Seven cuts jobs at Broadcast Centre ahead of new plan with Nine
Exclusive: Seven to cease playout operations from Melbourne in 2019 as it joins forces with Nine in Sydney.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News, Top Stories
EXCLUSIVE: Around 150 staff yesterday at Broadcast Centre Melbourne were told by Seven management that most of their jobs would will be outsourced by 2019.
The facility is the playout hub for all of Seven’s broadcasting around the country, but from 2019 it will be handled through a joint venture with Nine, based in Sydney.
“Seven has this afternoon announced some planned changes that would result in a number of roles in our broadcast operations team being impacted. We have entered into a period of consultation with those affected,” a Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight.
“Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment Co. have entered into an exclusive arrangement to form a joint venture for the playout operations of the two organisations.
“The combined operations would provide economies of scale by consolidating infrastructure for the two businesses, and create an industry facility company able to service other broadcasters and companies.”
At its Annual General Meeting and recent Half-Yearly Presentation, the company announced there would be cuts of $25m over a two year period.
Changes are expected to take place by April 2019, but Seven could not confirm how many roles would be made redundant.
“The planned changes come as a result of ongoing disruption in the industry, and bear no reflection on our people’s commitment and quality,” the spokesperson said.
“The planned changes would not take place immediately, and we have endeavoured to give those affected as much notice as possible.
“While we will endeavour to redeploy as many impacted staff as possible, the likelihood is that some people will leave the company. They will receive their full entitlements and we will provide career and personal support services.”
Updated: No redundancies are expected at Nine’s French’s Forest facility should the joint venture proceed.
15 Responses
It will be quite sad walking through BCM after this. That’s an enormous amount of floor space left empty. Much like the regionals 30 years ago when they slowly abandoned local production and were left with tiny news and sales teams in these huge empty stations.
Presumably given Nine isn’t retrenching any of their Sydney staff this new facility will be based in Sydney.
As the article says… “a joint venture with Nine, based in Sydney”.
Their ever diminishing audience/advertising share to streaming and other services has led to this… and they think they can win us back with ever increasing ad breaks and annoying watermarks and ad’s over programs… buzz off…
Big move, good story. I suppose it’ll save Seven (and possibly Nine) money in consolidating their broadcast teams. I do wonder again though why everything in this day and age still has to revolve around Sydney, I’m sure Nine wouldn’t shift theirs to Melbourne. It is always sad to see so many staff lose their jobs. I’d expect a noticeable difference to Seven’s on-air once the change happens too.
David do you know if they are keeping any broadcast staff in Melbourne (there are different aspects to broadcast teams)? Or is it a full shut-down?
I also wonder if this is 100% going ahead or whether they are still in talks, seeing if it’ll work well?
How is people being ‘sacked’ a good story?
You misread me. As in a good pick-up / breaking news. Obviously staff losing their job is not good, not sure why you’d infer that.
Of course it will ‘save Nine money’. There’s no other reason for Nine to share their bed with Seven.
Interesting! Should mediahub be worried? Looks like 7flix will move over to the NPC at frenchs forest when this happens.
Sounds like a WIN inspired media hub playout centre…. interesting
Exactly what Media Hub was set up to do. I wonder how far down the track it will be before this new 7/9 playout facility and MH merged into one super facility. Will SCM and PRIME jump on the bandwagon too.
Prime/GWN has been at MediaHub since December 2016.
I could actually see Southern Cross becoming part of any 7/9 playout J/V somewhere down the line, especially as their stations are predominately 7/9 affiliates.
As for the archives at BCM: Seven moved archival work (inc. digitization of tapes and film) to Brisbane two years ago.
Source? I would’ve thought all archived programs need to be accessed by the facility that plays it out? What use would it be up in QLD?
Source? It really doesn’t matter and it certainly doesn’t matter where archive materials are sourced from. It’s 2018 and only a click or two away.
Sully: The archive shift from Docklands to Mt Coot-tha wasn’t publicized much when it happened, other than Seven publicly looking for jobs for tape librarians and archivists in Brisbane in early 2016.
The digitizing project that Seven is doing in BNE (and did at BCM until mid 2016) will mean that any archived programming 7 has, will eventually be accessible to a BCM replacement, from a remote server instantly: which could eventually also be accessible through the 7plus service by the public.