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Less movies, more drama on 7flix.

Movie channel is now without movies two nights of the week, as it finds its feet.

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7flix

7flix is amending its schedule again, with more US series in place of movies.

Criminal Minds repeats will now air at 8:30pm, 9:30pm and 10:30pm Thursday. The change follows Grey’s Anatomy at 8:30pm Mondays, despite the channel launching with a promise of 8:30 movies every night of the week.

“From the very beginning, the promos for 7flix featured movie content and US dramas/comedies,” a Seven spokesperson said.

“We launched with 8.30 movies every night, but the plan was always to introduce US drama into the primetime schedule – which we’d done within the first month as you know.”

The launch of any new channel is likely to be subject to programming changes as it beds in, but 7flix has had a modest launch, last week averaging  1.5% share. The challenge will be to build an audience whilst it sticks to its channel brand of movies.

“7flix remains on brand as a place to view movies you love and great US drama,” said the spokesperson.

55 Responses

  2. Are we not being a little harsh in judging 7’s brand name of 7Flix?

    Isn’t Netflix, which also has “flix” in the title famous for streaming tv shows as well as movies?

    Aren’t filmed tv comedy and drama tv series (as apposed to reality, game shows, news and sport) a form of flix anyway?

    Before tv there were movie serials which contained a certain number of chapters with cliffhangers that young people would go to every week to the cinimas to watch, again flix.

    So my reconning is that a station that caters for movies and tv series that arn’t news, sports, reality or game shows can be callled Flix and the name quite suites.

  3. Repeats of movies full of ads didn’t work and won’t stop people subscribing to Netflix for better movies without ads.

    So Seven has had to change the channel. I don’t watch much 7Flix, but then I am watching nothing on One, Go!, Gem, 72 or 73, ABC3, ABC4 at the moment. And only one show on ABC2 and SBS2.

  4. it makes no sense to me to add more dramas!

    see this is why you don’t call it 7flix, flix is another name for movies or ‘flicks’ and there’s no guarantee the channel will stay the same. imagine if GO had been called 9teen. cause GO was meant to be teen TV show aimed, then went to movies and reality. doesn’t make sense to change your channel, if they called these channels simply like the channel numbers like the main ones (1,7,9,10,11) then there wouldn’t be a problem. they should have just called it 7extra, it’s not hard to advertise that “7extra, extra content from the channel you love.. channel 7”

    I can’t see why they can’t rebrand 7two and just have that for repeat dramas or even new dramas like they did when the channel first started, they can still air their British and reality type shows… there’s plenty of room on 7two. 7flix should have just aired there dramas…

  5. TV bosses need to define what a channel Is aiming to be. Each channel airs shows what the other channel has. If they can’t define a channel they may as well air the programs shown the previous day on their main channel ie time shift by 24 hours. 7Flix seems to be a fill air time style channel.

  6. Wish somebody would tell us when regional areas like Tasmania are going to receive 7flix i’d like to watch the station looks like they screen better stuff than the main channel which is called Southern Cross Television down here

  8. It seems I might be the only one loving the offerings on 7Flix. Once Upon a Time, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Grey’s, Scandal, HTGAWM, The Mindy Project, are all shows we love. However, I think it struggles with a bit of consistency. This week there was an extra episode of Once Upon a Time which we would have missed if we weren’t hunting for The Mindy Project which was off for no apparent reason. I also wouldn’t have known about Once Upon a Time in Wonderland if not for this blog. There needs to be more consistency and more promotion so everyone knows what’s going on!

    1. I cant access 7flix (Hobart being ‘regional’ and all) but I’m with you. Id enjoy OUAT, Galavant and OUATIW at the very least. There’s more offerings for me on 7flix than 7two currently for example.

        2. I used to watch 7two a lot in its first year, before there were multichannels en masse. As David said, 7two rates well with its skewed programming. Just doesn’t skew towards me, that’s all

    2. Agreed, promotion is always geared toward the main channel. Cross promotion within all Ch7’s channels will aid in minimising network hopping.

  10. As others have said, Seven rushed this out in response to Nine’s Life without thinking it thru. Hence the lack of a cohesive identity and the choice to go with an audio stream protocol that can’t be read by even some MPEG-4 capable equipment.

    So Seven haven’t a clue about what to put on Flix, but Nine have been like that with GEM since the first couple of months, and Ten are like that with all of their channels.

  11. So far I have not watched one program\movie on this channel, there is just such limited appeal content. The daytime line-up is 30-40 year old sitcoms, and the movies are just reruns of those we have had on the other 7 channels over time. There has been no new movie output from what I can tell. Adding repeats of primary channel programs like Criminal Minds is pointless. There is so much US and UK content out there never run on FTA they can purchase. Problem is, they want a new channel at the lowest cost possible, so why obtain new content outside of current output deals? They should be renaming the channel as 7Random.

  13. It was never exactly a “movie channel” to begin with. Showing one movie per night (not every night, mind you) is nothing we’ve not seen before on any station. SBS regularly airs more movies a week than 7flix ever did.

    If they’d played movies all through the day (rather than one movie a night, some nights) they could easily have stolen a big chunk of viewers, especially those stuck in bed, or stuck at home. Do a quick headcount of hospital patients, pensioners and the unemployed, that’s a sizable market segment.

    1. Agree. I was off work sick for a week after Easter, and there was nothing on FTA daytime TV, or even Foxtel for that matter. The only thing I watched was the South Park Marathons on Comedy Channel, but the amount of commercials for Finder.com.au was destroying my soul.

  14. That didn’t take long. It took TEN two years before it abandoned One HD’s all-sports format, and began showing dross like MASH and Get Smart repeats.

    1. Ah I remember ONE HD’s demise – first it started with “Sports”-themed movies (like… The Fan?) and then the premium HD Dramas… and then…

  15. 7-stuff we can’t fit into our normal schedule because our main channel is wall-to-wall reality and sport….

    One big identity crisis.

    Seven(ty)-two – the average age of our viewers

    Eleven niche US shows with the option to bring back to Ten when our latest reality franchise flops.

    Go and raid the archives of Two & a Half Men, stale movies and kids cartoons.

    7-Maate we can’t afford to add Nat Geographic to our pay tv package so here it is free and full of advertising.

  19. “but the plan was always to introduce US drama into the primetime schedule”… hmmm, maybe you shouldn’t have named the channel after movies then if you had known all along.

  21. Cut the crap Seven. The channel has not lived up to even external expectations so you’re moving away from your original plan to something else. There’s no shame in that. There is shame in not admitting you were wrong however

  22. I feel like 7Flix has now got less identity than 7TWO or 7Mate now they cannot focus on films.

    But it’s hardly surprising, an SD film channel full of ads was never going to be a hit in the HD streaming era or for those who with Foxtel the movie channel would still stand on top.

    I felt like this channel was launched as knee-jerk reaction and I have to wonder the long term rational.

    2. I also agree. The short-term rational was simply to eat into the extra advantage that 9 had with 9Life. The 1.5’ish that 9’s 4th channel was rating could have made the difference to many ratings weeks had 7 not delivered a 4th channel of their own.

      As for the long-term rational, 7 will deal with that on the move.

    1. Get the L out and call it 7Fix. Then advertise it as: The one stop channel for your fix of Comedy, Drama, Family and Movie programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

    2. “How about 7Flix because it is channel 76 and Flix does rhyme with Six which rhymes with Netflix and I hear people are watching a lot of Netflix at night during the week” said Ch7 Executive” “Excellent synergy there, run with it!” said Ch7 Boss

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