It can’t return to Mildura because it’s a different market to the existing Victoria market. Also didn’t the government allow people to set up VAST dishes and boxes so it could receive Ten central?
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Yes the government did allow VAST to go into Mildura, as someone who lives In the Mildura TV market It would be interesting to know how many viewers have Invested In VAST.
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The spots where you have seen the dirty feed approach in regional areas have two things in common that make them possible - a unique added cost of having to deal with the advertising timing for a non primary affiliate network, and no local content obligations.
This was a last resort cost reduction in loss making markets, not a new norm.
The metro networks have no significant add on cost other than the incremental distribution cost to provide local feeds, and with their need to meet local content rules, they have no reason not to also make the ads local.
With ad tech getting better, I’m sure they’ll be able to automate the ad traffic for regional areas and have it work like the online streams, inserting the highest bid with no human intervention, with the national buy a fall back.
My guess on the cost cut for metro networks is translator sites, for regional networks, losing a viewer to streaming the metro network BVOD is lost ratings and lost revenue, the metro network doesn’t need to care, provided they balance the cost of serving viewers OTA to lost viewers who won’t move to streaming.
Given the aging infrastructure, anything they can shut down instead of replace will be a benefit. I wonder how much deferred maintenance dragged on the negotiation over sale price?
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Traffic costs are pretty minimal now that most of those jobs are in the Philippines.
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Yeah they did, but they run up to $800 a dish. No wonder why locals in Mildura are a bit pissed off with the shutdown of MDT.
Have we seen or heard anything from locals since the closure? I’m going to guess that no one really notices or cares now that the dust has settled. With such a small market, viewers using BVOD pre-closure would surely outnumber those who actually watched MDT over-the-air…
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What rubbish are you talking about?
There are local news requirements written into the law of 30 minutes a day.
And how on earth would these stations be profitable if they can’t sell advertising?
Most advertising buys ARE NOT national.
So most advertisers ARE NOT going to pay to have their ads carried in areas they don’t want to be in, ie outside the 5 cap city markets.
And Ten is not going to beam Qantas and Coles and Govt advertising to 3.3 million people for free.
Your posts are total nonsense.
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Sorry to be a bit late to the discussion but with the talk about Mildura I think one important piece of information is being forgotten about the JV licenses. They were brought in early 2000’s with a bit of time to prepare before TDT launched in Tasmania as a test one and then others afterwards and were brought in to bring about the 5th channel to all regions. Remember when we only had 5 channels? Yes, digital TV existed and this was reliant on digital but the only multichannels were on the ABC and SBS with the intial SBS World News Channel and the ABC Kids and FlyTV ones.
There were no smart phones and therefore no apps, there was no streaming TV services, Netflix was still on DVD’s and myself and many others were still only on dial up internet. Terrestrial TV was still entirely viable back then for the population, newspaper circulations were declining but still profitable because the news sites didn’t have paywalls yet.
It’s now nearly 2025, in only a couple of minutes I can access any TV station around the world, let alone any of the regional variants around Australia and with apps built into TV’s for the last decade the average person can easily access content from any channel with relative ease.
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on that note I think we can hold off discussing anything to do with Mildura in this thread as this is not related to the thread topic, being SCA TV assets in aggregated markets being sold to Ten.
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Exactly!
The current regional TV business model is from a way distant era, long passed it’s used by date.
The only way forward for linear TV in this country while we still have terrestrial transmission is for 7,9,10 to be nationally licensed. The old 1950’s region by region licenses are well obsolete by now. Even more so when networking and aggregation commenced since the mid to late 1980s.
This would mean the still existing remaining independent regional stations are either bought up by their metro partners and or the regional license is abolished and re-issued to the metro partner with some Govt compensation to the regional operator. This will be the only way for all regions including Mildura to have access to all 3 commercial networks. Being the metro networks have the economies of scale to deliver unlike the regionals who are increasingly failing to do so, let alone have no ability to re-stream the metro partner’s content.
In return, there should be a mandated 5 to 10 minute local news window for each sub-market inserted into the metro flagship news bulletins at regional level. They could be produced by a consortium of 7,9, 10 say ITN style as occurs in the UK to help bring costs down and to help be sustainable. This of course means regional localism can still be achieved including local ads so as to avoid the scenario of all regional TV transmitters just carrying the metro dirty feed 24/7.
Who knows what the future brings, but as the way things stand now, all regional TV will be gone very soon if the Govt only tinkers and not do substantive change.
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Yep, and then that would mean some markets without a local news bulletin (or any local news coverage at all) would finally have local news coverage, even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes. And inserting them into the metro slot would make a whole lot of sense.
Geelong is one of those places where their Highton tower is just repeating the Melbourne signals 24/7. Having a short local news window for the first few minutes of the flagship 6pm bulletin would certainly help. Also think about places like Spencer Gulf who are without a local bulletin, let alone towns like Ballarat who now have to see headlines from Bendigo, Shepparton and Traralgon on WIN News. The only source for local at the moment in terms of news there is Seven’s short noodle updates, as well as those 2-minute or less noodle updates produced by SCA for their 10 affiliate.
Also, there should essentially be a slot after the first 10 minutes of the bulletin where in regional areas (including those currently without a local TV service) the first ad break is essentially all local ads for that respective regional area as an opt-out. If there’s local news, surely during the first ad break, you make it hyper-local by running just purely regionalised ads. This would give local advertisers the opportunity to advertise on TV and get their message out there.
Surely this would have to work?
You’re right. I reckon that’s where we’re heading, we’re headed for no more localism, and just simple 24/7 metro feeds of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth as they are, without any local opt-outs.
