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9Rush channel to launch with “adrenaline reality”

Nine's male-skewing reality channel will feature Top Gear, Bear Grylls & more.

Nine will launch “high adrenaline reality” channel 9Rush, a joint venture with Discovery Inc. on April 5.

The male-skewing channel will launch on Channel 96 at 7.00pm on Sunday, April 5 with the exclusive premiere of the new series of Top Gear UK.

Drawing upon Discovery’s back catalogue of real-life entertainment, all titles are brand new, free-to-air-first programs including “digging for riches in Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail, street racing in Oklahoma with Street Outlaws, kicking in doors with the police in the USA on Live PD, transforming rusty wrecks into one-of-a-kind rides with Kindig Customs, or extreme survival off the grid in the wilderness with Alaskan Bush People.”

It will also include free-to-air, premiere episodes of Running Wild with Bear Grylls, and Man vs Wild.

“At Discovery, we’re dedicated to powering the passions of our audiences with the best in real-life entertainment,” Rebecca Kent, General Manager, Discovery Australia, New Zealand & Pacific Islands, says of the extension of Nine and Discovery’s existing partnership.

“Action and adventure is a huge part of our DNA and we’re proud to be bringing our globally renowned and loved programming to 9Rush. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with Nine and connecting new viewers to Discovery’s powerhouse programs.”

“Nine are thrilled to partner with Discovery to deliver premium, free to air first content. As a global leader in real-life entertainment, Discovery’s dedication to serving audiences with content which inspires, informs and entertains is second to none,” said Nine’s Program Director, Hamish Turner.

“The deal will deliver Nine and 9Now thousands of free to air premiere episodes. 9Rush audiences will be spoilt for choice, with an extensive range of high action and adventure programming, available on Australia’s latest channel and available free on 9Now.”

28 Responses

  1. No doubt Mildura will miss out on this channel like 9HD & 9Life the S38B licences In markets like Mildura are a mess these should be put up for auction & a third player Invited Into these markets.

    1. I’m guessing this will be in the new format of MPEG4/H.264 to allow less use of bandwidth ,so it’ll be either in SD/HD ,then again they may be desperate and accommodate those with old MPEG2 TVs and STBs so time will tell.
      Any idea when it’ll start testing David.

  2. 9Rush will it be available in regional areas (Southern Cross 9 (nsw/act/vic) /Imparja (qld, nt/sa)/Tasmanian Digital Television etc)?
    I know it will be available on 9Now but some of us here in regional Australia do not have access to unlimited data on NBN (satellite services and some wireless services in regional areas can have data caps) etc.

  3. Sounds very much like 7mate without scripted content.
    I wonder how long it’ll take before they start showing action movies like Fast and Furious etc

  4. Another channel to spread advertiser’s over in a depressed market. 7 tried adding more with Food Network and closed it. More does not mean better.

    1. 7 were definately being greedy trying to steal SBS success there and it backfired. I think a thought out channel can work well (9rush may get a dedicated audience like 9life) if its not a channel thrown in to just try grab some share.

    1. Unlikely that Eurosport will be available on 9Rush. In Europe and other areas it can only be accessed via Pay TV or the Eurosport Player App (available in Europe for a fee of £59.99/€69.99 per year or £5.99/€6.99 per month) The Eurosport Player is not available in Australia yet.

      Eurosport is available in Australia via Pay TV Fetch for an extra $8.99 per month.

      Discovery own some free to air tv stations in Europe. It does air some sports like the Olympics on FTA due to rights holder requests/contracts. But as Discovery does not fully own 9Rush it would be unlikely that it would send some exclusive sport to FTA without some incentives.

      1. Plus Seven has the broadcast rights for the Olympics, so Eurosport’s coverage of the Olympics is unlikely. And other networks has a “3-3-3 rule” when it comes to the Olympics, in which they are only allowed to show 3 minutes of highlights, 3 times a day at least 3 hours apart.

  5. Hopefully Live PD airs roughly in line with the US rather than being months out of date, as it was when they tried it on 9Gem.

    Live would be great as it would be weekend late morning / early afternoon here, but that constrains it to a PG rating which probably wouldn’t work. Same day airing on Saturday/Sunday late night would probably work well.

    1. 60 Min Original “Live” Episodes are rated MA15+, so only after 8.30PM on FTA.
      30 Min Repeats episodes are rated M, so after 7.30PM and between 12PM to 3PM on school days.

    1. Heard same too.
      No real need for 9gem to have HD if trade-off is another channel or two. Only really nrl in selected areas on 9Gem plus Men’s T20 World cup (cricket) in October/November need HD.

      1. Actually, SBS has 3 HD channels (SBS HD, SBS Viceland and SBS World Movies), 3 SD channels (SBS, SBS Food and NITV) plus a lot of audio channels. Plus it looks like 9Rush will be in MPEG-4, like the HD channels on Freeview.

        As people often say, never say never.

    2. I think the SD channel will go for 9Rush and 9Gem to be exclusively in HD, not the other way round. I remember last year, SBS closed down Viceland SD for World Movies, a HD channel. So there is a possibility that 9Rush will be exclusively in HD, ala Viceland and World Movies (although World Movies is available in SD on Foxtel in addition to HD which everyone gets on Freeview).

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