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[Australia] SC10 to become Nine, Ten move to WIN


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And WIN will soon affiliate with Ten.

 

This happened because WIN lost a court case involving streaming Nine and it's multiplex channels to Regional Australia where WIN serves.

 

This doesn't affect NBN or Impraja Television, in which it will continue to affiliate with Nine.

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And WIN will soon affiliate with Ten.

Not something that's been confirmed yet, but many Australian media enthusiasts are predicting that will happen!

 

Even though I live in Sydney and therefore won't be affected by the affiliation switch (because Seven, Nine and Ten all own and operate stations in the bigger cities), I'll certainly be following regional Australian TV's biggest change in decades with quite an interest!

 

This happened because WIN lost a court case involving streaming Nine and it's multiplex channels to Regional Australia where WIN serves.

As someone who obviously lives in Australia, I'm certainly glad that the courts didn't rule in WIN's favour!

 

Incidentally, streams of Nine's multichannels (9Gem, 9Go! and the more recently launched 9Life) have been added to 9Now in recent days after initially only carrying the main channel since the service was launched in Late January.

 

This doesn't affect NBN or Imparja Television, in which it will continue to affiliate with Nine.

NBN will definitely continue to carry Nine programing, because they're owned by the Nine Entertainment Company (NEC), which of course also owns the Nine Network stations in the five main metropolitan/capital city markets of Australia.

 

Indeed, I would not be too surprised if NBN eventually brands itself as Nine because the NBN logo and branding (especially NBN News, which has traditionally maintained independent On-Air Presentation from Nine News much moreso than the general channel branding over the last two decades or so) was/is being phased out in favour of Channel Nine/Nine Network branding.

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These are mocks (at this stage) - but we will find out on July 1 what shape WIN News takes on air as a Ten affiliate. By SATV and MattB at Mediaspy. It's definitely an interesting time. It's possible there will be more local news in these areas, as Southern Cross has stated it intends to increase its news output - probably under the Nine News brand. WIN have so far not said much - they are the biggest news provider in the regional areas at the moment.

 

As for WIN's schedule, my guess would be - as in the mock - Ten Eyewitness News at 5.00; WIN News at 6.00; The Project at 6.30-7.30 (with Family Feud bumped to Channel 11). We'll see.. The reality may be a big big change.

 

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These are mocks (at this stage) - but we will find out on July 1 what shape WIN News takes on air as a Ten affiliate. By SATV and MattB at Mediaspy. It's definitely an interesting time. It's possible there will be more local news in these areas, as Southern Cross has stated it intends to increase its news output - probably under the Nine News brand. WIN have so far not said much - they are the biggest news provider in the regional areas at the moment.

 

As for WIN's schedule, my guess would be - as in the mock - Ten Eyewitness News at 5.00; WIN News at 6.00; The Project at 6.30-7.30 (with Family Feud bumped to Channel 11). We'll see.. The reality may be a big big change.

 

f7fa580d16b64f207c346eea82082427511596a2.png

8a549f1114edd6c1e884ae8d2ab2ab31161dcf7d.png

aea7fcc67caecebdf80eb2a49a4855d64ed8e0d5.png

c13d8393536d5e2811526461c3c7b23ef190905a_1_690x388.png

 

This makes me wonder why you don't have a job with Ten or WIN to create their graphics. This is pretty good!

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Ha! Well, it was SATV and MattB who made them, and yep - they are very good!

 

It's tricky for WIN. At the moment, WIN basically is local news as a brand, while TEN screams reality TV and younger-skewing attitude. How should "WIN-TEN" proceed? WIN could decide:

 

1) Cover all Ten branding and label everything WIN. (This is what WIN does now. It puts its logo over all the Nine network promos, sports, the Today show, everything..)*

2) Air as 'Ten' in everything except "WIN News on TEN". (WIN has a strong name in news.) (But does it make sense to be 'TEN'.. with WIN News?)

3) Call everything 'Ten' (Re-launch the news as "TEN Local News").

4) #3 and fire the majority of news staff! - becomes a relay station of the network, with a bare minimum local news.

 

My guess is option 2. I don't know - I think they have a proud little news business going, and I can't imagine WIN without news. For that matter, I can't imagine WIN without WIN (options 3 and 4) - although they are quite possible! I hope they keep news - it's a big drawcard. Whether or not they decimate their news (option 4) is a real threat and remains to be seen in the next few weeks.

