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Nine to launch GEM for women

Updated: The Big C, Southland, Miami Medical, McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol, Wife Swap are all coming to Nine's new GEM.

Nine’s third digital channel GEM will aim at women over 35.

As an acronym of General Entertainment and Movies, GEM promises a mix of ‘new content, classic comedies, cherished drama series, all-time favourite movies’ plus high definition sports aimed at the ‘sophisticated, discerning viewer’

It will be led by new US drama The Big C starring Laura Linney (pictured) and Oliver Platt.

Updated: Other first-run imports include Weeds, Southland, Miami Medical, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and the lifestyle programs Wife Swap, Secret Millionaire USA, The Chopping Block USA and How Clean Is Your House?

It will feature a new season of Random Acts of Kindness featuring Shelley Craft, Scott Cam, Dr Andrew Rochford and Simmone Jade Mackinnon.

Also screening are Aussie dramas McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol and The Alice, plus US crime shows CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, The Closer and Cold Case, along with movies such as Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, 21 Grams and Being Julia.

Friends will be stripped to air every week night,

The channel will officially launch on Sunday September 26th, when it is likely to be included in the OzTAM ratings panel, but it has been reported it will be on air on September 24 -a day before the blokey 7mate begins.

CEO David Gyngell said, “GEM is what its title suggests – a general entertainment and movie channel, carefully crafted and targeted like GO! before it, to appeal to a wide audience cross-section and complement Nine’s existing successful brands,” Mr Gyngell said.

GEM will also include some news and current affairs programs.

“We have a very significant investment in news and current affairs and some of that content will be repackaged to the style of GEM,” he said.

As with 7mate, the channel is set to be HD only, to replace Nine HD.

High definition sport will be seen on GEM until the digital switchover in December 2013.

Rumours on Nine’s moves, including the channel name, content pitch and launch date have been speculated for some time.

Viewers can watch GEM on channel 90 on an HD-capable digital TV, PVR or set top box.

This post updates.

132 Responses

  1. For those in NBN territory (including me) – yes they will be taking GEM, they’re working on getting it up and running by next weekend but they are yet to officially confirm whether they’ll be ready in time.

    You’d have to think they will be.

  2. Seven and Nine have taken the lazy route in adding more channels, so they now basically have 3 channels each to spread there back catalogue of crap. Plus Ten will be doing the same thing with their 3rd channel next year too.

    Yes its free but I beg to differ with those who think this is more choice. A choice between low rating cheap American sitcoms, female and male based dramas is not my idea of good choice.

  3. I’m a woman who never watches sport, nor do my female friends, so I find GEM’s inclusion of sporting events a bit bemusing. On the one hand they’re promoting the channel as female-focused, and yet they’re slipping in sport, a predominently male-oriented interest. Make up your mind, GEM.

  4. Any news on when this will be available in NBN territory (Newcastle and Hunter Valley)? I think GO! started at the same time as metro, so we might be lucky again. We had to wait several months for 7Two(on Prime).

    What channel numbers do you think Gem might use? The main channel for NBN is on 80 and GO! is 88.

  5. @jayjay, I agree completely. Most of what I read about all these new fta channels is compaining. I think it’s good that we get these new channels (wether you like everything on them or not) For Free….

  6. @thestalker – the woman is Laura Linney, like David said the star of one of the channels biggest new shows (BTW it’s great and hardly a girlie shows IMO)

    So finally Southland gets a run, good thing its in HD, pity most will not see it, also with Secret Diary of a Call Girl and The New Adventures of Old Christine, they are stretching this whole girl show thing a bit IMO?

    I guess with one ot 2 shows on the new HD only channels I might want to record to watch later it might be time to upgrade my SD PVR… anyone like to donate to the ‘Help Craig get a new Panasonic PVR’ fund raiser campaign LOL

  7. Meh ..we dont get any of these channels anyway.Odd that we here in country SA are going to be the first to disable analogue tv (Dec i believe) and we still cant access the extra digi channels

  8. david i dont know if you know but perthnow.com has got channel ten 2011 line up on there website as i cant see it on your website i thought maybe u didnt know?

  9. whinge whinge whinge…it’s another free TV channel. Stop complaining. It isn’t going to please everyone. I’ve seen so many people complain about having so much choice

  10. Whether or not you need to do a re-scan will depend on your equipment, just because you are picking up 90 doesn’t mean that the channel name on your TV will switch over from nine high definition to Gem without a re-scan, on some models it will, but on others it won’t. Personally I run a rescan on all my equipment when there are new channels, it is important to do re-scans every now and then.

  11. I did realize that Secret Diary of a Call Girl is a woman’s show…

    That’s not a good line up in my book. I doubt I’ll be watching any of it.

    What a waste…

  12. So if it’s on ch90 then we don’t have to rescan and if we already have ch73/63 on our TVs then we don’t have to re-scan them for 7Mate the next day?

    Also I didn’t notice the friends thing before but why would I watch? I have them on 111 Hits and the DVDs… see I told you some shows will be 4×3 with black bars on the sides as Friends was never recorded in HD and unlike Seinfeld recorded strait to video so no chance to go back to the original film and re-master it in 16×9 1080 HD.

    Just shows you some producers think ahead, but most don’t.

  13. Well now there has been an update the channel does sound a little bit better. I’m interested McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol, The Aviator but GO! and 7mate will remain the best but i will watch GEM if it comes to NBN.

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