If only they didn’t involve Foxtel and mess about with Presto…
Yep, major fuckup there. They did have Presto with FOXTEL, but it seemed like neither party wanted it to really work, probably because they didn’t want to cannibalise themselves. Stupid mistake.
7 have always lagged on digital and technology also. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into digital, HDTV (remember 7 tried to pass off 576p as HD … good times) and any sort of online presence flopped because they didn’t want to commit to doing it properly themselves, instead setting up a joint venture (i7, AOL7, Yahoo7, there was one with Primus I think as well).
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1000% correct
They have hung on to the concept of linear tv for Longer than anyone. And now it’s bitten them on the ass big time
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This I’d disagree with - NineMSN and Yahoo7 were both quite successful sites, and I think Seven have failed since in their attempt to do it themselves, and would have been better to work out a joint venture with a media outlet that is digital native.
Where they diverge is that Nine just seem to have done a far better job in shifting people to their post ‘MSN’ portal, while Seven trying to wrap it into their 7News site means they have to downgrade the celebrity gossip stuff and product placement that Nine can lead with and is a lot of what people are visiting those portals for (look no further than the Daily Mail’s success here for people’s desire for trash).
Nine get to have a MAFS story above the fold on their main ‘nine.com.au’ site, while the ‘Trending Now’ section of the 7news page is buried down the page - while Nine still can direct people wanting news to their separate news portal.
Going for it alone and pushing their news brand primarily I think has hurt them compared to their position in the cobranded yahoo portal.
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7Plus is decent though, Clive Dickens did a fantastic job developing that, especially pioneering the ‘live streaming’ with the Aus Open court feeds, Melb Cup, etc.
The recent team have also done very well securing the huge slew of content, promoting it lots.
But agree on the rest and decades gone by (HD TV, Presto and websites).
Primus7? That’s just for the regional viewers 
Yea…
7Plus, 9Now (BVOD)
9News, 7News (news sites)
Nine.com.au…
Seven has no general Landing portal with content
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Even if it was the right time who in their right mind will buy shares,one word of caution DILUTION!!
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Seven New Ventures including the stakes in Health Engine, Airtasker and SocietyOne is worth $103 million, and that Seven have approached fund managers about buying the lot, The Australian is claiming this morning. Seven’s debt is $570 million.
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Seven favoured the multichannel option
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Yeah they were successful, until MSN and Yahoo hit the skids. MSN was at the height of its power when people sat down at their Windows XP desktop PC’s to open Internet Explorer defaulted to NineMSN, logged into Hotmail, which took them back to NineMSN when they logged out, all of course with MSN Messwnger running with a mini version of NineMSN in the window. Once Firefox, Google and mobile devices took over, MSN waned and 9 sensibly got out of the joint venture in a proper and orderly fashion, and were able to build on what they had pretty effectively.
Yahoo wasn’t quite as powerful or popular but did well enough until Yahoo US made heaps of mistakes, went through CEO’s, ignored mobile and ended up pissweak and sold in a fire sale to Verizon. All while dragging Yahoo7 with it and 7 didn’t seem to be able to get out as well as 9 did with Microsoft; it seems like 7 had to completely rebuild, putting them way behind.
Nah I reckon it’s pretty ordinary; mind you I think all the FTA streaming services aren’t much better.
I watched that fire special on 7plus the other day on an Apple TV 4K with reasonable internet (50Mbps and Ethernet). Picture quality was average (576p, pretty yucky bitrate) and the ad serving was buggy, it kept saying “ad will finish in 1 seconds” through the whole presentation.
Yeah and it’s idiotic. 10 have the same issue as well, I don’t get why they can’t make a landing site with promos, news headlines, TV guide. Not hard at all!
With conditional access (pay tv) if I recall as well? Crazy ideas
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Pay TV on digital terrestrial? That could only end well.
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It was proposed at a time that onDigital was reasonably successful
I recall there was a couple of proposals on free/sub mix
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They didn’t really pioneer any of that though. They just brought it here. Multiple court feeds have been available for grand slam tennis tournaments in other markets long before Dickens and co decided to do it. They’d be ignorant if they didn’t.
What have 7 Plus got worth promoting? I just got a pre-roll ad for Smallville, if that’s the best they’ve got they are in trouble
Maybe I was too kind then, but 7Plus isn’t the worst (free service) going around
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7Plus and SBS On-demand have the same problem for me - after an ad break the last second or two of the scene before the ad plays again before fading to black again and the next scene starts.
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Blue Heelers
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Agreed. Great for us Maggie Doyle-heads
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Ah onDigital/ITV Digital - what a failure of a service that was.
If you have half an hour, the below program is worth a watch. It charts the story of how onDigital went from wanting to work with Sky into becoming a rival and how ITV Digital ultimately went bust after significantly overpaying to secure the rights to the English Football League:
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