 

..BIG decisions!

 

*By the way - in US terms of local and network brands co-existing alongside each other - rather than complementing Nine, WIN scrubs any hint of 'Nine' wherever humanly possible. A "WIN-TEN" brand (unmentioned 5th option) is unlikely, in my opinion, but who knows? Also, the problem with option 1 - erasing 'Ten' and covering up everything with WIN is a little dumb. Ten is a powerful brand - it would be like completely erasing the word "FOX" from a FOX station in the US.

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Not something that's been confirmed yet, but many Australian media enthusiasts are predicting that will happen!

 

Even though I live in Sydney and therefore won't be affected by the affiliation switch (because Seven, Nine and Ten all own and operate stations in the bigger cities), I'll certainly be following regional Australian TV's biggest change in decades with quite an interest!

 

 

As someone who obviously lives in Australia, I'm certainly glad that the courts didn't rule in WIN's favour!

 

Incidentally, streams of Nine's multichannels (9Gem, 9Go! and the more recently launched 9Life) have been added to 9Now in recent days after initially only carrying the main channel since the service was launched in Late January.

 

 

NBN will definitely continue to carry Nine programing, because they're owned by the Nine Entertainment Company (NEC), which of course also owns the Nine Network stations in the five main metropolitan/capital city markets of Australia.

 

Indeed, I would not be too surprised if NBN eventually brands itself as Nine because the NBN logo and branding (especially NBN News, which has traditionally maintained independent On-Air Presentation from Nine News much moreso than the general channel branding over the last two decades or so) was/is being phased out in favour of Channel Nine/Nine Network branding.

 

Be honest though... At least I knew what I was talking about which sounds pretty impressive. :)

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I wouldn't be surprised if WIN's ratings take a nosedive come this time next year due to hooking up with what is the lowest-rated network. WIN will have to maintain status quo as far as news programming otherwise people will go to Southern Cross or even Prime7.

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As far as those mocks of a Ten-affiliated WIN News are concerned, one would imagine those bulletins might look slightly different in reality now because Ten Eyewitness News: First At Five had a minor branding refresh (of sorts) on Monday!

 

I wouldn't be surprised if WIN's ratings take a nosedive come this time next year due to hooking up with what is the lowest-rated network.

I agree. Last I checked, the Ten affiliates don't rate all that well in regional Australia.

 

Also, it's now been announced that Southern Cross and Ten have signed a five year affiliation agreement for the supply of Network Ten programing to Northern NSW (AKA, NBN-land): http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2016/05/ten-continues-northern-nsw-affilate-deal-with-southern-cross.html

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nine on 5 Promo:

 

 

By the way, the reference to "welcoming back Tracy Grimshaw" and A Current Affair is made because WIN has pre-empted ACA to make way for WIN News for the last several years - despite the fact that A Current Affair is consistently one of the top 5 highest-rating programs in the nation.

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As we count down to June 1, here's a look back at an earlier Australian affiliation switch -- QTV in Townsville, Queensland, reporting that it lost its Nine affiliation in 1990:

 

 

(QTV teamed up with Ten a few days later.)

 

And a different kind of switch from Adelaide: In 1987, SAS-10, a Seven affiliate, and ADS-7, a Ten affiliate, switched their channel numbers in order to reflect their network affiliations and bring the stations in line with other major cities in Australia.

 

Here's how the switch was reported the previous day:

 

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Rugby fans in the affected region have been severely ticked off by this transition because the new Southern Cross Nine won't be running Nine's digital services on launch because they don't have the hardware yet, and this includes their high definition feed.

 

This means that Nine HD will not be available in time for the third game of the State of Origin series - a major rugby league event played between teams of players who first played professionally in Queensland and New South Wales (It's a best-of-three series, but they play all three regardless). They'll have to live with standard definition widescreen.

 

Closest U.S. equivalent would be something like this happening right in the middle of the World Series, in a secondary market of one of its teams.

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The first post-affiliation-switch WIN News for the Sunshine Coast. I'm very surprised that they kept Cool Hand Luke; the theme can now be heard on two competing channels! The lower-thirds have changed, however:

 

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You begin to wonder whether this affiliation switch will have the "WRAL effect"; was WIN dominant enough that associating them with Ten would have a positive impact on the network's performance post-switch?

