Nine plans “youth” channel
Entourage, Gossip Girl & Sex and the City are some of the titles Nine plans for its new channel.
- Published by David Knox
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Nine’s new digital channel will be unveiled next month with a report today that it will be a channel skewed at advertiser-friendly younger viewers.
The new channel will reportedly offer titles including Entourage, Sex And The City and Gossip Girl -the latter was removed from it’s primary channel.
The channel is expected to air later in the year.
Nine is also said to have signed off on “the biggest deal ever in Australian TV history” with CEO David Gyngell inking a $500 million contract with Warner Bros studios in the US to supply programs for the digital platform (you’d kinda hope that’s one ‘0’ too many typos?). Seven tried unsuccessfully to hijack the deal with Warner Bros.
Nine’s new digital channel follows the announcement this week of titles coming to ABC3, the new kids’ channel, by the end of the year. ABC2, SBS TWO and ONE HD are already on air.
So far no word from Seven on its new channel.
Source: Daily Telegraph
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- Tagged with Entourage, Gossip Girl, Sex and The City
49 Responses
Already their second channel sounds better than their main channel. Though that’s not really saying much…
Question remains though are Nine going to be axe happy with a new network! Is it going to be on their second digital channel? or just HD.
These shows are all old but nice to have them on FTA. I’ve been a fan of Entourage for years and years; own all the DVD’s and watch it as it airs on HBO 😉
I hope Nine utilise the channel well, they have a lot of low rating content that deserves to get aired.
Weeds, Curb Your Enthusiasm, ER, Fringe, The Wire, The New Adventures of Old Christine the list seems never endless there is that many in my head I can’t write them down quick enough. I just hope they don’t have repeats of high rating shows from their primary channel with all these shows being shoved into 10.30 > timeslots, for it to work, they need to have these types of programs in prime 7.30/8.30/9.30 timeslots.
So they’re gonna make their second channel have better content than their main one? Nice!
@Nine: 3 words: Curb Your Enthusiasm. One more: Seinfeld. 🙂
If nine can’t get anything right with their main channel, what hope do they have managing another one?
Weeds & Hotel Babylon please.
Im very happy with this.
As long as they chuck old episodes of Brisbane Extra, into the mix, as well as a “output” deal with Win, that enables Nine to use the Crawfords library, this channel will work, as one that can appeal to the masses in daytime (as a true alternative) and a younger audience at night.
your source link, only links to the daily telegraph home page not the actual article david
Good developments for Nine’s new channel. I guess more variety and choice can never be bad for the viewer, can it? Now hurry up Seven and get to the party!
what happened to seven sd2 channel, correct me if i’m wrong but didn’t leckie say it will be announced on march 15?
I think GO!99 has merit, It can now be a genuwine challenge for key demographics in the Age Bracket that Ch10 has..
I wish any other TV network had managed to get the rights to Warner Brothers series. Nine frequently let the rights to cartoon series (Justice League Unlimited season 1-2, Teen Titans season 1-4, Xiaolin Showdown season 1 -2) and other series (Malcolm in the Middle season 7) from Warner Brothers expire, before actually showing the series on TV.
One of the first series (Taken mini-series) on Nine HD stopped before the last three episodes were shown, due to the rights expiring. So I wonder if these series will even be completely shown.
It looks promising. It complements the traditionally older skewing programming of the main channel.
Hopefully they can take more risks with programming on the second channel if it does not need mass appeal. And it is a convenient place to show cancelled series rather than completely dumping them.
Though were old seasons of Entourage once mentioned as going to SBS?
@ barrett – yes, many available on dvds but having never seen entourage or gossip girl despite reading good things, i’d rather check out some episodes on tv before going out and buying the dvds or downloading episodes. Not everyone can afford that option.
@ harry – i read on knowfirst that the new channel is being carried by WIN and NBN
I wonder if 9HD break aways will stop once this channel launches- also, I hope 9SD2 doesn’t have as low a bit rate as OneSD, its like watching a youtube video.
$50mil per year for WB, i hope 9 know what they are doing that is a lot of money
a few years back everyone was saying that 9 paid too much when they paid 42mil/year. and that was in a good economic time and when 9 were #1. but i rekon 9 can still make a good profit out of it, they would be stuffed without it, they actually need to air the shows that they have paid for though.
as a viewer i guess this is terrible news. all the recent WB shows have not been treated very well by 9: fringe, ER, pushing daisies, chuck, OC, gilmore girls, smallville, studio 60, terminator, aliens in america, ect, ect
the only ones that are still in primetime are mentalist, 2.5 and cold case. and even those have taken a fair beating and aren’t spectacular raters.
Interesting that all these titles are “old” and easily available on dvd etc.
What new content have they got and will they show it in it’s correct season and sequence order – something they are incapable of doing now.
The FTA commercials need to follow the lead given by ABC2 in how to run a good successful 2nd digital channel.
hopefully by targetting the youth they will also understand the need for new episodes to be shown close to their US air dates. otherwise i don’t see this working out at all.
Probably a good idea to go after something different rather than cannibalise their existing audience but I would think that most people interested in these shows have already seen them. Hopefully they’ll be quick about getting new episodes on so it’s more convenient to watch them on tv compared to downloading them. I doubt that will happen given the differences in u.s schedules.
I’m betting they’ll slate the shows at 10.30pm or later…Entourage is a good idea, albeit 5 years too late. Gossip Girl is also great, but it kinda sucks that Nine renewed the WB deal again…too many good shows like Chuck and Pushing Daisies get screwed over by them. And maybe people will finally see the episodes of ER, Flashpoint and Fringe Nine have held over for so long.
well this would be quite a good road to go down, maybe this means they can include a few of their comedies too like til Death, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Little Britain and Weeds.
Excellent news, good to see there’s still some brains functioning at Nine and that they managed to keep their deal with WB. 500 mil thats a sh*t load of money, surprised they could afford it
…I think I might have grown a slight amount of respect for Nine. That’s pretty gutsy what they’re doing and if their new channel had more shows like that then they might have a compelling digital platform. 😀
Entourage – cool but a little late to the game
Sex And The City – great series but more re-runs?
Gossip Girl – again a little slow ch9 but I guess more people will get to enjoy this great show now.
Thanks for the update David
finally entourage will be on fta. im surprised it has taken this long as it will undoubtedly be high rating. channel 10 should have bought the rights long ago and put it on after rove on sundays.
This is great news. This channel sounds really interesting for the younger generation. Does anybody know if it will be available in Regional areas such as Tasmania, etc, etc…?