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Nine to stream all channels, 7Live to have full launch next week.

OzTAM about to launch Video measurements across TV, mobile, tablet and desktop, in early November.

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Nine is set to join Seven with the streaming of its three channels online.

Nine will begin Upfronts with advertisers this week, in which it is expected to confirm all three channels will be available on desktop and devices.

It follows Seven announcing its plans for 7Live earlier this year, and streaming Sunrise on tablets and phones in August.

Australian Financial Review reports Seven will now bring its streaming plans forward, from December 1st to next week, taking advantage of Melbourne Cup Day, Tuesday November 3rd.

The streaming will be geo-located to local markets.

But the move has raised the ire of regional broadcasters lobbying the government to remove the reach rule and arguing that current rules are out of date.

Andrew Lancaster, chief executive of Nine’s regional affiliate, WIN Corporation, said: “It makes no sense that regional broadcasters are constrained by the reach rule whilst metro broadcasters are free to stream their channels across regional Australia. The legislation needs to enter the same century as the technology.”

John Hartigan, chairman of Seven’s regional affiliate, Prime Media, added, of Nine’s plans: “It’s further proof of how outdated the media legislation is. I don’t have any issues with Nine, as we are not their affiliate partner, but this shows our laws are stuck in horse and buggy days when the rest of the world is turbocharged.”

Excitingly, OzTAM is finally set to launch an audience measure called Video Player Measurement, which will combine audiences across TV, mobile, tablet and desktop, in early November.

23 Responses

  1. I think people are missing the point here. Ignore the technology debate – (broadcast vs streaming) – for a moment.

    Television networks – (regional and metropolitan) – pay their licence fees for exclusive access to a licence area. Regional networks pay to have their area, and metropolitan networks pay to have their area. Seven and Nine will now effectively be “broadcasting” nationwide, in many instances outside of their licence areas.

    Now, because commercial television is primary funded by advertising revenue, if people are out on the bus watching a Channel Seven streaming service in downtown Ballarat – (where Prime7 is the licensed carrier of Seven Network programming) – the value of advertising revenue for Prime7 is diluted, because the person on the bus is watching metropolitan advertising.

    The metropolitan networks are using the fact that the current legislation does…

    1. Where your example falls down is that your expecting a user to pay high mobile data cost to stream 7 or 9 on a bus in the middle of ballarat. How good do you think mobile data reception in ballarat or quite frankly regional Australia is? I find blackspots with mobile data in metropolitan Melbourne. How good do you think fixed broadband will be in regional Australia. How big do you think data allowances or speeds in regional Australia are to be able to stream to the point where they are able to watch an ongoing television stream? I’m sure these streams would be data hogs and would require a good speed to avoid buffering. And then there’s the viewers who pvr everything.

      1. @tvf Where your argument falls down is you pick on the one example given, when there are a multitude of possible scenarios. They could be using the wifi from the local McDonalds, that negates all the points you’ve just made.

        1. Did you read Michael Wyres comment?
          He used the bus example and I put holes in the bus example.

          With your McDonald’s example. How many tvs are there in McDonald’s? None I would say therefore why can’t people use their phones as an option. How long are they going to be in McDonald’s to stream. I doubt it would be a very long period. How good would the stream be? If lots of people are using it. It would probably be slow and would be buffering quite a bit and wouldn’t be good to stream video.

          You keep giving these arguments and I keep finding wholes in each one.

    2. Those license fees are for utilising public airwaves and broadcasting over the air.
      Internet streaming is not related to that. Yes, the legislation is out of date and needs to be updated – but the affiliates do not own the digital rights for programming – they have not paid for them. And thus 7 and 9 own national web rights to their broadcasting – and affiliates have known this for a long time. The affils have sat on their hands not purchasing digital rights, developing catch up players or moving in the digital space at all. Now the networks are streaming on the net with their own programming – the affil are up in arms.

  2. Does this include sport like the cricket, and NRL? What about AFL on 7? Does this also mean that their is no point in buying a digital subscription to watch these sports when out and about (or just in bed on your tablet/phone)?

      1. Yeah but the Telstra live pass only covers all games on small devices and 7 will only air the matches on the 7 stream that already air on free to air anyway. So surely what 7 is doing wouldn’t impact on what Telstra is doing.

        Also you can’t for example subscribe to an afl live pass on a pc through the afl website because you can only subscribe through an official afl app and there is no app for a pc and the pc doesn’t fall into the small devices category anyway to be eligible for a pass. Alternatively you would have the option to watch afl through the 7 stream on a pc. So availability will vary on devices too.

  3. I don’t get why the regionals jump up and down about this. They haven’t negotiated/paid for the digital rights to their own programming. Otherwise they could be streaming online too.

    If they had some foresight and vision they would have negotiated to buy digital rights as part of affiliation deals.

    Thet don’t even attempt to have catch up players. It’s hard to feel sorry for them when all they do is cut local news and complain about how tough they have it.

    1. The “Save Our Voices” campaign is all about the regional broadcasters trying to either a) buy metro TV broadcasters or b) sell themselves to the metro TV broadcasters.

      I can’t imagine the metro broadcasters make much money on their “catch up” services, and I don’t think the regional broadcasters could individually make enough to make it worthwhile. Collectively, they possibly could. If WIN had kept Nine Perth and Adelaide, perhaps. There’s no point for them to launch services that would lose them money. That’s not a lack of foresight or vision.

  4. Geo-located TV – use a VPN as many overseas VPN’s have servers in our cap cities. It doesn’t matter if they log your activities, no-one is going to care if your metadata points to Ch9. However, internet connections in the bush can be pretty poor and streaming TV will chew through your data allowance. Unless you’re a sports tragic or want to switch timezones, I can’t see the point.

    On the other hand…the networks could remove geo-blocking and insert local ads according to the viewers geo-location. Give the local ad revenue to the regionals and keep a proportion from the national advertisers.

  5. Windows 10 universal app please?

    Will they create a new site for this like 7 has or use jumpin? Lets hope they avoid jumpin cause its just awful and use better video and sound technology.

  6. The new Apple TV launches next week with apps. I think this is the reason why both 7 and 9 have made announcements? Ten is already on there as catchup, so could we see their apps appear as well? Maybe (finally) iView too??

    1. Fetch still doesn’t have jumpin. The only one missing.
      Windows phone has no plus7, jumpin or iview. Tenplay video isn’t working. SBS on demand has less programs available compared to website or iPad app.
      Set up a windows 8 pc for someone a few weeks ago. No plus7, jumpin or iview app. Tenplay app video playback not working. Sbs app wouldn’t connect to a working internet connection.
      Other platforms are missing catch up services too.

        1. I’ve uninstalled the tenplay app from my windows phone. Hasn’t been working for properly for over a month and ten have decided to ignore the very recent multiple bad reviews for the app all stating the same problem.

          1. @Ikernan
            I don’t go around bagging people for their device choices and I expect the same in return. I’m not asking you to use a windows phone.

          2. @Bazza
            I don’t find my device choice limiting at all. Tenplay have made an app available and it doesn’t work. Simple as that. Maybe you should read this article where others have commented that they’ve had trouble with the tenplay android app.
            http://tvtonight.com.au/2015/10/tenplay-ticks-the-platforms.html
            Or maybe you should go to the google play app store and check out the recent reviews on tenplay. Seems they are having some of the issues us users on the tenplay windows app are experiencing. I see a lot of very recent 1 star reviews for the tenplay app on android.

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