 

In other news: there were three WIN co-owned digital television stations already affiliated with Nine, which had their affiliations effectively swapped with the actual WIN stations in those markets. (In some markets, as an intentional side effect of the great "aggregation", they only allowed two commercial TV stations because of three as the government thought the market could not sustain 3. In the transition to digital, the government began to allow a third, digital-only license in these two-station markets, but it has to be a joint venture between the two other owners in the market).

 

Two of these services (Mildura and Tasmania) were able to get the Nine affiliations in time for the switch, but for Western Australia's West Digital Television, it took a bit longer, which lead to an almost two-day suspension of all programming in favour of stock footage of the region.

 

 

Nine, abruptly, returned in this market right in the middle of election coverage.

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Slightly off-topic but how come the networks STILL have separate HD channels? Why can't a network like WIN transmit HD on channel 8 only AND have it to where tube-TV viewers can still see it? I never understood that.

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Slightly off-topic but how come the networks STILL have separate HD channels? Why can't a network like WIN transmit HD on channel 8 only AND have it to where tube-TV viewers can still see it? I never understood that.

The history of Digital Television in Australia is quite an interesting one. Before Digital TV started in 2001, some networks pushed for HD while others were content with SD. The initial compromise was to broadcast the main channel of each network in both SD and HD (although Seven's HD channel was only 576p "HD" up until 2007) while there were initially some very stringent multichanneling laws.

 

In what was most likely a move to protect Pay TV which was still relatively new to Australia in 2001 (just for the record, Pay TV was introduced to Australia in 1995), the commercial networks were not permitted to do multichannels as we know them now until 2007 (for HD multichanneling) and 2009 (for SD multichanneling) although they were allowed to do "multiview" broadcasts for things like sport (which they only really did for a few years before giving up) and datacast services like the old "Video Program Guide" or VPG channels.

 

The ABC and SBS have always been allowed to broadcast multichannels, but for the first 5 or so years of Digital TV they were very restricted in the type of programing that they could show. Basically anything resembling entertainment wasn't allowed to be shown but programs of niche appeal were permitted. Early multichannel efforts from the ABC & SBS included ABC Kids/Fly TV (2001-03, with mainly kids/youth-appealing programing), the SBS World News Channel (2002-09, with only foreign language news bulletins) and a initially very content genre-restricted ABC2 from it's launch in 2005. Not exactly riveting stuff which would get Digital TVs and set top boxes flying off of store shelves and into Australian homes!

 

From 2009 until the analogue switchoff, the commercial networks were only allowed to broadcast 2 SD channels and 1 HD channel and the networks legally had to broadcast their primary channel in SD until last year when there was an amendment made to the rules.

 

As far as HD is concerned, for the most part it was a simulcast of the primary channel programing up until 2009-10 when all networks except SBS decided to use their HD service for new multichannels (7mate, GEM, One HD and ABC News 24). It's only relatively recently that the commercial networks have started to reintroduce a HD broadcast of their main channel, but this time using newer MPEG4 encoding rather than the original MPEG2 encoding system for Australian digital TV. The current incarnation of Nine HD launched on November 26 last year (with multichannel 9Life also launching on that date), while Ten HD returned on March 2.

 

Seven's strategy for HD is probably the most interesting and definitely the most annoying judging by the opinions of many Australian TV enthusiasts on Media Spy, myself included. 7mate had previously been the HD channel in all markets but as of May this year, 7mate now broadcasts in SD but the network's MPEG4 HD service is dependant on what channel the coverage of AFL (Australian Rules Football) primarily airs on where you live. Melbourne and Adelaide currently get Seven HD, while Sydney, Brisbane and Perth currently get 7mate HD. Regional markets (including those in regional Queensland, where Seven themselves do own and operate the stations) still only get 7mate in it's original MPEG2 HD format. I believe that the ABC was originally planning to reintroduce a HD channel in June, but those plans have since been pushed back due to the WIN/SCA affiliation swap.

 

Probably the main reason why Australian networks continue to broadcast a SD channel is so everyone can watch the main channel (even on equipment which can't receive MPEG4 channels, of which there is a lot of out there!). And probably the main reason for the use of secondary LCNs (short for Logical Channel Numbers - basically virtual channel numbers. Eg, Nine's digital frequency is mainly VHF-8 in metro markets but the LCN is 9 for their primary channel) by the networks is so they don't annoy metropolitan viewers who are so used to seeing the main channels at their "traditional" spots on the dial. The main reason why Seven, Nine and Ten are branded that way is because those numbers used to be the analogue frequency of their main channel in major metropolitan markets, hence why Seven has the "7" range of LCNs, Nine has the "9" range and Ten has the "1" range.

