I would have thought the mix of Ten and star logos that resulted from that demand created more confusion than any previous attempts. There was no consistency at all.
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It was a dog’s breakfast! It was almost like the adbreaks were SC and the actual television was Ten.
They would have been better off with a light touch approach as with the “Ten Victoria” era - but even slashing one promo producer’s job was enough to be ‘worth it’ in those days. Very much a country cowboy operation. They needed one name for the whole ‘network’ so everything could be generic in every state - things like CSA tagging and so on.
Southern Cross (before Austereo) is a business built on cheapest possible relay - the whole Nine thing must be a real shock for them, actually selling television that people watch.
Tassie of course is a special case, which is why their seven-days-a-week news has survived.
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Their attempts at representing the SC Ten brand were just shockingly amateur. Especially when other operations within SC were/are producing great things. Clearly no production talent from Tassie was ever shared with their Ten operations at all.
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They use the Nine graphics, but with SC’s own music and VO.
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Media Release on affiliation deal
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50% seems quite high - guess SWM wanted SCA to match what they’re paying NEC?
SCA to continue to produce their own news for the Seven affiliation but not for the Nine one.
Wonder if we will finally see native HD and flix?
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I’m sure Seven would be more than happy for SCA to continue producing their own news service for Tasmania when it rates quite highly and is probably popular with viewers with long-serving presenters like Jo Palmer and Pete Murphy!
I was wondering about that too - I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the coming days/weeks.
Personally, I hope Southern Cross will at least be providing viewers of their Seven affiliates with native HD main channel programing by April 4…
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Nine is a supplementary channel in all of these markets - no reason to spread thin resources across two channels.
I’m sure had TV8, where SCTV began, been affiliated with Nine back in the day, some form of local news would have survived. No regional Ten affiliate newsrooms survived aggregation.
The recent news deal with Nine was about SC avoiding the capex involved in setting up newsrooms, given that they intent to divest in television at the earliest commercially viable opportunity.
It still baffles me why SC doesn’t sell GTS/BKN, Darwin and Central to Prime - and offload the last of their Canberra newsroom across the paddock in Watson.
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Particularly Darwin with their buddies at Nine being their only ‘competitor’
Prime has indicated it is a seller rather than a buyer, having offered itself to Seven who knocked them back. Out of SCA, Prime and WIN, only WIN has been buying in recent years, iirc.
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I think he means that as part of its deal to hand over 50% of its revenue SCA gets its local news in QLD, NSW and VIC produced by Nine, but in Tasmania they’re handing over 50% to Seven but still making their news in-house.
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Not so much a knock-back, but a ‘it’s not actually legal’ situation - given Seven owns as much as they are allowed to. Prime made out talks with seven were more advanced than they actually were, but it was all pie-in-the-sky.
Given that Prime management still needs to demonstrate commercial growth, I would have thought these stations would be a quick win.
Of course, Prime will be snapped up by someone eventually (maybe even a foreign investor), and adding half a million potential viewers to the network doesn’t seem like a bad idea. They could even read-out the Spencer Gulf news from Bunbury.
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I think you’re right too - I attempted to address that by talking about the demise of the SC mainland newsrooms from the TV8 days onward, following affiliation with Ten. SC Tas has been in the lucky position of being the number one station since aggregation (first being 7/10, then pure 7).
Now SC mainland has a nine affiliation, but no capital to ramp its news content up to the standard required by Nine - so they did it for them.
(Central Television is a different case, I know).
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For that price Seven had better be providing SCA with 7flix and a full HD feed for ch60.
Ah so it will sync up their Seven affiliation with their Nine affiliation, with both expiring on 1 July 2021. I doubt we’ll see any change at that point but good of them to leave the door open.
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Correct, was more of an observation than anything.
50% seems a bit high because of the fact SCA will still do their TAS (and I’m assuming continue with SA) news in house.
Yes SCTas has quite a high share of viewers and not a cheap product but look at the other regions they’re showing Seven content in - SA, Central, Darwin - not exactly areas with lots of viewers like RQLD/SNSW/RVIC under the Nine deal. But obviously they’re happy to pay the 50%.
Only noticed today that SC Darwin has some actual local content besides their weekly 3 minute infomercial, a delayed telecast of an NTFL game on Sunday usually on 7mate, though it’s on 7TWO this Sunday. It seems like it is the same game that is shown on NITV?
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I’d say 50% is a bargain given Seven is the number one network. I doubt Seven gave them much choice on the percentage. The local news deal with Nine was just as much about Nine’s brand reputation (SC noodle news on Nine taints the brand as its so bloody awful) and political ambition (Nine is after an SC9 takeover) than anything.
In relation to Tasmania, is the cost of local news accounted for before the profit pie is split? So essentially it’s a shared cost. Another way to look at it is: 7 Adelaide gives 100% of its profit to the network, and still makes local news when it could relay Melbourne. Before I get a bunch of crazy replies that SA people can’t watch Vic people read the news, think about it for a moment. ADS is a business unit within Seven and could cancel its news. Stranger things have happened - Prime cancelled its Newcastle news and that market isn’t all that much smaller. So SC gets to keep 50% of the profits after costs - I’d say it’s a great deal.
It would be very simple to calculate the net benefit of the local news in Tasmania - by looking at Channel 9 in Tas and seeing what they are able to charge for adverts in the Melbourne news they relay. I imagine it’s about half what SC7 can command. They have the added benefit of being able to observe how the Ten affiliation has affected poor old WIN in Hobart.
These affiliation deals are essentially shareholder agreements in all but name - with the added benefit that the supplier can actually dictate more about the business than the owner!
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It’s 50% of revenue. SC would be funding the news from the 50% of revenue they retain. ??
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Unless something has changed very recently, the affiliation deals specify x % of the advertising revenue, not the profit. And at least on one of the networks it’s paid monthly, not much chance to be working out profit and loss.
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