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Nine returns to WIN TV as regional affiliate

Regional affiliates are about to change partners once again, from July 1st.

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Nine Entertainment Co. and WIN Corporation have signed a new regional television affiliation agreement, signalling the end of its 5 year deal with Southern Cross, and in effect the end of 10’s deal with WIN TV.

The deal takes effect from July 1st.

The minimum 7-year agreement will result in WIN broadcasting Nine’s metropolitan free-to-air television content from channels 9, 9GO!, 9GEM and 9Life into markets including Tasmania, regional Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and Southern NSW, providing seamless access to Nine’s television content across all of metropolitan and regional Australia.

WIN will pay an affiliation fee of around 50% of its regional advertising revenue to Nine and provide airtime to Nine to allow promotion of Nine’s assets across WIN’s television and radio network. As part of the arrangements between Nine and WIN, WIN will also provide a sales representation service for Nine in Northern NSW and Darwin for a period of time.

Chief Executive Officer of Nine Hugh Marks said, “While our relationship with Southern Cross has been strong over the last five years, the opportunities presented by the WIN Network to both extend the reach of Nine’s premium content into more regional markets under one agreement, and to work co-operatively with them on a national and local news operation, mean this is the right time for us to return to WIN. The terms of this new affiliation agreement should be positive to Nine’s EBITDA from FY22 through the broader reach of Nine’s channels and by enabling incremental efficiencies across both sales and news.”

Chief Executive Officer of WIN, Andrew Lancaster said “We are pleased to be furthering our already strong relationship with Nine, through this affiliation agreement. Nine has clearly established itself as Australia’s leading media business and we are excited to be returning to carriage of the Nine broadcast content to our regional viewers.”

The decision has been made on the basis of WIN’s larger broadcast footprint, particularly in Western Australia and in Tasmania, to extend Nine’s reach to the largest number of Australians as possible.

“Ultimately, we have a simple strategy at Nine: create great content, distribute it broadly and engage audiences and advertisers. Moving to WIN clearly fulfils our distribution aims and ensures our television offering is made available seamlessly to as many of the nine million plus Australians, who live outside the five major metropolitan cities, as possible,” Marks told staff in a note.

“One of the impacts of the change in affiliate partner will be an impact to our regional news services which we currently provide on behalf of SCA. We are aware that there will be some roles impacted as a result of this change but those impacted can be assured that Director of News and Current Affairs Darren Wick and his team are actively looking at options for redeployment for as many employees as possible.”

WIN will provide a local news bulletin in regional areas at 5.30pm before taking Nine’s 6pm state bulletin in each state.

10 is yet to comment on the changes.

Update: WIN is expected to retain 10 in Northern NSW, given Nine already has NBN.

This post updates.

61 Responses

  2. As a someone who primarily watches 10 from Canberra, I am glad to get rid of that Ugly Blue mess that Win insist on having on the corner of the screen

  3. Living in the MIA which is a WIN monopoly area it’ll likely mean we’ll be reduced to the minimum number of 10 channels losing 10 HD because WIN are too cheap to offer all the multichannels from all three networks. There really needs to be government intervention to have all areas treated equally.

    1. … it’s because of “government intervention” over the years to suit media mogul “mates” and political party preferences that the broadcast industry is in the mess it is in now …

  4. I don’t really see what benefit WIN gives 9 in WA. If Nine’s programming is on WIN, then TDW will revert to 10. They have the same footprint as far as I’m aware, and I don’t believe either do any local programming. If anything it depreciates the brand!

    1. It’s not about footprint or reach. It all boils down to percentage of revenue. WDT gets Nine about 20% of ad revenue. Returning to WIN would get them around 50%. WIN Sales would also gain from the change as at present Seven Affiliate Sales handles WDT.

      1. I was responding to “The decision has been made on the basis of WIN’s larger broadcast footprint, particularly in Western Australia and in Tasmania, to extend Nine’s reach to the largest number of Australians as possible” from the article

    1. WIN will regain 9 affiliate and MDV (which is JV for Prime/WIN) regain 10 affiliate. In Mildura, 10 network shows appear on LCN8x, while 9 shows appear on LCN 5x. For example, 60 Mins appears on LCN5. WIth the switchover on Jul 1, it will go to LCN8.

