You’ve been around long enough so you know WIN was the only network in regional to not only maintain but increase its output in the 2000s in news, all of the others stayed the same or went backwards. When there was money available to invest.
You realise during COVID, WIN did not cut its bulletins despite unreal pressure to do so, I suspect capital was injected to pay for that. I would have said cut them out temporarily if they could not be afforded until the economics returned.
You know it is now 2025, you cannot apply the same ideology that we did 25-30 years ago. There was only one option left to free up capital for regional investment and that was through Save Our Voices to consolidate the remaining operators. There was no appetite for this so the deal with Nine was made in 2021.
All good to say people want this and that, but commercial media can’t fund something with nothing. The market turned in the late 2000s with affiliation increases, then the market started dropping not long after and has continued since forcing continual cuts to the business to breakeven.
Unfortunately there is only so much ad revenue in these small markets non aggregated markets, you can’t blame WIN TV here, they are a business not a charity, these regions both have less than 100k people in each you can’t expect more than one TV network with the current ad market. It’s not as if the people of MT Gambier will be unable to stay informed or have entertainment, they will still have Nine programming plus our tax funded ABC and SBS programming that is available to all Australians. There is a reason why most markets were aggregated, you need to have the population to support more than one commercial television station.
Win bought the former NRTV in 2018, BEFORE Covid, not in the years since Covid.
The local news increased investments only really occurs whilst they were the Nine affiliate. The decrease in spending on local news since it became the 10 did occur, most notably the axing of All Australian News the day before WIN reverted back to the Nine affiliate acrosd most markets.
Very expensive for council to maintain such a high-powered transmitter, the same idea was bough up to try & save 10 In Mildura, but council didn’t bite, Another reason Mildura was closed was that the transmitter was near its life span & needed to be replaced not cheap If you’re operating a TV station at a continuous loss.
Obviously a good point. There is no economical reason. However, I would say the networks are in the business of being in a business where television reaches all people - you don’t want to be in television and exclude certain regions.
Sometimes businesses will make a loss in one area, but make more money in others for the reputation of their company.
I was saying they have a choice.
Just to walk away because its not financially viable is not supporting Australians whom have watched linear television - it always seems a right now.
The government needs to work with networks to achieve a financially viable position. There has been zero lobbying by the networks through FTA to come up with other solutions such as rolling SA into 2 regions - Adelaide and Regional SA and combining the smaller areas. Adding Griffith to NSW.
There are few things that the government, networks can do with more of a push and looking at more options - there is no pushing for anything at the moment
I honestly think when they walked away in early 1990s it was too late. When WIN bought the old NRTV stations they saw the station as part of Channel 10 for 30 years.
If WIN had of bought NRTV, that may have changed more than just the NBN and NRTV affiliations.
Don’t know If this has been bought up, but If people In Mt Gambier really want to retain their 7 service then they could get a VHF antenna & point It towards Mt Dundas to get the signal from Western Victoria.
Yes I did bring this up, in the Nine (WIN) thread, and again (briefly) a few posts above in this thread, here’s that post to save you the scrolling up.
Whilst reception may vary depending on the location and household in Mount Gambier, there is an advantage to the interstate reception (despite that station being 1/2 hour ahead of SA). Residents in Mount Gambier who also opt to aim for the Seven signal from Western VIC will not only restore the Seven Network services, but they’ll also grant themselves 7Bravo and 7flix for the very first time.
And to top it all off, they’ll also get 7two and 7mate in glorious 1080i MPEG-4 HD, something that WIN’s Seven service hasn’t been providing (WIN’s 7two and 7mate are both in MPEG-4 SD 576i).
A lots of Mt Gambier residents already have two antennas on their roofs, a UHF for the local channels from the Mt Burr transmitter & a VHF for the Western Victorian channels from Mt Dundas.
