★★★★★ 0/5

Reminder to Seven and Nine

It's February -and still no word on plans for Seven and Nine's new channels.

31
Leave a comment

reminderWe’re now into the second month of 2009, less than a week to go before the official start of ratings.

And still, no word from Seven and Nine on their plans for a second digital channel.

Commercial Free to Air networks were free to launch these a month ago. While TEN has promised its 24 hr sports channel ONE HD (and ONE SD) from April, Seven and Nine are still to announce their intentions.

Networks have had months to prepare for these channels, which we are promised will comprise part of Freeview’s 15 channels. Sexy new ads tease us to convert to digital and HD, but the actual content remains a mystery.

On that note too, we still don’t  have a start-up date for Freeview either.

31 Responses

  1. I wouldn’t get my hopes up seeing any new SD channels from 7 or 9 at this stage in the year, a slight chance maybe around November , but I can’t see them launching a new Standard Definition channel this year. I think they waited way too late. Like mentioned, they had years to plan this but nothing has come of it.

  2. I agree with Andrew B on February 2nd, 2009 12:30 pm:

    The networks are afraid of providing extra content because *shock* viewers might move from their main channel

    But have the networks also considered that this can be used to their advantage by getting eyeballs tuned to their second channel that would normally not watch whatever is on the main channel, and might actually stop some viewers darting across to Foxtel. Yes, actually “growing” their audience!! So when Seven is showing Desperate Housewives perhaps their second channel could show some Arnie Schwarzenegger flick or Blokesworld or whatever (just examples) and you’ve got both the girls and the guys tuning into your channel(s), whereas with just DH you’ve mostly got the females and perhaps not so many of the guys. Complementary programming rather than competitive.

  4. # Paull on February 2nd, 2009 8:40 pm

    “it’s also disappointing that the HD channels have practically stopped showing anything different from the main channel”

    Agreed! For a while things were looking up for digital FTA television, with different programming on 7, 9, 10, then… it all disappeared. What the hell happened?

    Lame. Lame. Lame.

  5. So many opportunities, so little imagination. In 20 years Freeview will be a case study in head in the sand management. My prediction: the first management to throw out the 1980 Packer rulebook that rules Commercial TV, will dominate for years to come.

  9. Hmmm, we know ABC is going to produce a childrens channel closing down overnight and a 24 hours news channel airing press conferences and the like in their entirety or so a boss said on the Press Club, (now that is going to be good it’s turning into a real chore reading transcripts from press conferences to get the truth), I’m going to love listening and watching that.

    TEN is producing ONE HD, a 24 hour sports channel, but no word on the second digital channel yet, hopefully scifi will turn up on it, crossing fingers

    Nine and Seven phfffft does anyone really care? A scripted series never stays on those channels long enough to watch all the episodes, so who bothers, folks just download stuff that nine and seven get the rights to

    All the channels are producing the biggest turnoff of all, reality tv, never a bigger cause to stick one’s finger down one’s throat is reality tv, dancin’, singin’, weight loosin’, cookin’, house sellin’, renovationin’ the whole gamit, what an absolute turnoff, I’m hoping they don’t clog up the extra channels with that stuff

    A text explosion, wow, good on me, sorry David 🙁

  12. They should take the second channels away from them and give it to someone else, if 7/9 don’t use them properly.

    I think ABC and SBS could make use of them. There could be SBS foreign news, ABC Kids and then they still have another channel each to show niche programs or sports. I would like SBS to show more football matches from overseas on their second channel.

    I hope they don’t use it as a 2 hour delay channel. That is just a cheap variation of their existing programming. It does not give us new programs. It seems like a wasted opportunity.

  14. The claim for 15 channels is misleading given that the HD channels (except OneHD when it starts) are largely simulcast of SD channels with token (if any) amounts of their own programming. And ABC and SBS are already offering 2 SD channels each. I think the best case scenario we can expect in Freeview is 10 unique channels + 5 simulcasts (remembering too, that One HD will be simulcast on Ten’s second SD channel) which in effect is only 3 channels more than what we currently have with digital. And that’s provided that Seven and Nine ever get around to launching a second SD channel each.

