WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | Contact
Channel Nine has confirmed today that they will be renaming their iconic and long-running anthology brand the ‘Wide World Of Sports’ (WWOS) this summer.
Nine’s WWOS has rivalled Channel 7’s sporting coverage for decades but is now set to be renamed the ‘Wide World Of Reality Television,’ (WWORT) with executives at the company having already admitted that it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
After losing the rights to ‘Nine’s Summer of Cricket’ and falling out of talks over the Australian Open and it’s preliminary tournaments, Channel Nine is now reeling.
This leaves the broadcaster with the rights to the NRL and the State of Origin and maybe the odd swimming championship or the like every now and then.
Channel 7 has been left with the Cricket, the Olympics, International Rugby League, the AFL, Horse Racing and pretty much everything else.
With Kerry Packer rolling in his grave, the Director and CEO of Nine, Hugh Marks sat down with our reporters a short time ago in an exclusive interview with The Advocate.
“Yeah, we have lost some of our iconic sports and failed to secure anything else, so we are really going to focus on our Reality TV arm and try and win the market share there,” he said.
“We can reveal some exciting news. We are actually in talks with Channel 10 to try and by the rights to The Bachelor and The Project. So that’s really promising isn’t it?” he asked our reporters.
They declined to comment.
Marks then explained that Ken Sutcliffe will still be hosting wrap up, highlights and analysis programs with all the weekend’s major action.
“Yeah we will have experts sitting down with Kenny and going over what happened in the Live Auditions, and the Rose Ceremonies and bringing unparalleled analysis and insights,” he said.
“Exciting times ahead.”
We contacted the poor old ABC about the issues and they just tried to spruik their coverage of the bowls.
“Our 5 pm Saturday arvo bowls coverage has a really solid core audience and we are confident we can give Nine a go,” CEO Michelle Guthrie said.
More to come.
