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Nine to launch GEM for women

Updated: The Big C, Southland, Miami Medical, McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol, Wife Swap are all coming to Nine's new GEM.

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Nine’s third digital channel GEM will aim at women over 35.

As an acronym of General Entertainment and Movies, GEM promises a mix of ‘new content, classic comedies, cherished drama series, all-time favourite movies’ plus high definition sports aimed at the ‘sophisticated, discerning viewer’

It will be led by new US drama The Big C starring Laura Linney (pictured) and Oliver Platt.

Updated: Other first-run imports include Weeds, Southland, Miami Medical, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and the lifestyle programs Wife Swap, Secret Millionaire USA, The Chopping Block USA and How Clean Is Your House?

It will feature a new season of Random Acts of Kindness featuring Shelley Craft, Scott Cam, Dr Andrew Rochford and Simmone Jade Mackinnon.

Also screening are Aussie dramas McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol and The Alice, plus US crime shows CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, The Closer and Cold Case, along with movies such as Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, 21 Grams and Being Julia.

Friends will be stripped to air every week night,

The channel will officially launch on Sunday September 26th, when it is likely to be included in the OzTAM ratings panel, but it has been reported it will be on air on September 24 -a day before the blokey 7mate begins.

CEO David Gyngell said, “GEM is what its title suggests – a general entertainment and movie channel, carefully crafted and targeted like GO! before it, to appeal to a wide audience cross-section and complement Nine’s existing successful brands,” Mr Gyngell said.

GEM will also include some news and current affairs programs.

“We have a very significant investment in news and current affairs and some of that content will be repackaged to the style of GEM,” he said.

As with 7mate, the channel is set to be HD only, to replace Nine HD.

High definition sport will be seen on GEM until the digital switchover in December 2013.

Rumours on Nine’s moves, including the channel name, content pitch and launch date have been speculated for some time.

Viewers can watch GEM on channel 90 on an HD-capable digital TV, PVR or set top box.

This post updates.

132 Responses

  2. Thats great news i hope NBN will be taking it from the same day.Its great that we have these new digital channels with so much more to chose from. I like the name GEM .

  3. Whinge whinge whinge. I remember when the only choice was 2, 7, 9 & 10. And the test pattern came on at midnight. And you had to get up and turn a dial to change channel. Now I need a lie down, feeling old.

  4. why is it called GEM anyway, if anything it should be called Fem. Female, Fem, get it. its aimed at ‘Females’ so a name like that would be better, much like foxtels ‘W’ channel, aimed at Women. Nine now has 2 new channels that start with the letter G, I guess thats better then Ten’s digital channel names being just numbered!

  5. It would be nice if GEM could show sport like…ice skating events….horse events…womens cricket and soccer etc……
    And people…stop nit picking…..you have more TV choice than ever before in your whole lives……..If you do not like one channel….pick up the remote and try one of the many others on offer….

  6. Would have preferred GO to be changed to HD and make GEM SD, but what can you do? If those shows listed are the ‘flagship’ shows for the channel, i can’t see myself watching it other than for HD sport.

  9. As a non-blokey bloke I seem to get the best of bost world’s when “gender specific” channels begin. Can’t wait for GEM and 7Mate (what horrible names tho).

  10. Yes to Weeds, love that show.
    No to any sport at all, not interested at all.
    Also forget news and current affairs, as FTA has long forgotten how to do either at all decently.
    Moot point – I don’t have HD yet!

  11. Hang on, if they need to show the sport on GEM to meet their HD quota, does that imply the majority of the other programming will be SD? I hope they aren’t filling the HD channel with primarily SD content!?!

  13. @David (the poster, not the blogger),

    firstly your post seems a little confusing, firstly you ask why we need digital, and then the rest of your post seems to intimate that you think we don’t need HD, rather than we don’t need digital.

    and i can understand why you feel we don’t need hd, because fta has implemented it poorly (not entirely their fault), trying to fit in too many pixels into too narrow a bandwidth for that codec (mpeg-2).

    but if you look at foxtel’s hd implementation, it looks excellent, and well worth the upgrade from sd. in fact, i look forward to the day when they migrate all subscribers to hd and scrap their sd service completely, just like they did with analog.

  15. This channel looks terrible there is nothing I’m interested at all in only Rugby League and movies depending what the movies are but apart from that i won’t be watching but then again i need to see the full schedule before i can say it’s good or not and another problem is that it’s in HD. They should upgrade GO! to HD. by the looks of this channel i’ll be sticking with GO! and 7mate.

  17. This just seems rushed and unprepared. No odubt they don’t even have a full plan of what they’ll be showing (ala 7Mate’s “schedule”). I like the idea of a woman’s channel, especially to compete against 7Mate, but to release it a few days before (and with such little viewer notice) is just tacky and desperate.

    The whole beaucracy when it comes to the number of HD and SD channels as well as OzTAM’s stupid rules has really screwed over the viewers. Networks are feeling the pinch when it comes to ratings and for some dumb reason OzTAM thinks it’s smart to allow extra channels to be added as part of the overall ratings. They are two seperate channels that just so happens to be run by the same network, why then should they be counted as one channel? As such, Seven and Nine are releasing their new channels without properly considering a long-term plan. Look what’s happened to Go! and 7Two, they are both the dumping grounds for their flagship channels and even then many shows don’t survive. What’s going to happen when Gem and 7Mate start?!? Likewise, the loss of HD for the main channels is revolting.

    I hope my ranting view got across!

  18. I don’t see who people are complaining so much, yes the loss of HD for the main channel is a pain for the couple of shows you might want to watch in HD but you get a whole new channel for free.

    Maybe this will encourage more people to switch to digital finally and eventually the main channels can go HD… in 5 years!

    The HD sport thing is a little weird though, ladies be prepared for you favorite show to be shafted in the summer for Cricket.

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