On the eve of election day, Channel 9 has gone off-air in regional Western Australia after failing to reach an agreement over programming.

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Prime Media Group and WIN Corporation have spent the past two weeks negotiating with the Nine Entertainment Company over a program affiliation agreement for their joint venture, West Digital Television.

The parties failed to reach an agreement by the July 1 deadline and all programming on Nine, GEM and GO has been taken off-air.

The channels are now rolling generic images of Western Australia over the top of elevator music.

In a statement, Prime Media Group and WIN Corporation both said they would continue to negotiate with Nine Entertainment Company over coming days to resume broadcast for viewers as soon as possible.

The Nine Entertainment Group said in a statement WIN and Prime had rejected all offers to find a reasonable negotiated agreement, despite Nine concluding new program supply agreements for all other regional licence areas across the country.

All parties said they were still endeavouring to reach an agreement.

Due to new content and affiliate agreements between WIN, Southern Cross Austereo, Nine and Ten, Channel 9 and Channel 10 programming will switch channels in most parts of Australia.

WIN, which used to house Channel 9 shows, will now be broadcasting Ten programming across most TV license areas.

Channel 9 content will now be broadcast on Southern Cross, where Channel 10 content used to be.

Regional viewers missing out

Curtin University media commentator Sean Cowan said it was bad news for regional viewers.

"Undoubtedly, consumers in regional Western Australia are going to have less access to the television shows that they love, the news services," he said.

"[Also] the cricket — there's a hell of a lot of people out there who love watching the cricket.

"It's one less voice in the market [and] as far as I'm concerned and as far as the Government's concerned, the more voices in any market, the better."

He said WA was the only state in which Nine had been unable to strike a deal, but he believed an agreement would eventually be reached.

"I'd be surprised if that was not the case and especially on the eve of a federal election," he said.

"I'd also be very surprised if the Government didn't in some way start to perhaps put some pressure on for a deal to be done."