WIN Television is an Australian television network owned by WIN Corporation that is based in Wollongong, New South Wales. WIN commenced transmissions on 18 March 1962 as a single television station covering the Wollongong region. The WIN Network has since grown to cover much of regional Australia. The network's name, WIN, originates from its first station, Wollongong's WIN-4. WIN has a programme supply agreement with metropolitan broadcaster Nine Network, covering its stations in Regional Queensland, Southern and Western New South Wales, Griffith, Regional Victoria, Mildura, Tasmania, Eastern South Australia, and Regional Western Australia. WIN also has a programme supply agreement with third-placed metropolitan broadcaster Network 10 for its Northern New South Wales station. WIN also produces and broadcasts weeknight half-hour local news bulletins across its Queensland, southern New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania markets as WIN News.
Regional services
Through its many television broadcast licences, WIN re-broadcasts metropolitan network content into regional Australian markets, as follows:
History
Early years in Wollongong
Television Wollongong Transmission Limited (TWT) was incorporated on 4 October 1955 by a group of local businessmen. Five years later, it was awarded a licence by the Postmaster-General's Department over a number of other groups aligned to Sydney-based stations ATN-7 and TCN-9 to broadcast to the Illawarra and South Coast regions. The new station was to broadcast on the VHF-4 frequency, using the callsign WIN (which stood for Wollongong Illawarra New South Wales), in line with other Australian call signs.
1980–1999: aggregation and expansion
During this period, WIN expanded through the purchase of stations in Victoria, Queensland, and New South Wales. In 1984, WIN became the first regional television station to transmit stereophonic sound. Close links between WIN Television and the Nine Network ensured the Nine Network affiliation for southern New South Wales when aggregation occurred in March 1989. The changes meant that WIN expanded into the rest of southern New South Wales, launching new stations in Canberra, Orange, Bathurst, Dubbo, and Wagga Wagga, with new buildings and studios built in Orange, Wagga, and Canberra. Aggregation also provided the network with two additional competitors, The Prime Network and Capital Television.
In 1990, WIN purchased Queensland station Star TV, with stations in Rockhampton (RTQ) and the Darling Downs (DDQ and SDQ), just weeks before aggregation was to occur in regional Queensland. The station had already been set to become a Network 10 affiliate under its previous owners; however, WIN's links with the Nine Network enabled it to clinch the Nine Network affiliation away from QTV, which was then forced to affiliate with third-placed Network Ten with just days to go.
ENT Limited, a Launceston-based company that owned a number of television and radio stations in regional Victoria and Tasmania, was taken over by WIN in 1994. Television Victoria and TasTV were, as a result, rebranded as WIN Television. The network further expanded to Griffith in 1998, when WIN purchased MTN-9 Griffith and its supplementary station AMN-31 from its local owners. As MTN had been affiliated with WIN since the early 1990s, the station was easily integrated into the network.
WIN became regional Western Australia's second commercial television network on 26 March 1999 after winning the rights tender in 1997. Prior to the launch of the new station, GWN held a commercial monopoly on the market. GWN became an affiliate of the Seven Network, while WIN took a combination of Nine Network and Network Ten programming. Despite Nine's traditional ratings dominance throughout most of the country, incumbent GWN has remained the market's most-watched station. The second ratings survey of 2006 placed WIN Television with a 34.7% commercial audience share in prime-time, compared to the Golden West Network with 65.3%.
Also in 1999, WIN purchased two stations in South Australia: SES-8 in Mount Gambier and RTS-5a in the Riverland region. They became known as WIN SA. In 2002, supplementary licences were granted under Section 38A of the Broadcasting Services Act, allowing the network to launch a WIN Ten service using the MGS call sign in Mount Gambier and LRS in the Riverland. This enabled the main SES/RTS station to be a sole Nine Network affiliate, which lasted until 2007, when a supply agreement was made with Seven.