I think we can safely say that while Sky News’ political commentary programs rate well by the relatively low standards of Pay TV in Australia, they get comparatively miniscule figures even compared to the individual market ratings of a 6pm news bulletin in Sydney or Melbourne on a bad day.
Do I think programs like “The Bolt Report” and “Paul Murray Live” would be popular if they aired on primetime free to air TV? I’d personally like to say no but realistically, the answer is probably yes knowing how well personalities on conservative-tilting talk radio stations rate in some metro markets.
Personally I agree but despite being a (generally) more professionally operated station than CTS-31 ever was, unfortunately TVS was disadvantaged from the start due to a number of factors which were no fault of their own.
I suspect TV broadcasters are going to have to share multiplexes if/when we transition over to DVB-T2 and HEVC (because of the money that can be made by selling off even more spectrum to the telcos in the process), but that worthy discussion is for another topic.