They were affiliated with the #1 network. They seemed to take that for granted and work against Nine in almost every regard. Of all the TV companies in Australia WIN has shown themselves to be the most arrogant and unwilling to work with their parent network and evolve, change, try new things, invest in new platforms and harness the future. They like to pretend they are a big bossy national network, but they are an affiliate company. After becoming so difficulty with Nine they lost the affiliation and got Ten. They don’t even seen to work with Ten - still trying to hang on to a 9 News look, the WIN brand that was associated with Nine - and their own weird approach to almost everything.
And as for local news. These chopped up static, 6 hour old news from 2000km up against 9 and 7 at 6pm - I mean. Recipe for disaster. Their marketing sucks. Their social media sucks. They change news readers like underwear - and they have not evolved or tried anything new in 20 years. And now they are dying - they play the victim.
My suggestion is WIN replaces those losing news with some form of national news bulletin provided by Sky News (on WIN). Like what they do at Breakfast.
…which since the mid-2000s, has actually become the #2 network (albeit one that’s been on a primetime resurgence recently - I’d bet that WIN would’ve loved to have MAFS this year).
Although I definitely agree with your overall point. No matter how you spin it, a Nine Network affiliation is a far better situation to be in than Ten’s with their incredibly weak news & sports portfolios.
Yet another point I totally agree with. Although knowing some of WIN’s recent strategic moves, I actually reckon they’d be more likely to unload their television network to News Corp than Ten if/when the time comes!
I know we can’t erase the past, but I wonder how different the scenario would have been if most of these were under 2 station markets instead of 3.
Unfortunately, There probably would have been 3 channel markets, which would have included Wollongong, Canberra, Newcastle and possibly Gold Coast/Northern Rivers in NSW and WIN would still be in this position. As people keep pointing out, it was the inability of WIN change and the arrogance of management that got them in this position. The had also been relying on the past to try and hold onto viewers.
I believe the only way forward for all media organisations is to merge with other media outlets as the antiquated legislation that we currently have is part of the problem. Now that there are so many choices for viewers to watch their favourite shows, the networks are losing advertising revenue. The old systems arent working.
I wonder if WIN considered a 7am news broadcast and be the point of difference? They could do like ABC do with their Sunday broadcast of Weekend Breakfast, have viewers go to WIN News then come back later or just screen the first hour of Headline News on the main channel then air WIN News possibly as a 1 hour statewide (or multi-region) edition in NSW, QLD , Vic and Tas.
They could have done lots of things, like simulcasting the i98 breakfast program into Wollongong, the Southern Highlands and the South Coast. But they’ve done nothing as you and everyone else has indicated.
I still think even if it was decided that aggregation would initially only result in one extra commercial channel, all the major regional markets probably would’ve eventually gotten all three networks - perhaps as a joint venture/secondary service (similar to Tasmania, Mildura, Darwin, Regional/Remote WA & Remote Central/Eastern Australia).
Haven’t there been major changes to the media laws just in the last 18 months to 2 years which have resulted in things like the Nine/Fairfax merger and to some extent, CBS buying Network Ten?
Anyway, I think there’s only one of two ways we’ll see the regional networks survive: They either get brought out by the metros or start to become larger content producers in their own right.
Make no mistake, while there’s quite understandably a lot of sympathy out there for people who lose their jobs because of regional TV cutbacks, Media Spy is highly unlikely to be sympathetic to those media organisations like WIN who could eventually die out because of a failure to evolve their product for the digital age. For all the criticisms - many quite deserving - we may give the major metropolitan networks, at least they’re trying (albeit, with Ten entering the game a bit later than the other two) to modernise their organisations! Same deal with the ABC & SBS, who both seem to have a fairly good presence in the online/digital space.
I see your point, a production wing to bring in revenue and balance their budgets. If Crawfords, for example, still produced content that any of the networks were willing to spend big money on, the revenue could then be reinvested back into WIN’s local news.
Problem is, WIN’s the only one with a production wing and it’s been almost a decade since Crawfords made anything. Being bought out by the networks seems the only plausible fate of the affiliates.
If WIN were to sell all of their television interests, and their current Ten-affiliated stations were bought by CBS/Ten, what would happen to the JV channels WIN partly own (TDT, WDT etc) and what would happen in solus markets where WIN own/control all commercial stations? Would CBS have to purchase WIN’s interest in these channels too, and if not, is there a possibility they would close down?
Of course not, under this hypothetical, they could choose which licences to offload if they didn’t want to or if they did not get sufficient offers for them.
The other option is buying a bulletin from their competitors, as what happens in the UK on C4 and NZ on Prime. Some of the journo’s jobs could have been saved then. Time both bulletins so they’re not competing directly and you still get some form of affordable local journalism.
WIN needs to do more to attract viewers and advertisers. I think WIN could screen WIN News at 6pm in the regions it continues to serve. The screen an ecore on Ten BOLD at 6:30pm and 10Peach at 7pm.
WIN should also consider moving AAN or The Project encore to 10Peach and screening it instead of the first screening of The Late Late Show on 10Peach. At present WIN screens 4 hours less than Ten of infomercials throughout the week. WIN could the generate extra revenue by screening additional infomercials.
The other option would be to do what SCA did for a number of years and drop an encore of something throughout the day (eg Frasier on 10Peach 11 am weekday morning), perhaps for the full hour to make up for the loss overnight. Personally I hate infomercials, but if they have to screen in order for a network to survive, then do it - just as long as they dont do what NEC have done to GEM and be infomercial centre 1am to 10:30am most days.
Just ideas feel free to be as critical to these ideas and point out any flaws you see in my ideas
I think that the WIN watermark logo isn’t Bruce Gordon’s favourite map, I would say it is this one that is the route from the L F Wade International Airport, St George’s, Bermuda to his home at Wreck Hill, Sandys, Bermuda.
