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TV rights thread part 4

Lockyer4President!

First Grade
Messages
7,975
No mention of the $$$ so far.

The NRL has today signed a five-year broadcast rights partnership with SKY Television that will bring the excitement of the Telstra Premiership, Holden State of Origin and the Holden Cup to viewers across New Zealand.

On the day of the most anticipated Telstra Premiership in memory, Rugby League’s biggest New Zealand broadcast rights partnership features:

• All Warriors Telstra Premiership matches, the Harvey Norman Rugby League All Stars, the Holden State of Origin Series, Telstra Premiership Finals Series and Grand Final will be shown live on SKY Sport;

• All Telstra Premiership matches and televised Holden Cup matches are available for broadcast on SKY Sport.


“The game in New Zealand is the strongest it has ever been at all levels and we are thrilled that we have agreed to a long-term partnership to bring the best Rugby League competition in the world to fans across New Zealand,” said NRL General Manager, Strategic Projects, Mr Shane Mattiske.

“The anticipation ahead of the 2013 Telstra Premiership has been incredible, especially for the Warriors’ opening home match at Eden Park in Round 2 against the Roosters.

“We know how much it means to fans in New Zealand to be able to watch Rugby League and this partnership offers the most comprehensive coverage ever provided.”

Mr Richard Last, SKY’s Director of Sport, was enthusiastic about the deal.

“We know how passionate SKY viewers are about the NRL and we are delighted to announce this five-year deal to deliver fantastic Rugby League viewing to New Zealanders,” he said.

SKY Television has also announced that Andrew Voss will commentate all Warriors home-games alongside ex-Kiwi player turned broadcaster Daryl Halligan.

http://www.nrl.com/nrl-signs-nz-broadcast-deal/tabid/10874/newsid/71025/default.aspx
 

Bengal

Juniors
Messages
877
What did we get for the NZ rights?
Have not seen a figure published here in NZ. Think it's commercially sensitive due to both sides wanting "x" amount (and both being very vocal about this is process) but only one side getting what they want. Someone's got egg on their face. Now for what I'm really here for - a bleat about the size of the friggin on-screen Sky broadcast scoreboard. It is beyond a joke, by far too intrusive - no one needs the full names of the teams on the scoreboard for crying out loud. Thank gawd for radio.

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whall15

Coach
Messages
15,871
I know it's not the done thing but how would a small top corner scoreboard like Sky UK go?

Just an example.

Sky%20Sports%20Scoreboard%20-%2010pc%20Overscan.png
 

juro

Bench
Messages
3,790
Have not seen a figure published here in NZ. Think it's commercially sensitive due to both sides wanting "x" amount (and both being very vocal about this is process) but only one side getting what they want. Someone's got egg on their face. Now for what I'm really here for - a bleat about the size of the friggin on-screen Sky broadcast scoreboard. It is beyond a joke, by far too intrusive - no one needs the full names of the teams on the scoreboard for crying out loud. Thank gawd for radio.

.
Do kiwis like a good bleat?
 

Bengal

Juniors
Messages
877
I know it's not the done thing but how would a small top corner scoreboard like Sky UK go? Just an example.
Yes - and their Super League commentary on-screen scoreboard is almost as unobtrusive. Brilliant stuff. Love to know why they need to be so prominent - imagine its a commercial thing because it serves no useful purpose to the average punter including blind-as-bat followers like myself who can still easily see (or make-out) the smaller scoreboards.

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Dogs Of War

Coach
Messages
12,718
Im sure there was something about 2hrs every day on one of the channel 9 digital tv channels of some sort of nrl programming. What happened to that?
 

El Diablo

Post Whore
Messages
94,107
http://www.smh.com.au/business/medi...illiams-loses-last-battle-20130809-2rm7w.html

Print outsider Kim Williams loses last battle

Date
August 9, 2013 - 2:07PM

Malcolm Maiden

In his farewell note to News Corp staffers today, Kim Williams said his time in charge of News’ Australian operations had been marked by ‘‘many good wins matched with some memorable awful problems and opponents’’.

He devised a $2 billion takeover of James Packer’s Consolidated Media group last year that doubled News’ ownership of the Foxtel pay-TV group to 50 per cent, and carried it from 50 per cent to full ownership of Fox Sports, a crucial and profitable supplier of content and channels to Foxtel.
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When Rupert Murdoch split News Corp globally this year into two listed companies, one centred on pay TV, broadcast TV and film and the other centred on publishing, the Australian pay-TV assets that Williams embraced went across to the publishing arm, new News Corporation.

The industrial logic of that move was questionable, but the financial logic was not.

The print media assets inside new News Corp, including News’ newspaper interests in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, are generating close to two-thirds of new News Corp’s revenue, but they face the same challenges from digital media that all established publishing operations face.

The pay-TV assets that were also inside the company and were bulked up by Willliams are smaller, but have a stronger revenue and profit growth profile. They are yeast in the new News Corp cake.

Williams’ departure, and News’ decision to replace him with one of the Australian publishing group’s old hands, former Herald and Weekly Times managing director and HWT chairman Julian Clarke, suggests however that it was the fights and losses inside News’ Australian arm that eventually told.

News Corp has always had operational control of Foxtel, and Williams was running the pay TV group in December 2011 when it was announced that he would cross over to replace John Hartigan as boss of News Ltd, News’s Australian media arm.

