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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