrooms it very well known by average people. Yes there are some people who donāt actually care - so pay little regard, but there isnāt a disproportionate level of stupidity in regional areas.
The largest level of paranoia regards a city having āit inā for a local people comes from Melbourne. Iāve not been to any Australian city so obsessed that Sydney is overshadowing it.
The reason regional people feel screwed over is because they KNOW their local radio station isnāt local anymore and the TV presenters they used to see at local public events are no longer there. And - the reason these things have changed is to save money and cut staff. Certainly, itās a product of the times - but please donāt make out the āregional peopleā are too stupid to understand whatās going on.
I guess the people I know in these areas are not āaverageā then. While the closures are reported, the stations also keep reasonably quiet about them and use tactics to appear local, so theyāre easily forgotton about by people who donāt really care.
If you got off youāre high horse, youād have actually noticed that I wasnāt lumping all people in regional areas into the āidiotsā basket. I was merely saying that a good chunk of the population are not in tune with these things.
The key word I posted was suspicion. I donāt say itās the reality.
It means that thereās a reasonable agreement to comply with the terms or a higher cost if they continue to go it alone. Less in this case simply meant the reasonable negotiated amount rather than a higher, āunnecessaryā fee.
But for people who have called them Southern Cross for nearly 30 years, they will take a while to adjust or go looking. Also, if they do bring in a watermark (Iād be putting money on that one) and maybe even the in program pop up advertising like Seven then there will be some viewer backlash against that.
Even taking a look at the announcement on the SC News Facebook page thereās still people asking if it will still be called Southern Cross News (??? thought the post was fairly self explanatory!) and others saying theyāre upset because it will be like the Nine news on TDT and full of Melbourne stuff. So there will be confusion for people.
The Modern Family ad has been showing on high rotation and is the straight 7 ad, Iām expecting to see more of these over the next 3 weeks with new promos probably not being created at all.
EDIT: The Mentor ad is also a straight 7 one as well. AFL promo still Southern Cross but that has been airing for months.
Thatās what Iām expecting, but currently they have had no watermark so introducing a watermark will annoy viewers initially. They already have nearly half the market regularly but there will be some people upset with the changes.
To me it doesnāt matter if the jobs lost are in Tas or in Canberra, theyāre still lost jobs. Iām thinking now after seeing more and more straight 7 promos that the branding is no longer being done as of Friday just gone. Anything made and shown before (e.g. Sunday Night has been SC, but Interview and the others are 7).
Doesnāt mean that people will like them any more.
I reckon they will avoid using dirty feeds because of the in-program advertising for Seven News Melbourne and the like. Then again, they donāt seem to care about it for their Nine marketsā¦
Ups: Less time and less costs in playout.
Downs: Might get a similar situation with Nineās NBN where the market-specific feeds (especially during news lead-ins, i.e. Millionaire Hot Seat) have a 0.1% chance of slipping metro ads and promos to their system. Imagine, a TOC miscue can slip Melbourne-specific content to Tasmanians on Southern Cross. As of now, I guess TNT is 95% āclean,ā given the rare Seven News stuffup back then when SC News was about to begin.
Regarding the affiliate naming, I regularly edit on Wikipedia and Iām thinking that the name Southern Cross Seven, similar to the current name for the Nine affiliate, would not fit. In all SCA media relating to the Nine affiliate, they only use āNine Networkā or simply āNineā and this will presumably be the case for the Seven affliate. On the station level, itās just āNine [state name]ā and will soon be āSeven [state name]ā.
Iām thinking of opening a rename discussion for proposals for the Wikipedia articles and I was wondering if anybody on MS had suggestions of their own? Iām leaning towards Nine Regional and Seven Regional in a similar style to the official Nine News Regional, and the local versions of BBC One and Two broadcast in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (e.g. BBC One Scotland).
Note: This is concerning the Wikipedia articles, not the threads on Media Spy. Iām looking for opinions before I start a formal discussion on Wikipedia as there may not be as many people passionate about TV media on Wikipedia as there is on MS.
Good idea, going a step further, what about merging Prime/7QLD/SC Tas threads, SC Nine, Nine Tas, Imparja and NBN threads, same with their news bulletin threads, as they have many common issues and are morphing into one based on their affiliations.