He came in with a brief to be a change agent and meet the challenge from digital media that all established print-heavy media groups face.

The changes he wrought were substantial, extending beyond the Cons Media acquisition to root and branch restructuring of News itself, but he made enemies in the process.

Editorial production and commercial processes including advertising sales were unified under a ‘‘one city, one newsroom’’ mantra, and editorial numbers were rationalised. External management consultants were engaged.

In another business, it would have unexceptional. In the tribal world of newspapers where structural and cyclical pressure on revenue and profits is extreme and changes take time to flow to the bottom line, however, there was push-back from key lieutenants including editors. Williams was an outsider making changes that made commercial sense, but the paradox was that the very fact that he was a print media outsider counted against him.

The recent arrival of News’ former New York Post editor Col Allan with a short term brief to ‘‘take the tabasco’’ to News’ titles was widely regarded as an ominous sign.

The role that Williams played in last year’s $1 billion-plus auction of Australian Rugby League broadcasting rights may also have been influential.

He was a key player in the auction, and it was won by the Nine network and Fox Sports. The Ten network was squeezed and its 9 per cent shareholder and chairman, Lachlan Murdoch were squeezed out. Foxtel’s win was a financial win for News, because by the time the rights were auctioned it had moved to full ownership of Fox Sports, and doubled its stake in Foxtel to 50 per cent, matching Telstra’s 50 per cent shareholding.

Lachlan Murdoch has continuing significant influence at News, however, He resigned as a News executive in 2005, but is a director of both the new News Corp and the TV and film spin-out, 21st Century Fox. He is also being talked about again as a potential successor to Rupert Murdoch after the US telephone hacking scandal damaged the prospects of his brother, James.

For Williams, Fox Sports' win in the rugby league auction may have come at a political cost.

it was rumored that before Williams took over that Gallop, Murdoch and Hartigan had been working on a deal that would have seen all games live on Fox as well as Ten getting FTA rights

something like that

it also came out after the rights were done that Fox pretty much refused to negotiate with Ten which didn't help their bid

Lachlan's revenge perhaps
 

El Diablo

Post Whore
Messages
94,107
http://www.smh.com.au/business/williams-walks-the-news-plank-20130809-2rngo.html

When news filtered through the media and sports world that the Nine Network and pay television group Foxtel had clinched the broadcasting rights to the crucial National Rugby League (NRL) it was the beginning of the end for Kim Williams.

Days before, Lachlan Murdoch – chairman of Ten Network and a director of News Corp – had been given the heads-up that Foxtel was planning to stick with Nine to bid for the rights rather than form a partnership with Ten. Murdoch was livid. He had held numerous talks with Williams over the months of June, July and August 2012 and was under the impression that Foxtel would side with Ten, a move that was commercially sensible and would breathe new life into the struggling network and even more importantly, deliver a king hit to arch rival Nine, which was in the middle of talks to renegotiate a mountain of debt to hedge funds. If Nine lost the rights, it would be weakened considerably.

It was high stakes. The ratings at Ten had been slipping and the NRL broadcasting rights had been seen as the network's panacea to stop the ratings rot. When it became official that Ten had been left in the NRL wilderness and that Williams had backed Nine, Murdoch felt he had been kicked in the guts.

One source said Williams was always the smartest man in the room but he overestimated the strength of his relationship with Murdoch. “He obviously believed Lachlan would get over the NRL. It was a complete misjudgment,” he said.

His fate was sealed. From then on it became death by a thousand cuts. “It became a shit sandwich and finally took its toll,” the source said. “Kim had enough and quit. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have been pushed eventually, because Lachlan, the favoured son, had lost confidence in him and Rupert had to listen to him.”

Until then Murdoch had been a huge fan of William
 

El Diablo

Post Whore
Messages
94,107
http://www.smh.com.au/business/medi...iams-was-cut-down-at-news-20130809-2rnsx.html

By now, however, Williams had an even bigger problem - one Lachlan Murdoch. The young Murdoch had initially been his strong supporter, but the battle over NRL broadcasting rights would end all that. As negotiations over the rights drew to a head in mid-2012, two contenders remained: Ten, the ailing network chaired by Lachlan Murdoch, and Foxtel, which had teamed up with the free-to-air operator, Nine.

"Lachlan saw the NRL rights as part of his grand vision for rebuilding Ten," a senior News executive explains. "He also felt that he had the deal stitched up, through his News Ltd connections."

But he hadn't bargained on Williams, who, together with Nine, outbid Ten at the 11th hour. According to someone intimately involved with the negotiations, "Lachlan felt gazumped. Which he was."

To make matters, worse, Williams, in an effort to get his bid over the line, agreed to relinquish News Ltd's "first and last rights" over the NRL, options they held till 2027. These were uncommonly powerful rights, effectively allowing News the last say in bidding over broadcast rights on all manner of platforms - free-to-air, pay TV, online, even technology that had yet to be invented. William's willingness to surrender them was seen by Murdoch as a deep betrayal, as his one-time-friend doing anything he could to stymie Ten's bid.

"Lachlan burst a pipe over it," says the News executive. "He went to Rupert and tried to call for Kim's head. But Rupert told him to calm down … The thing about Lachlan is that he's a good hater. He totally froze Kim out. But then, Kim is a good hater, too."
 

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