Network Ten and SCA to sign affiliation deal
Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) and Network Ten, have announced they expect to enter an affiliation agreement from 1 July 2021 under which Network Ten will supply its programs for broadcast by SCA in the regional Queensland, southern New South Wales and regional Victoria commercial television license areas.
The news comes just weeks after Nine Entertainment Co and WIN announced an agreement that would see Nine end its five year affiliation agreement with SCA, instead returning to WIN for at least seven years, in a deal which will see the regional media company pay Nine about half of its regional advertising revenue.
According to a release from SCA, it has been granted authority by Network Ten to market, sell, and book advertising products and packages for broadcast from 1 July 2021 in Network Ten programs on SCA’s television stations in these licence areas, as well as to deal with other parties in relation to audience measurement, television program guides, marketing, promotion, and related matters.
Mumbrella understands the full terms of the deal are yet to be confirmed, but SCA had no comment at this time.
It is not yet known how much SCA will be paying for the deal, but as part of its deal with Nine it was paying 50% of its revenue. WIN will pay Nine the same amount in the new affiliate deal.
SCA and Ten’s previous affiliate deal, which ended five years ago, saw the former paying an affiliate fee of 34%.
When Nine defected from WIN in favour of SCA in 2016, the deal was reportedly worth almost $500 million.
As flagged in Mumbrella’s Best of the Week by Tim Burrowes on 13 March, a deal between SCA and Ten for two years, would allow SCA to recoup some of the lost revenues by the WIN and Nine deal.
“So one possibility would be for SCA to offer Ten just a two year deal in the hope of switching across to Seven when the SWM deal with Prime comes to an end,” wrote Burrows.
“There’s another factor too. The upper echelons of the TV industry believe that Southern Cross Austereo boss Grant Blackley wants to sell SCA’s TV interests. The company seems to see its future much more as a radio business (although it prefers the word audio these days).
“Although this week’s loss of the Nine affiliation was not unexpected, SCA’s TV network is now worth significantly less than before because it can anticipate lower ratings and lower revenue.”
Viacom CBS has recently started to assemble a local team for the launch of Paramount+ ahead of the streaming platform’s launch in the Australian market later this year.
In February 2020, Viacom CBS, the parent company of Network Ten, took sales for its Australian properties – MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., MTV Music and MTV Dance – in house after ending its relationship with Foxtel Media.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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