Two stories caught my interest in last week’s national papers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review. The stories both concerned the ongoing negotiations for V8 Supercars’ new media rights deal, which will commence next year. The Australian’s article focused on Ten’s play for the rights, which if successful would see the network return to […]

Foxtel’s proposed merger with Austar took another step in the right direction last week when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions (ACCC) commenced market consultations over Foxtel’s draft undertakings. Foxtel has provided the ACCC with undertakings in order to allay ACCC concerns that a merged company would hamper competition in the IPTV market. Foxtel and Austar, along […]

Optus’ TV Now service was held earlier this month by the Federal Court not to infringe the AFL or NRL’s copyright in their match broadcasts. Following the Court’s decision the Australian Football League’s Chief Executive Andrew Demetriou, in a wide-ranging interview with the Herald Sun made a number of comments surrounding the case and Optus’ conduct. The comments […]

With the AFL’s NAB Cup preseason competition beginning this Friday it is an opportune time to look at how this competition and the home & away season will be covered following last year’s record A$1.2 billion media rights deal. To watch matches this year and beyond, AFL fans will be spoilt for choice across free-to-air, subscription-TV, […]

FOXTEL yesterday announced a jump of 5.1% in subscription revenues for the six months to 31 December 2011. This result was off the back of solid improvements in the take-up of FOXTEL products by FOXTEL customers including FOXTEL’s iQ, multiroom and high definition digital offerings. This is a good result for FOXTEL in a tough retail environment […]

The Optus TV Now service has been given the stamp of approval by the Federal Court of Australia today. The service, according to Optus, allows a user to record and watch later free-to-air TV shows on a user’s mobile or PC. It allows an Optus customer the freedom to record TV shows anytime, anywhere to play […]

A report in the Australian last year confirmed that High Definition (HD) broadcasting of Australian sport on free-to-air television looks dead and buried. For those who did not notice Saturday coverage of AFL matches by the Network Ten only featured on the network’s primary channel towards the end of last season, whilst viewers were able to watch […]

This week the Gillard Government announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs’ international television network, the Australia Network will now become a permanent feature of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s duties as the national broadcaster, rather than have the network put out to commercial tender. This announcement comes after the Government scrapped that tender process to run […]

The Santos Tour Down Under has a new Australian free-to-air broadcast partner, the Nine Network. There were murmurs a couple of weeks ago when SBS staffed tweeted that they were likely to lose the broadcast rights to the Tour Down Under (TDU) to Channel Nine from next year. Under the new broadcast agreement Nine will be […]

A couple of things happened on Saturday night: The QANTAS Wallabies won their first Tri Nations tournament since 2001, by overcoming the All Blacks at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium; and Over 1 million viewers tuned into see that win. Over the last few years it is arguable that there has been a decline in viewers for […]