 

Apologies if I've gone off topic too much and if the post was too long, but I hope that helps explains the situation (both historically and currently) regarding Digital TV in Australia! :)

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The history of Digital Television in Australia is quite an interesting one. Before Digital TV started in 2001, some networks pushed for HD while others were content with SD. The initial compromise was to broadcast the main channel of each network in both SD and HD (although Seven's HD channel was only 576p "HD" up until 2007) while there were initially some very stringent multichanneling laws.

 

In what was most likely a move to protect Pay TV which was still relatively new to Australia in 2001 (just for the record, Pay TV was introduced to Australia in 1995), the commercial networks were not permitted to do multichannels as we know them now until 2007 (for HD multichanneling) and 2009 (for SD multichanneling) although they were allowed to do "multiview" broadcasts for things like sport (which they only really did for a few years before giving up) and datacast services like the old "Video Program Guide" or VPG channels.

 

The ABC and SBS have always been allowed to broadcast multichannels, but for the first 5 or so years of Digital TV they were very restricted in the type of programing that they could show. Basically anything resembling entertainment wasn't allowed to be shown but programs of niche appeal were permitted. Early multichannel efforts from the ABC & SBS included ABC Kids/Fly TV (2001-03, with mainly kids/youth-appealing programing), the SBS World News Channel (2002-09, with only foreign language news bulletins) and a initially very content genre-restricted ABC2 from it's launch in 2005. Not exactly riveting stuff which would get Digital TVs and set top boxes flying off of store shelves and into Australian homes!

 

From 2009 until the analogue switchoff, the commercial networks were only allowed to broadcast 2 SD channels and 1 HD channel and the networks legally had to broadcast their primary channel in SD until last year when there was an amendment made to the rules.

 

As far as HD is concerned, for the most part it was a simulcast of the primary channel programing up until 2009-10 when all networks except SBS decided to use their HD service for new multichannels (7mate, GEM, One HD and ABC News 24). It's only relatively recently that the commercial networks have started to reintroduce a HD broadcast of their main channel, but this time using newer MPEG4 encoding rather than the original MPEG2 encoding system for Australian digital TV. The current incarnation of Nine HD launched on November 26 last year (with multichannel 9Life also launching on that date), while Ten HD returned on March 2.

 

Seven's strategy for HD is probably the most interesting and definitely the most annoying judging by the opinions of many Australian TV enthusiasts on Media Spy, myself included. 7mate had previously been the HD channel in all markets but as of May this year, 7mate now broadcasts in SD but the network's MPEG4 HD service is dependant on what channel the coverage of AFL (Australian Rules Football) primarily airs on where you live. Melbourne and Adelaide currently get Seven HD, while Sydney, Brisbane and Perth currently get 7mate HD. Regional markets (including those in regional Queensland, where Seven themselves do own and operate the stations) still only get 7mate in it's original MPEG2 HD format. I believe that the ABC was originally planning to reintroduce a HD channel in June, but those plans have since been pushed back due to the WIN/SCA affiliation swap.

 

Probably the main reason why Australian networks continue to broadcast a SD channel is so everyone can watch the main channel (even on equipment which can't receive MPEG4 channels, of which there is a lot of out there!). And probably the main reason for the use of secondary LCNs (short for Logical Channel Numbers - basically virtual channel numbers. Eg, Nine's digital frequency is mainly VHF-8 in metro markets but the LCN is 9 for their primary channel) by the networks is so they don't annoy metropolitan viewers who are so used to seeing the main channels at their "traditional" spots on the dial. The main reason why Seven, Nine and Ten are branded that way is because those numbers used to be the analogue frequency of their main channel in major metropolitan markets, hence why Seven has the "7" range of LCNs, Nine has the "9" range and Ten has the "1" range.

 

Apologies if I've gone off topic too much and if the post was too long, but I hope that helps explains the situation (both historically and currently) regarding Digital TV in Australia! :)

 

 

Thank you for the post, it's very concise and we appreciate it.

Question?

I noticed that the 9Nine newscopter didn't have a visible microwave antenna on the belly. Does it broadcast live?

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