Growing up in a RL mad area (Hunter region) in the '90s, even in the days before AFL suckups like Eddie McGuire dominated our tv screens and before you heard of ppl like Andrew Demetriou/Vlad, Prime (local affiliate of Ch7) gave AFL more than its fair share of exposure in the Hunter to the few supporters who reside there. I remember that we always got the Saturday arvo and Sunday arvo game live - sometimes even getting 2 AFL games on Sunday (12:30-6pm)!. Hell, we even got the Sunday AFL Footy Show (shown after Sportsworld) from Melbourne that was hosted by Rex Hunt! Those ppl who are older than me and live in NSW/QLD could probably tell me what the situation was with AFL coverage before the mid-90s.
All of this whilst Ch9 stopped showing Sunday games from mid '96 to end of '97, which meant the only time we ever saw Sunday arvo footy during that time was when the Knights played an away game on Optus/NBN, and was shown on 1hr delay at 4pm. I guess we were lucky, like the Broncos, having non-Ch9 games covered. The Sydney folk would've only been able to see Sunday footy through Optus.
Ch7/Prime - before they lost the rights in 2001 (After they got it back in 2007, they started screwing AFL fans over) - did so much more for AFL than Ch9 did for rugby league over the period of time I've made reference to (1995-2001). The fact is that the small handful of AFL supporters who lived in the Hunter definitely cannot complain about not getting fair media exposure.
