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News 16 May 2022 - 3 min read

NITV to split into 12 metro, regional transmissions

By Sam Buckingham-Jones - Deputy Editor
NITV

Anna Dancey, National Sales Manager NITV, and Tanya Denning-Orman, Director Indigenous Content SBS, who said: "it’s exciting to continue improving the services we provide for our diverse audiences, whatever part of the country they’re tuning in from."

Ten years after launching with SBS as a free-to-air channel reaching First Nations people, NITV will move from one national broadcast to 12 markets from tomorrow. The change means more targeted programming, and, SBS hopes, more targeted advertising from brands that want to reach First Nations people with relevant, regional ads.

What you need to know:

  • First Nations TV channel NITV will split from a single national broadcast to 12 markets from tomorrow, with more tailored programming for five metro markets and seven regional markets.
  • The split means advertising can also be more targeted to region, and NITV, owned by SBS, says it reinforces its Beyond 3% initiative, which aims to encourage brands to spend more three per cent of their media reaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

National Indigenous Television (NITV), the SBS-run channel showing programming produced and presented by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, will split from one national broadcast to a 12-market split transmission from tomorrow.

The change means the channel will broadcast some more targeted shows, like news, sport and weather, across the five metro and seven regional markets. It also means brands will be able to advertise in specific markets, not just on the national channel showing First Nations stories.

“NITV continues to grow and strengthen as a channel delivering powerful, entertaining, and important programming providing a voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” Tanya Denning-Orman, Birri and Guugu Yimidhirr woman and Director of Indigenous Content at SBS, said.

“Launching a 12-market signal and being able to explore more targeted opportunities for audiences and brands, comes at a time when we’re investing more in First Nations content across our platforms than ever before, and reaching more Australians with our unique storytelling and Black perspectives across the wider SBS network.”

The split transmission follows NITV and SBS’s launch last year of Beyond 3%, an initiative that aims to encourage brands to invest more than three per cent – the proportion of the Australian population that are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – of their media reaching those people.

NITV was launched as a satellite and cable channel in 2007, before becoming free-to-air as part of SBS in 2012. SBS’s most recent Annual Report says NITV reaches 1.8 million Australians each month.

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