TV broadcaster Prime launches regional internet sites

Stuart Corner
Monday, 24 September 2007 10:25

Your IT - Home IT

TV broadcasters have seen the Internet take ever more of their customers' eyeball time and it's now starting to make inroads into their advertising revenue. One broadcaster, Prime, is fighting back with plans to launch Internet portals specific to each of the regional communities it serves and strong cross ties between online and broadcast content.

It has formed a new subsidiary, iPRIME to operate the service, headed up by Tony Surtees, the ex vice president and general manager for commerce, Yahoo! USA. iPRIME promises to "integrate customised community-based content for online audiences with television, maximising the blended relationship between the two media.

iPRIME has secured domain names in the form 'townametv.com.au for over 200 communities in Australia on which it intends to launch iPRIME portals. Canberra will be first, on October 7, to be followed by Newcastle and Wollongong before Xmas. (however it does not own the canberratv.com.au domain name).

iPRIME's initial focus will be NSW but it eventually plans to rollout portals for town in other states where Prime broadcasts. Prime's TV broadcast service covers northern and southern New South Wales, Victoria, the Gold Coast area of eastern Queensland and all of regional Western Australia. In the eastern states of Australia the service is branded Prime. In Western Australia it is known as Golden West Network. Prime also has a commercial radio network in Queensland, bringing the total audience within its coverage area to around five million people.

iPRIME says it will offer marketers and advertising agencies the opportunity of being able to micro-target their campaigns to specific regional audiences and it promises to provide innovative technologies to these advertisers and marketers across multiple media platforms. "This unlocks vast opportunities for marketers to develop relevant and highly measurable campaigns to deliver real results.