The Prime Television reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Prime Television

Sponsorship the way you would do it
Prime Television was formed in the mid 1980s as a network of regional stations:

AMV-4 Albury/Wodonga
RVN-2 Wagga Wagga
CBN-8 Orange/Central Tablelands
CWN-6 Dubbo/Central Western Slopes
MTN-9 Griffith (now part of WIN Television)
NEN-9 Tamworth
ECN-8 Taree

In 1986 the Australian Government announced plans for aggregation, that is the merging of sole regional television markets (markets served by one commercial station only) into larger markets containing three commercial stations. 


Despite opposition from some regional TV operators, Prime was positioned to take advantage of the new arrangements. The formation of Prime Television was to give the network a presence in three of the four initially proposed markets: Northern NSW, Southern NSW/Canberra and Victoria. 

Prime Television formed an affiliation with the Seven Network for the supply of programs to these markets.

In December 1989, CBN-8, RVN-2 and CWN-6 formed Prime's presence in Southern NSW and Canberra - competing against WIN Television (Nine Network affiliate) and Capital Television (Ten Network) The RVN and CWN callsigns were changed to CBN.

In December 1991, NEN-9 and ECN-8 branded as Prime Television expanded to the Northern NSW market which includes Newcastle, Lismore, Gold Coast and Coffs Harbour. The ECN callsign was replaced by NEN.

Aggregation arrived in Victoria on 1 January 1992 but Prime (AMV) postponed its expansion across regional Victoria until March 1992.

In the late 1990s, Prime Television continued to expand by purchasing the Western Australian regional television network Golden West Network (GWN)which covers the entire state of Western Australia outside of Perth as the only commercial station available.  In 1999, GWN took on Seven Network affiliation as WIN Television began transmission across the state.

Prime Television also expanded overseas in the late 1990s purchasing Azul TV in Argentina - which it has since sold - and also purchased a network of UHF transmitters across New Zealand which relaunched as Prime New Zealand.

Prime New Zealand now operates as a joint venture between Prime Television in Australia and the Nine Network and programming is predominantly sourced from Nine.