  16. I suggest nothing will happen until ONE starts in April.

    Not only would these channels have the rights to alot of shows and movies they don’t currently show, they have enough past shows that are not on anywhere at the moment that could easily fill many channels!

    I also believe there is some fear to providing alternative viewing during prime time as it will take viewers away from their main shows. Freeview and digital won’t take off until 2013 when analoge switches off. It’ll be a long wait…

  17. Time-shift (or +2) channels aren’t always practical with FTA because of various timeslot restrictions and classifications.

    But C4 in the UK has dedicated music (4music) and movie (film4) channels, perhaps Nine could do one, and Seven do another! Surely one of them has enough movies sitting on the shelves with their various programming supply deals to be able to fill one channel and it doesn’t even need to be 24/7.

  18. i’d say the reason that they aren’t up yet is because every slight opportunity to advertise at this time of the year is treasured so much so imagine how hard it would be to promote 2 networks. that said there’s no reason they can’t ‘announce’ the plans for april or may.

    my prediction is that both (or atleast 7) will do alternate programming, 7’s will mainly feature comedy because they have done a US comedy scoop this year including; in the motherhood, cupid, castle, gary unmarried, on top of 30 rock, scrubs, family guy, american dad, according to jim, reaper, kath and kim US and samantha who which can never fit in good timeslot on 7.
    as for 9. i always thought would do an alternate program channel but seeing as they sold a lot of the potential shows to foxtel i’d say a 2+ or a catchup channel is on the table.

  19. how ironic, i gave a talk on this at uni just yesterday, they said we could talk about anything so i chose freeview and digital tv coz i didn’t have to do any new research. my first sentence was “freeview, the digital devolution, some very bad decisions and a whole lot of misinformation”. mostly i focused on how 10 are wasting the opportunity to have a 3rd channel and just sticking with 2, but i also mentioned that 7 and 9 have not said anything and so expectations are pretty low, dear god i hope we don’t just end up with 2 timeshifted channels from them.

  22. Thats because there is nothing to say.
    They chop and change programs willy nilly as it is now, so could that mean that there nothing to put on an extra channel?

    I checked the ninemsn website for Melbourne TV guide yesterday, it did not even show an SD and a HD channel, it only showed one channel. Also, there were lots of TBA’s for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I checked the yahoo7 guide for Melbourne, guess what, for CH9 it actually had the programs listed.
    So, ninemsn shows TBA for its own CH9 but Yahoo7 shows the programs for CH9?
    How pathetic is that.

  23. It almost makes me cry to see how our commercial FTAs treat digital with such disinterest (Freeview?? so much hype and nothing to back it up!), with the possible exception of Ten but they’re not perfect either (eg. no HD programs after April unless you’re into sports?)

    The networks (particularly 7 and 9) should be actively pursuing this opportunity to try and stop the flow of viewers flocking to pay TV but instead keep their heads in the sand and hope digital TV will just go away while they keep plugging away with outdated single-channel services. While it’s not always wise to compare Australia with other countries, our commercial networks could learn something from the way the UK networks have tackled multi-channelling.

    Alternatively if our networks are not willing to participate in the new world of digital multi-channelling then they should hand back their digital frequencies and have them assigned to someone who can do something decent with them!

  24. They don’t have a plan, This is just a sham to draw attention to themselves and keep the people in suspence.

    The only channel thats ‘serious’ about freeview is Channel-10 when they announced ‘one-sport’ it showed they are willing to have a crack at it.

    the difference beetween PayTV and the FTA networks, PayTV say something.. They do it!

  25. Was that your quote in the news limited papers on Saturday, David, which said that Freeview was ‘like a band-aid for an axe wound’ (from an unnamed media commentator)? It was very clever whoever it was.

Leave a Reply