Nine and Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) have announced that SCA will take on representation of Nine’s local television sales in the Northern New South Wales licence area.
The arrangement commences on July 1, 2018 (with a transition period from May 1, 2018) and builds on the broader affiliate agreement between the two parties.
With SCA already representing Nine for national sales in Northern NSW, this agreement will mean all TV sales for Nine’s NBN operations in Northern NSW will be undertaken by SCA.
Managing director of QTQ and NBN Kylie Blucher said: “This is a natural step in the close relationship we have with our regional partner SCA and there are obvious synergies in having them represent us across the Northern NSW licence area.
“For local advertisers they will continue to be serviced by a strong local team who knows the area and their needs.”
Brian Gallagher (pictured), chief sales officer for SCA, said, “With this extension into Northern NSW, SCA will be bringing its expertise to sell the Nine TV product to local and national clients across the vast majority of regional Australia.”
As the largest regional market, the Northern NSW licence area serves a population of more than 2.1 million people, with centres in the Gold Coast, Newcastle, Central Coast, Tamworth, Taree, Lismore, Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour.
Nine and SCA are working with impacted employees for their transition to SCA. Mediaweek believes there could be a small number of redundancies from the merging of the sales teams.