    2. In the TV markets where aggregation wasn’t implemented the original station which In many areas was WIN they have abandoned these markets by providing no more local news content, The aggregated markets must have minimum local contact standards & this is something the government has known about for a long time yet has done nothing to address this issue. What I’d like to see is a channel being allocated for community use In regional areas at least regional TV markets may have a chance at producing their own local content.

  6. Living in Sydney’s South West (Belfield), I have been considering purchasing a high-gain antenna pointing towards the Illawarra region. The idea was to receive Sky News from WIN.

    My question is whether Sky News on WIN will continue after July 1, 2021.

    Reasoning, high gain antenna were used to view WIN’s coverage of the Rugby League which was not broadcast on Nine Sydney.

    2. There are reports that 9Life will not return to WIN until Sky News on WIN’s contract ends in August 2021. So one can assume, with this info, than Sky News on WIN’s days are limited.

  7. Nine has just played SCA off against WIN, and now WIN off against SCA to raise their share of revenue from their regional affiliate from 25 to 50%. Nine now has what they wanted, 50% of revenue and WINs slight increase in stations, terms that Gordon rejected 5 years ago.

    SCA could try to outbid WIN for for 10’s affilateship in Northern NSW, a growing region, as it might be worth more to them than WIN now.

    1. But SCA don’t have any transmission facilities in Nthn NSW. What is now 10 on WIN will remain 10 on WIN, as 7 is on Prime and 9 is on NBN which 9 owns.

      2. Nobody needs to own TV towers and transmission equipment, or playout Hubs or distribution networks. You can just lease them. 7,9 10 created TX Australia to take over their analogue broadcast system and upgrade it to digital 20 years ago. 10 was forced out when it went bankrupt but sued sucessfully for compensation. Broadcast Australia manages TV and Radio transmisson.

        The question is does Ten want to deal with WIN after WIN hasn’t added any value for them, then ditched the deal to go back to Nine. Especially if Gordon gets the seat on the Nine board that he was been trying to get for over a decade. If WIN isn’t broadcasting 10 channels in the area then what use is what it owns or leases there to them? But yes all this is speculation, so far SCA has announced to shareholders that they will negotiate with Ten for areas WIN is dropping.

        1. Southern Cross no longer has a tv licence in Northern NSW. It is now owned by WIN so no chance of SCA returning unless they put in a decent bid to buy NRN back from WIN.

  8. When are regional.areas going to.align their LCNs with the metros, as in WIN 9, 90, 91 etc, Prime 7, 71, 72 etc, SCA 1, 10, 11 etc? In the analogue TV days we could do that with manual memory programming, but not with digital.
    Darwin stations use 7,9,10, as do the VAST channels. As these regional.markets use metro LCNs, why can’t all other regional areas including those with metro/regional overlap?

    1. I guess that Ten programs will go back to TDT in Tasmania. And SCA TAS will continue to be Seven Tasmania. So to paraphrase it, what is on TDT in TAS will now be on WIN and vice versa.

    3. @MHA They won’t use metro LCNs because of the conflicts it produces in overlap areas. If, for example, you can pick up 7 Sydney and Prime7 Illawarra, and they both used LCN 7, your set-top will send the channels from the weakest signal to the bottom of the channel list or TV guide. Using alternate LCNs like 6 instead of 7 ensures this doesn’t happen and that both the metro and regional channels stay in a prominent position at the top of the list. No conflicts, no loss of audience because they can’t find your channel.

      Same goes for VAST, or rather, the Remote Central and Eastern licence area. They use 7,9,10 LCNs because they’re likely to overlap with some regional areas (5,6,8) rather than metro areas, given they cover the centre of the country and are surrounded by regional affiliates.

  10. i think there is more to this deal to be announced, i think a buyout which was suggested earlier will still happen with 9 buying WIN at some point

  11. Looks like here in Canberra we will lose that rather strange Nine News Local at 5:30PM weekdays. I wanted to rewatch it and save stories on it so I Googled it and found nothing whatsoever. No website, no videos, nothing. I’m starting to believe that the whole show is an optical illusion and I never really saw it.

