Seven digital tipped as ’72’
Nothing has been confirmed by the network but a report today says Seven's new digital channel will be called 72.
- Published by David Knox
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A report today says Seven’s new digital channel will be called 72.
But nothing has been confirmed by the network.
The article in the Sydney Morning Herald tips a lifestyle channel, but then says it may carry current series of high-rating shows including Desperate Housewives.
It also says Seven is understood to be exploring a youth-oriented schedule, called 17, to start next year.
Seven would not confirm or deny the name or timing of the new channel but industry sources told the Herald all of Seven’s launch activities and conversations revolved around 72.’
Seven’s chief sales and digital officer, James Warburton, said, ”You have a couple of new digital channels which, in the case of ONE during prime time, is pulling about 27,000 25- to 54-year-olds and GO! doing 47,000 on average for the same demographics and times.
“And then you have Channel Seven averaging 1.2 million with 11 of the top 20 shows each week.”
Warburton would only indicate that it would reveal “a comprehensive offering at an appropriate time and that time is approaching.”
Get him a job in Canberra!
While ONE turns 6 months tomorrow, GO! has its official launch on October 4th.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
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42 Responses
This explains all the lag between digital and analogue as I have at my house because my mother doesn’t believe in digital yet she praises its programming sometimes
Yep sounds fine to me too, just wish 7 would officially announce the bloody thing.
It’s allegedly a hybrid channel – lifestyle, entertainment, news from MSNBC and some documentaries. Sounds fine to me 🙂
if they do use the 72 LCN i think 7 will choose to call it “seven two” rather than “seventy-two” makes more sense and sounds better, it is the second channel 7. i think this is likely to be confirmed by 7 as the LCN they will use because there are people on the DTV forum noticing that they are testing out 72 as a separate stream to work out how to best balance the bitrate between the 3 channels. also interesting to note they looked at 25-54 year olds, this is not the target demographic for either GO or ONE, but it is 7’s best demo, if they looked at 16-39 it would be a different story. why exactly do they think the ratings of 72 will be so much better than GO or ONE? i think this is one claim that channel 7 will not be able to back up, if they had such a magic-bullet schedule why did it take them this long to launch it.
I love the concept, but I don’t like that proposed name “72” – it doesn’t take into account the fact that Prime and the other regional affiliates have been assigned channel 62 for the same channel in their own areas. How about a less-blatant name. I’ve got a suggestion – “AU Living” – based on the old “UK Living” brand for what is now “Living TV” over in the UK. As for their third SD channel, that could be further split into a daytime youth programming block and a separate nostalgia channel at night time.
Oh – note to Seven – how can you consider Go!’s ratings when they haven’t officially launched it yet? It hasn’t been promoted at all on Nine AFAIK so chances are the vast majority of people who even have digital haven’t even caught on to its existence yet.
Come 4 October I expect to see a lot of promos and cross promotion on Nine for Go!. And its ratings will only get better.
I don’t watch *anything* on Nine – seriously not one show – but on Go! I’m watching Seinfeld, Survivor, Charlie’s Angels, and soon Weeds and Nip/Tuck (well admittedly in the case of every show I’ve named, again, but hey, it’s a start).
Seven, stick Deal on this channel, and hopefully some Queenslanders will watch.
Ok, so we all agree that “seventytwo” and “seventeen” are dumb names for TV channels and we all probably think we could do a better job of running them than the muppets who are currently running them, so …
What would you call your brand new digital channel, be it:
Lifestyle?
Lifestyle + desperate housewives (wouldn’t that just be a general channel then??)
Or something completely different?
An whilst those in charge of the 7, 9 and 10 networks might have all the intelligence of a muppet (not counting Beaker of course – the worlds all time coolest scientist!), at least be thankful that 9 and 10 are giving you extra digital channels.
Here in regional South Australia I’d be happy to have some extra-channel-giving muppets in charge of TV rather than investment bankers – still no extra commercial digital channels and no plans of launching them anytime soon – it’s a good thing I like the ABC!
How pompous, you can’t compare One and GO!’s ratings with Seven’s. Almost twice as many people have access to Seven compared to One and GO!. I don’t know exactly what they’re thinking with that 17 service, as Ten obviously owns that channel. But then again it could work, just like One on channel 50 in Tasmania and Ten on channel 5.
@Paull, how could 7 squared work with 72? Isn’t 7 squared 49? And would that be your hundredth or thousandth comment on GO! being blocky?
SO 72 will be basically more of the same from 7 and 7Teen a little more youth as predicted, all the networks even ABC with ABC2 will have a youth (whatever that means to you) channel to cancel each other out there while the main channels continue to dominate. Only ONE has something unique.
Hmm, when I think about the Lifestyle/Housewives mix, it almost sounds like Seven is contemplating something in line with Arena/Bravo, with the latter offering shows like Six Feet Under, in addition to their heavy lineup of reality shows.
Unless Seven were able to secure the rerun rights of some of the top tier reality shows, e.g. Top Chef, Project Runway, then they’ll be hard tasked to top the ratings of GO (while ONE is a great channel, it will never be a ratings powerhouse).
Actually, when I think about it, any which way it will be hard to provide a more comprehensive and attractive service than GO (never fails to shock me that it was the brainchild of Nine).
I do see where Mac is coming from. I’ve read the news link as well and he does seem to be suggesting that Go! and One are low raters by compared to Seven;s main channel.
What he does not realise is that digital take up is slow in this country and not everyone is going to have access to these new digital channels until 2013 (if they are still around by then). He implies it with his arrogance, he probably didn’t mean to.
But he has to realise that the new channel is not going to score big audiences like normal 7 does, he better be prepared for ratings to be as low as 300,000. (or whatever).
how stupid of warburton to compare the ratings of one and go to seven, does he think that sevens multi channel is going to rate better than channel ten and nine? nine and go are competing with seven as one channel, it’s not as if go! is trying to compete with channel 7 directly. besides seven are the ones that are behind, they havn;t even launched their multi-channel yet! it also interested how he only talks about the 25-54 demos of one and go but then for seven he includes all demos.
Mac probably best to read the article via the link, though I don’t believe I put a different spin / context on it. Frankly there was a lot in it that left me confused anyway. Lifestyle Channel / Desperate Housewives????
Nine had arrogance for years…it only shows now that 7 are arrogant as ….or maybe its fear of losing the #1 title…whatever it is…i still applaud Sean M comments…could not have said it better…
If that 3-views idea ever happens (although Prime is already transmitting View 1, View 2, View 3 on different channels) it’s will not be very useful in a live sports program, since my digital TV and STB go to black for 2-3 seconds when switching channels, unlike the old analogue sets which switch instantly. Both ACMA and FreeTV promote it on their websites.