It’s worthwhile quoting verbatim from The Guardian on the good news flowing to free to air television viewers in regional Australia who have been the subject of the Sky-after-Dark muppet show since regional television operator WIN started broadcasting into the regions including where I live : “Sky News Australia will lose a large chunk of its audience in July after it was dumped by regional broadcaster Win, which has carried the pay TV channel in Tasmania, regional Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and southern NSW since August 2018.”
The deal saw Sky After Dark beamed into unsuspecting free-to-air households which had previously been immune to Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and Alan Jones unless they had a Foxtel subscription.
Three years ago, Sky was trumpeting this larger footprint when it signed the historic deal with Win to launch in 30 markets to a potential audience of 8 million people. But along came Nine Entertainment last week to ruin the party by inking a new seven-year deal to broadcast its metropolitan free-to-air television channels 9, 9GO!, 9GEM and 9Life into the regional markets, displacing Sky because it has no room.
Sky News did not respond to a request for comment. “This is such good news in so many respects. As a pay television broadcaster Foxtel/Sky has a minimal audience for the far-right rantings of Jones, Bolt, Dean, Credlin, Murray and others. They rely heavily on fringe right-wing politicians to guide the viewers and spin their conspiracy theories : Craig Kelly, Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan are luminaries in this regard.
Sky were trying to create a mirror image of their US compatriot, Fox News, in Australia but clearly the pay TV subscribers were not going to achieve this for them. With their access to regional free to air Murdoch had a potential audience of some eight million additional viewers to influence and peddle his brand of snake-oil.
Now it’s not going to happen and Sky can return to its echo chamber and no longer affront the good folk of regional Australia, unless Lachlan can convince a very compliant coalition to give him a free to air television licence or find another carrier – let’s hope not !
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[cuts two onions to hold under eyes]
Boohoo. How sad for The Rupert.
[throws onions away and wipes eyes]
Don’t throw the onion away – pass it on to Tones to munch on.
That is very good news indeed.
What a sensible and community minded decision by WIN Television management.
Attuross, I think you are being a bit harsh about the Drum. I sometimes wish I could see less of Kate Carnell, Amanda Vanstone and a few other Libs or Conservatives but I think they strive for balance, given the pressure being applied to the ABC by the four-letter-words in the so- called government. I also think they cover a large range of subjects and aren’t afraid of calling out the mis-government for its increasing stuff ups. And I like the presenters who generally do a good job of ensuring everyone gets a hearing but we also get a fairly deep dive into topics of the day. Not having ever watched any of the offerings on commercial channels I can’t comment on how they compare.
Here in Tassie we already get the crud of the 4x 9 Network channels on FTA, plus faux spews on ch.83 (deleted on ALL household tv’s).
As for the Win network, out of their entire catalogue of programming across the 3 channels, the only program that gets a toe in is the ‘local’ 1/2 hr news weeknights at 6 p.m.
But ‘local’ is a bit of a joke as it’s broadcast out of it’s Wollongong studio’s with the on-air presenters badly pretending they’re here in Tassie.
I’ve had Foxtel via satellite ever since I moved to rural SA to live 16 years ago & not once has it ever been used to watch any of the Sky channels.
The only reason I got it & still have it is it’s the only reliable way to get the ABC & SBS here as the landline connection can be very dicey at times here due to the weather & the only other things I watch are sports as in AFL, NRL, Soccer & cricket.
Neil, have you tried the VAST service? It uses the same satellite and similar frequencies so, if you are unable to get satisfactory reception from the terrestrial transmitters, you may be eligible to access the VAST services. Ask your local (?) TV technical service people.