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The Seven Network is an Australian television network available in most Australian capital cities. Its parent company and namesake has, in recent years, grown into a diversified media company. Seven's main shareholder is Kerry Stokes, who also owns Australian Capital Equity and subsidiaries such as heavy equipment supplier Westrac.
It was once owned by disgraced businessman Christopher Skase.
Its origins come from the Australian Television Network formed in 1963 by the Melbourne station HSV-7 and Sydney station ATN-7 when they were both owned by newspaper publisher, John Fairfax Ltd, (now John Fairfax Holdings).
Diversified Media Assets
While originally focusing on running a television network, Seven has recently diversified into a range of other media areas over the past decade. Below are some of the businesses it has run, or is involved with:
- It was a former stakeholder in the Optus Vision consortium.
- It owned a part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer - Once during the Christopher Skase ownership through Quintex in 1989 and again with Kerry Stokes in 1997.
- It owns a large stake in the Telstra Dome (previously Colonial Stadium) stadium in Melbourne.
- It was a former partner in the AOL7 Internet joint venture with America Online and Telecom New Zealand subsidiary AAPT. This venture is now owned by Primus Telecom and has been renamed "Primus-AOL", but Seven continues to supply it with content.
- It owns a third of Sky News Australia, a subscription TV channel. The other equal partners are PBL (Nine) and BSkyB (Sky Television UK).
- It owns Ticketmaster7, a ticketing company.
- It owned a majority stake in B Mobile, a mobile phone retailer but has now sold out.
- It owns a magazine publishing business, Pacific Publications, which publishes the following magazines in Australia and NZ:
- New Idea
- Family Circle
- That's Life
- Monument
- Golf Leisure and Lifestyle
- Home Beautiful
- Your Garden
- K-Zone
- Total Girl
- Girlfriend
- TV Hits
- It owned the (now defunct) i7 portal.
- It operates the Austext teletext service.
- It was a partner in Sports Vision, a company that ran the now defunct Sports Australia channels.
- It owns C7 Sports, which had a number of subscription sport channels and is continuing its efforts to find carriage again. The service was originally available on Optus Vision and Austar plus Foxtel during the Olympics in Sydney
- It owned Australia Television (now ABC Asia Pacific), a FTA satellite service broadcasting to Asia and the Pacific.
- It and Granada Television each owned half of the Red Heart production company. The two companies retain close ties.
Television Network
While Seven has in recent years diversified into a range of other media businesses, its primary business is still operating television stations, and the Seven Network. In the past, when market ratings products were calculated by AC Nielsen from viewer logbooks, Seven consistently outperformed the other networks. With the introduction of electronic ratings reporting by Oztam, the Nine Network jumped to the #1 spot. Now, in most areas, Seven usually rates #2 overall, competing with the Ten Network. However it regularly rates first in Perth.
It has a strategy of targeting females. This is one reason why it has more drama and less sport than the other networks. It also has more UK content than the other commercial networks (but much less than the ABC and SBS).
Most of its inhouse and commissioned programs have near exact copies on the Nine Network, due to copying by both sides. Nine's version almost always wins.
Seven Network Owned
Callsigns for Seven Network stations in the capital cities:
The Seven Network also owns 7 Queensland, which covers the Queensland regional aggregated market.
Affiliates
Seven Network programming is also carried by the following affiliate networks:
- Prime Television - Griffith, New South Wales region (WIN owns both commercial broadcasters in Griffith - one carries their own programming, the other is a feed from Prime Television)
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