NBN Television: Aggregation Aggravation

A Word on Aggregation

At right: Before aggregation, NBN's primary audience resided in the Newcastle region and Hunter Valley, heavily promoted as such to potential advertisers.

When, in it's first term in the 1980s, the Hawke Labor government made plans to increase competition in regional TV, it aimed to provide more choice to viewers who were confined to a single commercial channel and the ABC. 

The scheme was criticised for threatening the profitability of over a dozen media companies, particularly NBN, and that Australia would be the only country in the world of less than 50 million people to have three commercial TV networks. It would therefore be an uneconomic use of resources for such a thinly-spread population.

The plan proposed that more than 20 regional stations in eastern Australia would have their monopolies abolished. It was a difficult juggling act for the government to ultimately decide which stations would find themselves in what areas, competing against whom. It planned for approximately one million people per "approved market" - which meant four markets in the eastern states.

Northern NSW would comprise 1.25 million potential viewers (at the time) , the region where, in 1985, it was thought likely that NBN would be placed. The north west was home to ECN8 Taree and NEN9 Tamworth owned by Television New England, while the state's north east was served by NRN11 Grafton and RTN8 Lismore, owned by Northern Star Holdings. Both of these companies would increase their market share by 50%, while NBN would lose 40% of its market share. NBN also, curiously, would enter the Gold Coast market to battle the Brisbane metro stations, as it already did at NSW's Central Coast, competing against the Sydney metros - although in that mountainous coastal strip VHF television reception for either Newcastle or Sydney had long been problematic.

At right: Three translator stations serviced the upper-Hunter: Murrurrundi, Aberdeen, and Merriwa. The Sugarloaf signal travelled well up the coast to Taree.  Across Lake Macquarie it reached parts of the Central Coast, however three more translators were needed to service mountainous areas of Gosford, Wyong, and around Bouddi.

Aggregation's roll out was roughly one region a year, and as NBN's turn approached, Mark Wallace, writing in the Canberra Times in 1991, said: 

NOBODY in regional television is celebrating today's second anniversary of aggregation in Southern NSW. With three stations, program schedules are full of repeats and the summer months provide little other than sport and programs not deemed attractive enough' to be scheduled during the ratings year. Localism is a thing of the past, even for stations such as WIN, along with NBN 3 in Newcastle, which had long been considered among the most prolific producers of programs in regional television. 

Local print media was far more upbeat:

 Local television viewers can look forward to a smorgasbord of Programs from December 31 (1991). The Hunter's television viewers are the big winners when two new players join the area's television scene next year, marking the start of aggregation. NRTV and Prime are set to break the Hunter's commercial television monopoly when they start transmitting on the UHF band from January 1. Aggregation means that the Hunter's viewing audience will have access to the Prime Network (based in Tamworth) and Northern Rivers Television (based in Coffs Harbour). Each of the three stations will relay Sydney television networks, giving the viewer a more extensive range of local, national, and international programmes, from which to choose. 

Canberra's Capital CTC 7 founder, George Barlin, was scathing about the loss of local production under aggregation:

 "Then it was so plain for all to see, that the days of local programming were gone," Mr Barlin said. "It would just be matter of turning on the tap, and none of the country stations could ever make a profit be-cause there were three stations where there had only been one before. While there was enough money to make one very profitable and very successful television station, there wasn't enough room to support three. That's when the rot set in. Local television went out the window when aggregation came in."

Pictured at right: Post aggregation, NBN's coverage was dramatically extended, even into Queensland's Gold Coast, with a translator at Currumbin and a sales office at Surfer's Paradise.

A good measure of, and perspective on, the cost to NBN of aggregation - extending its network into north and northwest NSW - is the number of television transmitter sites and relay sites to feed this massive expansion. Before aggregation NBN maintained Mt Sugarloaf, three Central Coast translators ('rebroadcasters') - Bouddi, Gosford, and Wyong - and, in the valley, for the districts around Aberdeen, Merriwa, and Murrurundi. After aggregation NBN maintained 32 transmitting sites. When relay sites were included, the station had equipment at more than 50 locations, the majority on remote mountain tops. 

In addition to the initial capex and ongoing maintenance dollar cost - not to mention the electricity bill, so I did - this was a huge workload for the small team of transmission technicians. Also there were now seven regional offices with their sales, admin, and news staffs, which also brought a doubling of the company's IT infrastructure as computer use grew, along with its ceaseless demand for network access.

Despite the outlay, and Nine's gouging on programme costs, by the mid 1990s NBN was succeeding beyond expectations. Fortunate, too, for the station that its new owner had deep pockets and a prudent approach to business. In 1993 Soul reported a 23% fall in net profit to $27 million, after their "media interests contribution" fell to $3.5m from the previus year's $8 million, stating it was "a direct result of the effects of the recession... and that NBN continued to be burdened by the costs of implementing the government's television aggregation policy and the resulting high programming costs."

But NBN's subsequent and returning profitability was inevitable. Firstly, it had unassailable dominance in the most populous and lucrative market, the Hunter and Central Coast regions, bolstered by its one hour news and that programme's local-to-region news and advertising that were seamlessly inserted. Secondly, it had aligned with the leading network at the time, Nine. Almost by predestination, that alignment was inevitable due to Nine favouring NBN as its affiliate because of NBN's market dominance - hence ability to pay top dollar for Nine's programmes. Circular logic.