Sunraysia Television was a publicly listed company which owned Channel Nine Perth's parent company ''Swan Television and Radio Broadcasters'' from 1989 to 2007. Although listed on the

ASX Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as ...

, Sunraysia had been majority owned by Eva Presser's Sabtel (between 44 and 50 per cent) with

WIN Corporation WIN Corporation is a private Australian media company, that owns assets including the WIN Television network, Crawford Productions and several local radio stations. The company is based in Wollongong, New South Wales. History Founding The WIN b ...

owning another 43.65% of the company.

History

Sunraysia Television has its origins in the area around

Mildura Mildura is a regional city in north-west Victoria, Australia. Located on the Victorian side of the Murray River, Mildura had a population of 34,565 in 2021. When nearby Wentworth, Irymple, Nichols Point and Merbein are included, the area had ...

, known as Sunraysia. It operated a single television licence, STV-8. In 1985, the station was purchased by Eva Presser. In 1989, Sunraysia acquired Channel Nine Perth from Bond Media who were forced to sell it due to cross-media ownership laws restricting national audience reach. They paid A$95 million for the station. As part of the deal, it also sold STV-8 to Bond Media for $18 million, which was then onsold to

ENT Ltd. ENT Ltd, standing for Examiner-Northern TV Ltd, is a private shell company owned by WIN Corporation. In its heyday, ENT was a publicly listed Australian media company based in Launceston, Tasmania. It was run by major shareholder Edmund Rouse unt ...

for the same price. In 1994, following a failed takeover bid for Sunraysia,

Kerry Stokes Kerry Matthew Stokes (born John Patrick Alford on 13 September 1940) is an Australian businessman. He holds business interests in a diverse range of industries including electronic and print media, property, mining, and construction equipment. ...

sold his 21.2 per cent stake to Bruce Gordon's

which already held 19.9 per cent. Mrs Presser was quoted as calling the Stokes bid "uninvited, unnecessary, unwanted, unspectacular" and that her rejection wof the bid was "unequivocal".

Selling of ''Nine Perth''

In February 2007,

PBL Media Nine Entertainment (registered as Nine Entertainment Co. Pty Ltd) is an Australian publicly listed media company with holdings in radio and television broadcasting, newspaper publications and digital media. It uses Nine as its corporate brandi ...

announced that it would acquire 100% of ''Swan Television and Radio Broadcasters'' from Sunraysia for $136.4 million. However, after protest from

owner Bruce Gordon, who was offering Sunraysia a revised $163.1 million, it was announced months later on 21 April that the board of Sunraysia would now endorse WIN's revised offer. The sale went through on 8 June 2007.

Sunraysia & the Pressers

Eva's husband Dan is executive chairman of family company, Sabrands. Sabrands runs the Sunraysia Natural Beverages company, which similarly has no ties to the

Sunraysia Sunraysia is an illdefined district, sometimes incorrectly referred to as an economic region, located in northwestern Victoria and southwestern New South Wales in Australia. The region is renowned for its sunshine, intensive horticulture inclu ...

region, and since 2013 has owned the iconic

Rosella Rosellas are in a genus that consists of six species and nineteen subspecies. These colourful parrots from Australia are in the genus ''Platycercus''. ''Platycercus'' means "broad-tailed" or "flat-tailed", reflecting a feature common to the ...

business. The Pressers use ''Sunraysia'' as their personal brand name, which some may see as ironic given the name was also used in a 1920s dried fruit advertising campaign, for the Australian Dried Fruits Association - an entity with no connection to the Pressers.

References

{{reflist Defunct broadcasting companies of Australia Mildura