TV1 and SF will be off air permanently from the end of December.
Mediaweek reported in August the owners of TV1 and SF — CBS Studios International, NBC Universal and Sony Pictures Television International — were unable to negotiate a satisfactory deal with Foxtel. TV1 General Entertainment Partnership confirmed to B&T the company employees 35 full-time staff confirming that these jobs will be affected.
Pundits' reactions on forums such as 'Whirlpool' and 'TV Tonight' have been mixed with some asking what "35 people do" and citing "commercial reality", while others are more cynical and are not happy with Foxtel's monopoly status, claiming this is the same treatment meted out by Foxtel over their movie offerings.
12 months ago Foxtel dumped the Movie Network and Showtime channels and substituted them with cheaper to produce in-house product; Foxtel Movies.That month, TV1 had a channel share of 2.3% and was beaten only by Fox Footy and Fox Sports 2 which was screening the Ashes. SF had a channel share of 0.7% which was higher than all the Foxtel movie channels except Premiere.
TV1 started on the Galaxy platform in 1995 and has been one of Foxtel’s more popular channels with a mix of retro and crime content, including the Australian productions Killing Time, The King and Stupid Stupid Man. SF launched as SciFi in 2006 and rebranded as SF last year. It is currently producing the local sci-fi film Arrowhead (source: TV Tonight).
'The Australian' newspaper (which has shareholder commonality with Foxtel, with both companies enjoying monopoly/ oligopoly status) presented a different spin when it reported "The US TV networks have decided to dissolve their partnership, meaning Foxtel must now deal directly with each studio to purchase content instead of just buying TV1 and SF programming" — the implication being, for this writer at least, that the owners of TV1 have brought this upon themselves and Foxtel must plug the vacuum.
A spokesperson for Foxtel told Mediaweek: "Channel agreements regularly come up for renegotiation and our current agreements with TV1 and SF are due to expire at the end of this year. We are currently in discussion with several of our content suppliers to determine new arrangements and will continue to maintain both a replacement general entertainment channel and a dedicated science fiction channel."
