Mildura Digital Television to shut down on June 30
"The financial position is no longer tenable," says board of regional television broadcaster.
- Published by David Knox
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Mildura residents will no longer be able to watch Channel 10 or its BOLD and Peach channels on free to-air television from June 30th.
Mildura Digital Television will shut down on June 30 according to local radio station River 1467.com.
The Network 10 affiliate is owned by Seven West Media and WIN Corporation and began broadcasting in 2006.
“Mildura has been put in The Dog House by the SevenWest – WIN joint venture, effectively telling local residents I’m an Australian Operation, Get Me Out of Here!” Member for Mallee and long-term Mildura resident Dr Anne Webster said.
Shadow Minister for Communications David Coleman said the Coalition has supported a reduction in the tax impost on television broadcasters.
“It’s called the Commercial Broadcasting Tax, and in 2023, TV broadcasters were forced to pay over $44 million for it,” Mr Coleman said.
“The tax disproportionately affects regional broadcasters.”
“If they didn’t have to pay this tax, they’d have more money to invest in staff and programs for local communities.”
Statement from Mildura Digital Television:
The Board of Mildura Digital TV (MDT) today announced it has taken the difficult decision to wind up its operations effective June 30, 2024.
MDT has been delivering Australian programs into Mildura since 2006. The joint venture owners, Seven and WIN, have continued to fund MDT despite the station running at a loss since its inception.
Whilst MDT realises this is not an ideal situation, the financial position is no longer tenable.
“The state of the regional advertising market means MDT is unable to justify the cross subsidy of delivering TEN programs to the Mildura television market. Without the subsidy provided by the joint venture owners, MDT will be insolvent and no longer a going concern,” said Chris Halios-Lewis
Chairman, Mildura Digital Television said, “It is a regrettable position we find ourselves in. We have had ongoing discussions with Government but this has not provided us with any certainty that continuing MDT is viable.
“Whilst we understand this will be a surprise to the local community, the challenging nature of the regional television market has led to this action.
“If we are to avoid further disruption to regional markets the Government will need to accelerate reform plans to ensure a sustainable regional media market,” said Mr Halios-Lewis.
Communications with the public and local stakeholders has commenced to ensure a clear understanding of the change. For people wishing to continue to watch TEN programs, they can do so online at 10play.com.au or the 10play app on your devices.
Updated:
TV Tonight understands WIN was no longer interested in maintaining the joint venture for MDT.
In a new statement 10 has called on government intervention.
“Bitterly disappointed”: 10 calls on Albanese to save Mildura Digital TV
16 Responses
Timing is exquisite. Last week the UK announced the streaming replacement for Freeview, and if the government gets behind some kind of bailout, it needs to be for something like this — an Australian version of “Freely” should not allow any distinction giving disadvantage to regional areas. There’s simply no reason, 40 years after “aggregation” got rid of the whole concept of regional TV stations, to keep going with a weird country version of everything.
“MDT” was a digital-transition dividend to plug the gap in one of the missing pieces of aggregation during the last half of the analogue era … so to lose it, is awful. But skip ahead now — AM transmitters, and soon TV transmitters, are going to be noticed for how expensive they are. The first AM stations are already being officially retired in the UK, and on the sly in the USA. This is just for running costs, nothing to do with licence fees.
This is what happens when someone believes it’s a great idea having 31 commercial channels in what used to be a 1 commercial channel market, and then have those channels, Seven in particular, promote streaming rather than keep watching this channel, in every commercial break. As for “Apps” and “streaming” – “Beverley McGarvey, who is chief content officer and vice-president at Ten’s parent company Paramount, said she needed 45 minutes and the help of an engineer to be able to download 10Play onto her new television. Ms McGarvey said despite being “pretty tech savvy” she had trouble downloading the app”.
(abc.net.au/news/2024-02-23/tv-channels-fight-for-screen-space-against-streamers/103503288 ) – Know the feeling Bev.