    By contrast WIN News makes their stories freely available on the Net and kept their Facebook page going while others were deleted during the recent dispute. It is also good because I’ll now be seeing stories about where I live, rather than a whole lot of stuff about Wagga, Wollongong and Bathurst/Orange.

  12. I just moved from metro Melb to regional Vic and it has taken me 6 months to figure out the different channel numbers. Now its going to change again??? Ridiculous.

  14. Is it really that important?? The same shows will be on the same channels at the same times, so nothing really changes. To me its a bit like the contract catering industry. You go to bed working for company A and wake up in the morning with a new shirt that says company B, but you are still pushing out the same menu…

    1. It is worth acknowledging for seniors that small changes can be quite difficult. At this stage it isn’t clear if some markets may lose shows. In my experience there are so many quirks to regional markets.

    2. It’s not really “The same shows will be on the same channels at the same times”. In Sth NSW for instance 10 network shows currently on 8/80, 81 etc. and Nine network shows currently on 5/50, 51 etc. will swap.Currently “Bold & The Beautiful” is on 8/80. Come July it will be on 5/50. In Tas Nine will go back to a ‘main’ channels and 10 will go to the joint TDT channels. However, in Nthn NSW nothing changes.

  16. If i was in Tens shoes l would hang up for SCA to come crawling back. SCA wont have much bargain power. Time for CBS to buy a regional affilate out.

  18. I think Ten should do a deal with southern cross so long as all the Ten channels are transmitted as WIN has a habit of not showing all the channels, also what about 9LIFE channel?

    1. WIN will transmit Nine content – no TEN content from July 1. All Ten content will be on SCA or as people used to know it Southern Cross TEN

      1. Except in Nthn NSW. WIN=10, NBN=Nine. In Griffith WIN=Seven. WIN also broadcasts 10 on AMN and Nine on MDN, supplementary channels owned by WIN. No changes.

        1. WIN isn’t Seven in Griffith. They will change just like everywhere else. 10 programming will move from WIN Griffith to Nine Griffith and be renamed 10 Griffith, and Nine programming will return to WIN. Seven Griffith will remain unchanged just like in 2016.

  20. In late jan, my dad & I went down to Esperance & there was no 9HD/9Life in the region. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stream shows on 9Now (as there was no wifi in the holiday home). Should WIN switch back to 9, hopefully, there will be 9HD and 9Life in WA. If regional affiliation change takes place, do viewers need to rescan channels?

  21. I am very surprised SCA would let their affiliation deal with 9 slip through their fingers.
    On the NSW Central Coast, it’ll mean NBN (NEN) will have to vacate the sales and news premises it had shared with SCA’s old 2GO/Sea FM site for the past 5 years.
    I assume WIN will walk away from the agreement with Foxtel to b’cast Sky News? Bruce must have a bigger plan in mind…

  23. What a win for elderly viewers in the regions who struggle as it with trends to extra channels and streaming. Having their regular programs switch networks every 5 years is really keeping them on their toes.

  24. So what does this mean for Northern NSW though? We have WIN too that carries 10 or will that remain unchanged? For us Nine is via NBN branded as Nine. Its confusing but just wondering what that means.

    1. All unfolding…It’s effectively going to mean networks change dance partners just as they did 5 years ago. There may be some odd market variations. Update: I’m hearing WIN is likely to do a deal with 10 for this area.

      2. What is likely to happen with the sales representation? If Nine are saying WIN will sell NBN and they will also need to sell 10 NNSW as well wouldn’t the ACCC view that as anti-competitive behaviour?

    2. NBN is owned by Nine, so no changes. Just like before. 10 will continue on the WIN-owned northern NSW stations. Not sure what’s “confusing”. It’s been as it is for quite a few years. It is not going to change.

      1. I know but WIN wasn’t around in Northern NSW before this deal was done last time. It was through Southern Cross. The article did say the end of 10s deal with WIN thats why i asked and was a bit confused.

    4. It’s like channel 9 becoming channel 10 overnight and vice versa. It’s confusing for the viewer and as David said it’s even more confusing for the elderly.

      1. It happened 5 years ago and didn’t cause too many problems. 5 years later it is happening again, but there’s only half the FTA audience to be troubled.

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