I already addressed this back in August when I first joined MediaSpy and warned everyone in the Seven Regional thread that this would probably happen in let’s say 2030, but everyone called my prediction nonsensical.
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A similar idea was proposed by the regionals 4+ years ago, except you would have the one operator operating all regional markets and channels combined across the country but with a news bulletin in each market including smaller ones. It didn’t take as the government clearly did not support it. That is why WIN went the nuclear option of re-signing with Nine and sacking more of their news staff (again) to make it work.
A metro setup nationally as you say, would be lucky to have one channel providing news to all of their markets, and it would have to be the Seven affiliate as that is the one that generates the most profit. Nine are too eager to ravage their regional audiences of free cash flow as we have seen over the past 15 years so whilst they may provide a small insert in such a circumstance for aggregated markets, it would be more costly overall for them (plus Ten which is negligibly profitable in ever-declining advertising market, even with noodle updates) to provide such a service in other markets and they would not do it willingly.
Amongst the real market players remaining (of which SCA is not one), this agreement as seen by the details of the deal is good for one entity only overall, and that is Ten as it now guarantees their revenue stream for as long as they want it for the larger aggregated markets.
Time to wait and see how the cards fall for TAS, SA, NT and Remote.
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The Govt nor viewers and nor the networks would entertain the return of all regional markets going back to sole monopoly operators, a throwback to the past. It was through them being gatekeepers and their laziness and poor offerings mostly screening cheap old content that had not screened in metro areas for many years being they could get away with it back then to generate the profits they did. And being gatekeepers where they paid very low prices for fresh metro content as the metro networks had no-one else to sell content to. These factors and others will never see that happen. It would be pure insult for regional TV audiences making them even further removed than what they are now from metro audiences. If what we see in Mt Gambier is what you think should happen elsewhere, think again. Being where you are limited to far fewer choice of services with minimal HD and no local news content whatsoever being that monopoly market is exempt from localism quotas. Time is up for regional operations as they currently are.
I can see a time when the metro networks will form an ITN (UK) style joint venture for the production of news content. There is an increasing amount of resource sharing that goes on now. As the networks get increasingly squeezed, I can see this happening. The cost savings will be enormous. As like the UK, a JV news production company would still produce separately branded flagship bulletins for 7,9,10, but could also be the vehicle to produce 5 to 10 minute local inserts into regional areas when 7,9,10 own and control signals nationally when the current independent regional TV operators are wound up.
That’s what Sky News was trying under Angelos Frangopolous’ rule. They produced news bulletins for NITV (before it fell under SBS) and Prime NZ (when the news was controlled from Sydney).
It’s possible they might be interested in taking over producing other network content again but they’d need a substantial increase in Reporters, Cammos, Editors and Producers. Which ironically could be ex Network staff.
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I don’t see it, other than being a vehicle for noodle updates. The local markets cannot sustain additional expenditure with the two main operators paying the hefty affiliation rates that they are. Any additional expenditure and content, unless from the Seven channel which continues to outperform the rest of the commercial FTA market, would be at the expense of either cash flow currently paid for the metro network’s content or would end up making the Nine and Ten operations operate at a loss, that is how tight their margins are - there is little left to cut outside further reductions in regional jobs in Tasmania, Canberra and Wollongong. The money is not there, regrettable to say this but WIN is just about overfunding its news division considering the 50 per cent fee it is now paying whilst revenue is still declining. The recent temporary reprieve from licensing fees should help for a couple of years though.
I think there’s smarter ways to meet the content quotas than the short updates we’ve generally seen.
SCA’s old State Focus is a good example - a throwaway show on Sat/Sun mornings, you could do a show like that with a lot of content recorded the state capital or in Canberra using existing metro resources, as a lot of it would just be state/federal politics as it effects a local market. Swap in the specific local members in a general piece and the whole segment would be local to the market.
Adding in filmed interviews on the streets of a region would hit the 3 point per minute target “news that depicts people, places or things in the local area”, a weekly show would mean one or two video journalists could get to somewhere in each of the sub-regions in a state and do enough content to meet the rules in basically a single show.
As much as full local news pre recorded windows would be nice within the main Ten News, pre-recording a local regional weather report would be more appreciated by viewers - and much less resource intensive.
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From an SCA perspective, too expensive, when you add in travel and production costs etc.
Much easier and cheaper for someone to research stuff remotely off the internet etc and regurgitate that on camera centrally for each market.
But yes, would be good to see an actual program though.
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Could 10 insert brief local news updates during 10 News First bulletin breaks? For example, immediately following the ‘coming up’ previews between blocks?
They could, and SCA should already being doing that if they aren’t doing it already.
Trying to think from the perspective of what would make sense for Ten to produce - how you’d best utilise their existing resources to meet the quota rules.
If a state political reporter for News First adds on doing some interview content with local members, that’s stuff you can record in the capital city with existing staff, that is then local news for their regional services. Ideally as well, you find something to report on interesting enough to also make the main Ten News each night.
That’s the problem with the ‘noodle’ updates - they can’t sell ads within them and typically they eat up time that’s used for ad breaks, as they are longer than the typical 15-30 second ‘newsbreak’ you’d do on the metro feed.
Ten’s situation is a bit different than we’ve seen with Nine and Seven’s acquisitions - both of them, for NBN and Prime, purchased existing news operations and have run them pretty much the same as they ran before, with the slight integration in the case of NBN but keeping their old format.
Because Ten are seemingly just getting the licenses here, unless there’s an agreement to get SCA to keep doing what they are doing (and slightly more of it for the increased Trigger Event thresholds) - they need to find a cost effective way to meet these rules.
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