Australian Regional TV realignment

July 1st sees a huge shake up in regional TV in parts of Australia following a change in affiliation agreements which saw Nine strike a deal with Southern Cross, forcing their former partner WIN to affiliate with Ten, previously affiliated with Southern Cross (SC10).

Southern Cross have now release a promo promoting the change, and a website http://www.nineon5.com.au/:


They will brand their channels as 9 but due to how the LCNs are allocated will continue to broadcast on their dedicate LCNs of 5 (and the 50s). Regional broadcasters don't broadcast on the obvious LCNs to avoid confusion in areas where their might be an overlap with the metro station.

WIN, which has it's own identity in the 9 style, will take over airing Ten programming in the areas affected, but on channel 8 (and the 80s). If that wasn't confusing enough in other areas WIN retain affiliation with 9 and SC with Ten.

The situation arises because of a "reach rule" in Australia which prevents commercial broadcasters reaching more than 75% of the audience, so in regional areas the main networks have affiliate agreements - usually with Prime for 7 and until now WIN for 9 and Southern Cross for 10.

I guess the closest parallel here is what happened with TV3, which was in all but name effectively an affiliate of ITV, only for ITV to strike a better deal with UTV (and then be bought out, which is what is expected to happen in Australia as the reach rule is likely to be relaxed sooner or later).

Here's a report from WIN News about their upcoming affiliation with Ten:

Such affiliation switches are relatively common in the United States and Canada. Here's an example from 1995:



(BTW, HERE's a video explaining why this affiliation change happened. But be warned: It's very complicated.)

Here's a WIN promo for the new Ten affiliation:

Out of interest, are there still parts of regional Australia that aren't fully aggregated (ie. that do not have three commercial TV stations, each affiliated to one of the metro stations). I think parts of SA may still have only two commercial channels?

Also, for a long time parts of the NT had regional stations that worked off an off-air QLD feed, meaning the 6pm News was actually shown at 5.30, etc due to NT and QLD being in different time zones. Have satellite feeds resolved this anomaly?

There are definately areas where WIN or SC are the affiliates of two networks but I think Digital TV has meant the three commercial channels are available, although not necessarily all the digital channels associated with them.

Do you mean for example they have the programmes from one network on their main channel and a second network on one of their additional digital channels?

That's what I was thinking but it seems in practically all cases there are now the three main commercial channels in all commercial areas, though often one of them is broadcast through a company set up by the local affiliate of another.

Will we see WIN News with Ten Eyewitness News theme, and regional bulletins on Nine reduced to just-news-summaries as Southern Cross Ten used to do?

I'm not sure about WIN News, but according to this post by user NQCQTV2 on MediaSpy, Southern Cross's news summaries will remain unchanged for now (just with new branding):



Some have speculated, however, that Nine may want Southern Cross to produce full-length regional newscasts eventually.

Here's an earlier Australian channel 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 (poor picture quality):



And here's QTV in regional Queensland reporting that it lost its Nine affiliation in 1990:

A WIN News Queensland promo featuring WIN's new lineup: