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7food flagged for closure

Ending low ranking channel would free up spectrum and help turn 7mate a HD channel.

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Seven is set to close its 4th multichannel, 7food.

Launched last December after 2019 Upfronts, the food channel has struggled to make in-roads, targeting food lovers, people 16-49, and grocery buyers with children.

But the channel has been devoid of any first-run local content, despite plans to launch original titles. At just 1.9% of Seven Network viewing it also regularly trails SBS Food.

Seven sources indicated the channel’s future was unclear.

Yesterday CEO James Warburton also flagged 7mate would switch to HD in 2020 and announced a relaunch of 7flix.

The axing of 7food would free up more spectrum for 7mate and allow for AFL games to be in HD around the country through Seven / 7mate.

35 Responses

  1. This is truly great news if this means the quality of 7mate HD is true high quality. For the AFL fans in non AFL states, its such great news. Also for anyone who watches the NFL on 7mate too. I’m thrilled by this news.

  2. dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7606695/Channel-Seven-denies-reports-7food-set-close-low-ratings.html

    they’re saying in the article that the partnership with Food Network is continuing. didn’t address if the channel is closing.

      1. Are you able to find out more RE: 7flix? Mainly as to why they’re even bothering to re-launch their 2nd newest, less than four year old channel? Which does rate.

        Only good reason I can think of is to 100% replicate 7mate’s “male” success?

  3. Will 7Flix will be called 7Plus1, BigBrother 24×7, 7Casino, 7Erotica…..?
    Combining 2SD channels to make 1HD will work better if the format is MP4 but does Seven have the guts given the 7Flix fiasco some years ago?

    1. The current 7HD channel (i.e. since 2016) is MPEG4, as are all HD stations currently available. Logic is that its lower bandwidth than MPEG2 while incompatible TVs can still watch the SD version. SBS Viceland and SBS World Movies don’t have SD versions, but can be viewed online.

  4. I seem to remember 7Food starting off saying they would be running first run series from the US with reruns of Better Homes & MKR etc, but all they have done is show reruns of a lot of shows we already saw on SBS food along with Fast Ed & Karen on high rotation with the same few clips.

  6. It was never a good idea to add another food channel when there was already SBS Food. Freeview should be making sure that there is more variety in channel genres. I would like to see 24 hour music video channels, like the ones they have in UK Freeview, such as Now 80s, Now 90s, Kiss TV, Magic TV etc.

    It would seem like a natural progression to have music video channels on Australian Freeview as they operate alongside food, home shopping, children’s, news, sport and movie channels in the UK Freeview.

    A good precursor to what Australian Freeview would look like in the future would be to see the sort of channels they have been adding to UK Freeview.

      1. My mistake, i read it as all channel shares because of the comparison with SBS Food. Just 1.9% of only Seven seems even worse than a .9% all channel total.

        7flix was due a name change soon after launch

  8. Good move. And just to let all the TV executives reading this know – my family will never watch an SD channel. When you’re used to HD and Netflix and Stan in 4K, SD is pretty much unwatchable.

  9. We don’t need two cooking channels, we don’t need 3 shopping channels and we don’t need news on almost 24/7 on all the main channels. Our population is not big enough for all these channels. The TV networks are killing their own channels. Stop refreshing and rebranding them, if they fail ditch them.

    Does anyone even watch the Olympics? do we need 99 channels dedicated to it? yawn.

    2. Live sport is still king. Once the Melbourne Cup is done, six of the top seven watched shows (oztam overnights) will be sport events (MAFS been the exception). The Summer Olympics have traditional rated very well, and even more so next year in a timezone friendly country.

      1. Well yes we *do* want 99 channels devoted to the Olympics. Last Olympics was great. You could go to the website, see a list of sports and events in uninterrupted longform without commentators barging in after a few minutes and saying “And now we cross to the women’s ping pong”. For years we had heard about the host broadcaster providing 99 channels and the local broadcaster choosing what they want to show on just one channel. Now we finally had the freedom to see what we want when we want. Looking forward to that again next year.

    3. The only TV I have watched this year has been House Rules (first time viewer) and The Masked Singer. Everything I watch is on Netflix and the last Olympics coverage I saw was the Sydney Closing Ceremony.

  10. This is good news coz 7 did a totally inferior job compared to SBS. Hopefully SBS can re-take some titles and strengthen their slate to how good it was before 7 got hungry.

    1. SBS Food is better without all the American content from Food Network. I suspect the reason SBS dumped Food Network was because of the cost of licencing so I’m not sure it’s something they’d want to go back to.

      1. Not as simple as that. It depends on many factors. You would require more bandwidth to broadcast a HD channel on the old video format standard for it to look half decent and less on the new standard. ABC is a good example of this.

  13. I’d never watch 7Food in prime time but I watch it between 6:30-7:30am without sound while on the treadmill at the gym, a better alternative to the morning shows. Just wish they’d get rid of Pioneer Woman at 7am, everytime she begins to over salt the meats or actually cook, they cut away to some rubbish happening on the ranch like washing cars, doing a scrub burn off, or showing the same renovation scenes on some warehouse in town she owns.

    1. I’d rather see 7mate go HD. Nine owned stations (and NBN) have done it with 9GEM, which saw it break multichannel records. With the suite of sports (especially AFL in NSW/Qld, domestic cricket, and the Olympic games next year) 7mate HD makes perfect sense.

      1. 9GemHD is only in HD primarily when broadcasting sport. At all other times it redirects to 9Gem (SD). Your TV might display the format when changing channels.
        All of Nine’s channels can be seen in HD on the Internet.

        1. This isn’t true. 9GemHD is running in 1080i HD right now during Days of our Lives, and that’s hardly considered sport.

          Are you confusing native HD and upscaled HD? 9GemHD was running upscaled HD content in some markets not long after it launched, presumably due to capacity issues at NPC.

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