Yes and no! The 1-station history is a ball-and-chain that continues to hurt the regional areas, 40 years after it was supposed to be replaced with equity of service with the cities. A streaming platform needs to be easy and universal, none of this app business, I agree. The solution is what we saw last week in the UK — they are replacing “Freeview” with “Freely”. You need a standard system built into TVs, and (again, just like 25 years ago, and 50 years ago) the UK is giving us the system to adopt. If there’s going to be government intervention, it needs to be in return for progress on this — the broadcast towers are going to keep shutting down, first in regions, then in cities. They simply cost too much to run!
I keep on saying it – FTA TV is dead, but it just doesn’t publicly acknowledge it. Given good quality internet service to any regional centre, I would say that most commercial FTA TV channels will be dead in the water within 10 years, given their current offerings. It is a classic example of the economics not stacking up and they will much prefer viewers move across to their streaming services.
It is all good and well for Oppositions to call for extra funding but they never say how they’re going to pay for it. I wouldn’t give David Coleman or the Liberal Party or any party air time if they can’t say how they propose to pay for their request. The absence of this basic prerequisite for any investment exposes the promise as populist nonsense. Regional media form is needed to allow more mergers and acquisitions with strict local news requirements to remain in place at a bare minimum. I doubt they pay much tax anyway but it’d be good if multinationals paid more instead of creative accounting and shifting the tax ‘burden’ all offshore mostly like Google, Meta and others do.
I do not live in the Mildura/Sunraysia and I usually don’t watch Channel 10 programming anymore in general (they do not have any content that I am interested in watching !). However I think if Paramount Global we’re serious about their commitment to Australia and wanted to squash rumours about Channel 10 either being sold off or shut down, they would talk to the government about buying the MDT licence so it was owned and operated by them ? They could just relay a dirty feed from ATV-10 Melbourne to ensure Network 10 had a presence in the region ! Not all Sunraysia area viewers would have adequate internet speeds to watch via 10play app or website.
i am not sure that a global entity like Paramount is going to be too fussed about a small regional outpost in Australia that has a audience only in the thousands that contributes little if anything to Ten’s revenue, and if it’s running at a loss, it would be of even of less interest to them. I think it’s fair to say Paramount have bigger concerns at the moment than what happens in Mildura.
Shouldn’t Southern across Austereo step in who operate other Network 10 affiliates in Eastern Australia?
I would hardly call a population of 65,000 plus a regional outpost. Mildura has been overlooked on many occasions for all manner of things. We didn’t even have 7/Prime until the mid 90’s. We missed out on Aggregation of TV channels many years ago as well.
Exactly. When the Aussie “Freely” (whatever we call it) replaces Freeview, like in the UK, this time we need to abolish all distinctions in service levels between regions and cities, and across regions. The UK broadcasters lumped their pride and got together; so should ours.
The tax on spectrum was imposed as a replacement for the old licence fees which were dropped in 2017. There was a transitional period for 5 years before it fully kicked in. 19 regional broadcasters were given a further two year extension worth $9.5m. Rather than being disproportately affected it seems that regional TV multi-channels just have less revenue. I guess WIN is still broadcasting 10 as that isn’t going.
“I guess WIN is still broadcasting 10”. WIN is 10 in northern NSW, Sydney to Brisbane, as they couldn’t get Nine affiliation for that area. At the same time SCA-owned stations in Tasmania and SA have 7 affiliation. 10 is on more joint-venture stations, owned by 7, SCA & WIN than are 7 & 9. If I were 10 I would be looking at my program distribution in regional areas as this would be a major point in AFL and NRL broadcast negotiations. Is Mildura the start of something?
As a resident of Ouyen it is going to be interesting to see what happens there could be 3 solutions which provide Channel 10 content to Mildura:
1: Seven West Or Win could agree to insert 10 content into their programming lineup
2: The CDT service provided by Imparja & Southern Cross could be broadcasts into Mildura, but could another joint venture survive.
3: A new commercial licence could be allocated for Mildura, but then you have the question of a third operator being viable.
If Channel 10 ever had a ratings blockbuster like Married At First Sight, someone would find a way to boost a sagging timeslot.
This will be a very sad day for Mildura viewers who won’t be able to access 10’s channels.
Will viewers in the Mildura broadcast area need to switch to 10Play to keep watching these channels? It’s probably the more remote and rural areas further away from Mildura that could have issues with broadband services and reception, if it hasn’t been connected to the properties yet.