Yes. Ten didn’t pay for the content so they had breached their contract and Fox cut the supply of programs.
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Gordon and Antony Catalano (whose shares blocked the merger) were never going to accept whatever SWM offered
Foxtel’s drawn debt of A$1,495,000,000 and REA’s drawn debt of A$240,000,000 could restrict News Corp from making a move on another company.
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So that leaves Comcast as the most likely player. What happens to The West Australian and Community Newspaper groups if Comcast buys SWM?
Do we have any idea when SWM will go up for sale?
There are four possible scenarios.
- Comcast could keep the papers (unlikely)
- Sell the papers to Nine Entertainment
- Sell the papers to Australian Community Media
- Demerge the papers from SWM to become an independent listed company
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Is there anything suggesting Comcast is interested in Australia?
The whole purpose of Comcast buying NBC Universal seemed to be vertical integration, to squeeze more money out of their monopoly cable customers.
Have Comcast expanded beyond the USA?
PS: It appears they bought Sky (UK & Europe), but other than that I don’t see/know of anything else of significance.
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As much as I’d probably prefer to have them own Seven instead of News Corp, I’m not really sure Comcast would be interested in investing in the Australian market, considering that we’ve got a considerably weaker Pay TV landscape (Yes, our FTA market is better - but would they really want to follow in the footsteps of CBS/Ten? I’m not so sure about that) than those in the US & UK/Europe.
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I’m more inclined to believe they would look at the likes of Foxtel over SWM
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CBS ending up owning 10 isn’t really relevant:
The only way I’d see it happening is if somehow the situation came up again, so 7WM going under with Comcast at the time being a major creditor & seeing that taking over 7WM was the best way to recover their money/minimise their losses.
(Hopefully my attempt to post my reply in the Seven West Media thread works…hmm…
PS: Oops, adding quote to fix missing context!)
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The WA Newspaper Group (WAN) brand could return.
It would be worth SWM entering into an agreement to intergrate Peacock with 7plus in Australia somehow.
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Seven News reverted back to Seven Nightly News nationally. Back to the future.
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Serious question: Do people in real life still refer to Seven News as “Seven Nightly News” some 20 years after the brand was dropped?
Some who grew up with it still say 7 Nightly News
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It was a very good brand, and clearly worked if there are remnants to it years later.
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I believe the 1800 rundowns were still being labeled internally as 7NN as recently as 2017.
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Seven used NBC’s slogans in the 80s as well as The Mission theme for their news service (except for 5 days in January 2014). Let’s Celebrate 88, Let’s all be there, Be there, and Just Watch us Now were examples.
Even last year’s election coverage had borrowed elements from NBC with 7’s coverage branded “Decision Night in Australia”
I still call it Seven National News.
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No