One for the ladies, one for the fellas.

Gem and 7mate go live.

Post author By John Beohm
Post date September 27, 2010
4 Comments on One for the ladies, one for the fellas.

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Gem from the Nine Network, and 7mate from the Seven Network both launched over the weekend, although not in that order.

Long before digital multichannelling got too interesting in Australia I pondered how the commercial networks would approach the tricky task of extending their brands to multiple channels. Channel 4 have done a great job naming their portfolio of channels under the “4” brand, while the UKTV group have adopted individual brands for each of their many channels.

These two approaches are currently playing out in Australia, with the Seven Network now extending its brand name and logo to 7two and 7mate, while Channel Nine has launched Go! and Gem. Personally I think the impending launch of Eleven is the best branding we’ve seen on a commercial multichannel yet, but that said I’m pretty hot for any branding Channel Ten comes up with.

As for this weekend Gem looks pretty and is a nice start, although perhaps something you might see on an inflight channel, 7mate on the other hand is less a brand and more of a punchline, so lets just say neither of them bowled me over.

Tags nine, Seven Network

4 replies on “One for the ladies, one for the fellas.”

I agree absolutely about your assessments of both. The brand ‘7mate’ is setting Australia back 30 years! And GEM really does seem like QANTAS’s ‘onQ’ or similar!

Having said that, they both will offer a good selection of shows. The New Adventures of Old Christine and The Closer on GEM and Parks & Recreation, Family Guy, American Dad and Caprica on 7mate.

7Mate has to be the worst name I have ever heard of for a TV channel.

A great time for Australian TV, Personally I think some of these channel brands are kinda cheesy, but rebrands are inevitable, so they get better eventually. I feel the seven brand overall is becoming very outdated, very qucikly with the multicoloured variants, the 7mate brand is particularly strange, the fluro blue and the bogan ‘maaaate ‘slogan leaves a bit to be desired. That said, I can appreciate what they’re trying to do by linking them, Hope to see them adopt the channel 4 approach and become more closly linked, yet individual, I love the whole channel 4, e4 and more4 concept. I’m looking forward to the 11 brand, I saw the preview video on the ten website, they’re certainly taking it in a good direction.