WIN went black in Mackay during the NRL match. It didn’t come back on until this morning.
4 Likes
Wrong thread my dudes.
3 Likes
I think because the discussion crossed both Nine and Ten WIN outlets this maybe was a catch-all thread but you’re right this thread is more about WIN the company rather than the broadcasting outlets.
4 Likes
A widespread WIN outage may be corporate related: WIN and Prime used to have a JV called BTS Networks that did their transmitter and microwave link maintenance. When Seven bought Prime they pulled out of BTS Networks and pulled their links out of the WIN owned Digital Distribution Australia and moved to Telstra.
BAI Communications now do both WIN and Seven Regionals maintenance and probably even DDA’s maintenance. If the issue is widespread and affecting WIN only it may be a DDA issue or even a problem back at their Mediahub playout centre.
A lot of the broadcast tech’s have been forced out of the industry during all these changes so don’t be surprised to see outages on the increase across all broadcasters.
3 Likes
From The Australian:
Light has been shone on the until-now private financial affairs of billionaire Bruce Gordon’s regional broadcaster WIN Corporation, revealing that it has not been immune to the headwinds buffeting the sector.
The accounts of WIN, deputy chaired by the 94-year-old, Bermuda-based Gordon, have been grandfathered since the mid-1990s under changes to the Corporations Act at the time.
2 Likes
Needing a developer to get the site built, the WIN Grand site has now been sold for $70 million, with the new owners, Level 33, to deliver the vision provided for the site.
WIN will have future involvement by purchasing site space once complete - While Mr Gordon has sold the asset, he plans to acquire the commercial and co-working building once it is complete, which could be as much as 20,000 square metres of lettable commercial space.
“While WIN will no longer own the site, we remain committed to the project and will continue our involvement by investing back into the site,” Birketu said.”
2 Likes
Not really sure where to put this as I can’t find a thread for WIN’s solus markets and their Seven affiliate stations in those markets, so if a mod thinks this should be somewhere else, please feel free to move it 
I’ve heard that in Mt. Gambier, Riverland/Loxton, and Griffith, since the start of July WIN are no longer doing any local commercial insertion on Seven services (Seven, 7two, 7mate…they don’t have the rest yet) and are instead running a complete dirty feed off the network. I’m told that WIN reached an agreement with Seven to allow this.
Mt. Gambier and Riverland/Loxton are not surprisingly running Adelaide feed.
Griffith however has switched from using the Sydney feed to taking Seven Regional’s Wagga feed, including the Wagga local news. I guess they are geographically next to each other and the weather report on the Wagga news is at least vaguely relevant. I’m told that Seven insisted that if WIN were to run dirty feed in Griffith, it had to be of Wagga and not of Sydney. I guess Seven might be thinking they could sell a few Griffith commercials and they wouldn’t look out of place in Wagga.
As for who’s paying who and what the contractual arrangements might be, I don’t know. But it does seem like an interesting way for Seven to effectively take over a market without ownership changes triggering increased local content requirements.
10 Likes
That’s kinda a return to the previous analogue era status quo to some extent for Griffith - when AMN launched in the first place it was off air from Prime (the Orange feed apparently) - though I recall reading they substituted the local news with The Simpsons from Ten.
It makes sense from a cost perspective, the cost of working out all the feeds for the tiny markets is likely to not be worth it - while WIN have Ten already for NRN so utilising that for Griffith wouldn’t be much of a problem.
Far better outcome than just switching it off.
Things must be getting a bit dire at WIN cost cutting wise if they are scrounging around the network for cuts like this though.
5 Likes
In the later stages before WIN Pres moved to MediaHub, WIN7 Griffith took a split of Prime’s Far South Coast feed with a commercial trigger supplied by Prime so WIN could insert local commercials. I think this choice of feed was because it a) took the Sydney news and not a competing local news service, and b) had AFL at a reasonable hour. At that time Prime FSC took AFL from Seven Melbourne on Friday nights at 8:30 and got Seven Sydney’s live Sunday afternoon game.
The commercial trigger was attached to the first commercial in the break so they would get the promos at the top of the break off the feed. Alas this meant it was after the Prime Far South Coast local news updates. While these generally covered up Seven’s updates and I’m sure WIN probably ran to a fixed duration rather than relying on a trigger to roll the break when they expected an update to be present, I wonder how often when the updates got moved at short notice, WIN inadvertently showed a Far South Coast news update to Griffith viewers, who were undoubtedly thrilled to learn about playground upgrades and pothole repairs in Bega.
8 Likes
I’ve been told this is the tip of the iceberg.
4 Likes
I suspect there is some significant ground work being laid for an eventual merger with NEC, including stripping back whatever they can of the non-Nine affiliated stuff
That said, I continue to hear that the regional ad market is dire, with some markets almost impossible to sell in, in any great quantity.
5 Likes
At least one local news outlet has covered WIN’s changes in Griffith, albeit focusing on the loss of Sky News Regional. Their take on the Seven services becoming a dirty feed from Wagga is “local businesses can no longer book advertising on Channel Seven through WIN” which, as someone who understands what’s happened, seems like an odd way of describing it, but to the general public and to local advertisers this is probably exactly how they look at it.
The article doesn’t mention that those advertisers could probably buy the same airtime by talking to Seven in Wagga, but does mention one local advertiser’s concerns that similar out-of-area businesses are now having their ads broadcast to his customers, causing him more competition. Given how local advertising tends to end up on statewide filler lists anyway, I’m not convinced this is a new concern, but can accept the change would be resulting in an increased amount of out-of-area advertising being aired.
6 Likes
Oh no. How will they ever survive? (in reference to WIN pulling Sky)
2 Likes
“Last night I was watching companies in Orange and Wollongong advertise on our network without paying for it. This competes with our local businesses,”
Oh, I’m sure they’re paying for advertising
Has WIN been treating Griffith separately to the rest of Southern NSW? Surely these changes would have some impact but it’s surely not new seeing out-of-area ads?
4 Likes
Also says that Sky News is also no longer on air in WIN’s SA markets.
1 Like
I’m watching the 7 Griffith feed and it is definitely a dirty feed from Sydney. It is not the Wagga feed. They must have changed it.
7 Likes
Thanks for that update. I’ve asked around and gather it changed back to Sydney during the week at some stage. No idea why it changed but there you go.
I could speculate that local advertisers might not mind Sydney ads as much as they mind ads from competitors within driving distance, but that would just be speculation. Or maybe Seven’s astrologer told them the Sydney news forms a more harmonious conjunction with the phase of the moon.
4 Likes
Could also be that Seven News Sydney would be more relevant than Wagga Wagga news - plus avoids issue of local wagga wagga businesses taking customers from local Griffith businesses.
Can any of our Riverland or South East SA members check if Seven SA is also now a dirty relay of Seven Adelaide?
6 Likes
Welcome to Mediaspy I’m sure you will have a good time on the forum.
5 Likes
I hear on the grapevine that more changes are coming - not sure if it’s a Griffith-esque arrangement or they’re pulling the pin entirely.
2 Likes