THE old-media world is crumbling. The castle has not been sacked but its foundations are looking shakier than they have since Bruce Gyngell welcomed the nation to television.
The mass audience of yesterday is being diced and sliced in ever more ways by competing entertainment options such as pay TV, the internet and whatever it is young people do with their mobile phones.
The bad news for the NRL is that its figures for rugby league's top-shelf weekly product, the Friday night games on Nine, are likely to sag; the good news is content is still king, whatever the medium.
The other bad news is that cost-cutters have taken over Nine, Seven remains in love with AFL and Ten is unlikely to veer wildly from its youth pitch; the good news is that technology might throw other bidders into the ring, particularly for some of the lower-rated matches, or for other product such as a possible network of club-sourced programming on the internet.
"Live sport will have great appeal for all of the television world - whether it's syndicated Foxtel, free-to-air or in various forms over broadband," observed media buyer and analyst Harold Mitchell.
"Sport will continue to be a major part of the economics of the business because Australians can't get enough of it."
And television will continue to be a major part - the major part, in fact - of the business of the NRL. Its TV rights deal, widely criticised and staunchly defended by NRL chief executive David Gallop, pulls in about $97 million a year and runs until the end of 2012.
Rugby league evolves slowly but who knows what the media will look like then? In terms of finances, the new-media landscape is the main game for the NRL, and a small strategy committee has taken the first steps towards getting the game in the best shape for its next sale.
"The real skill is to be able to package the game in such a way that you get the maximum benefit for the NRL, and that you offer real value to the networks - and others - who are paying for it," Mitchell said.
"The model ahead that the very sophisticated sporting bodies are looking at is driven by the fact that people will pay to get what they want. They should have a group right at the top who understand the new digital world, because those who can get that to work properly are they ones who'll get the great revenue."
Manly chief executive Grant Mayer, a member of the NRL strategy committee, wants everything to be on the table. Is two halves the right way to go? Has the NRL got the number of teams and their locations right? And how should it negotiate - sell the whole season, break out representative games as a separate product or even auction matches on an ad-hoc basis?
"We've got to make sure we've got world's best practice before we get into the negotiating ring," Mayer said.
Andrew Stevenson