Aus TV History | Seven Network 1990s

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Purple (90) Sydney (92)	Olympics (92) 2nd Music (93)

The 90s started out as damage control in the wake of Qintex's reign, but moved on to see another media mogul buy up the pieces and have his turn at running the network.

After Skase fled the country in 1990 and escaped extradition proceedings, Qintex’s broadcasting assets were buddled together by its receivers and turned into the discrete company, the Seven Network, in 1991.

Seven tried to refocus and move on with business, launching a new national current-affairs program, Real Life, in January 1992. It was hosted by ex-ABC reporter Stan Grant, however was replaced by local editions of Today Tonight in 1995.

Discover It All		The company listed on the stock exchange in 1993. Pay-TV was the subject on everyone’s lips around this time, and in 1994 Seven joined and then withdrew from the Optus Vision partnership with Nine and Optus. This indecisiveness came from disagreements within the company over involvement in any pay television schemes being promoted at the time. Kerry Stokes, who had previously owned television stations in Western Australia and Canberra, raided the market for shares in the Seven Network in March 1995, and became chairman of the company after reaching 20% ownership in May. Stokes has since increased his stake to over 40% through purchases and buy-backs.		Sydney Melbourne Sport

Long Short		Seven joined up with Kirk Kerkorian in 1996 to finally takeover the company that Qintex never could, the MGM/United Artists movie studio. The partnership acquired the studio for US$1.3 billion, but Seven sold its stake back to Kerkorian in 1998 for US$389 million. Australia Television, a loss making Asian pay-TV channel owned by the ABC, was sold to Seven in July 1997 as the government reduced ABC funding. Seven already ran Seven Network Asia in some countries, so this helped increase its reach throughout the region.

		Darwin finally gained a second commercial television station in 1998 when Telecasters launched Seven Darwin (TND-34) on 27th March. It was affiliated to Seven, taking a Queensland feed with local ads inserted, as well as producing a nightly local news bulletin.		Generic Melbourne
TND-34 Darwin

Short Melbourne Brisbane I Want To Laugh		'The One To Watch' was the successful catch-cry Seven introduced in 1999 and continued to use for the next 5 years. Seven became the first free-to-air network to broadcast a constant watermark over its programs in 1999. Seven made a point that it would not broadcast the logo over news or current affairs, but never-the-less uproar still followed and the size of the logo was reduced and made more transparent. Continue to the 2000's »

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