For those of you hard of reading, I'll write it again. The ABC didn't want to do it any more.
Simply put, NO CHANNEL 7, NO FOOTBALL TELECAST!!
Do you know that for sure? They are still broadcasting the WAFL this season. What you said, Hazydog. It's a myth that the ABC had made the decision to scrap SANFL coverage. There is not a single reliable source for the claim (and no, beenreal repeating something over and over is not a 'reliable source'). The news stories in mid-2013 when this suddenly popped up (as 'McGuire Media is coming to save the SANFL—for a mere $1m a year!') were doing no more than parroting the line being fed to them by the SANFL, which had decided which way it wanted to jump. See, for example, the 'boy, does this guy ever get it right?' assertions of Rucci : "... as the ABC prepares to walk away from football in both Adelaide and Perth". Um, whoops. Impeccable sources as always, I'm sure. 'The ABC is gonna walk away, leaving us with nothing' became a self-fulfilling prophecy for some people in SANFL management. The fact is that the SANFL walked away from the ABC.
WAFL has always been a lower-attendance and therefore presumably lower-rating comp than the SANFL, and yet the ABC bat on in the West. The NTFL has always been vastly smaller than both, and yet the ABC have batted on there. The ABC bats on covering the VFL in Victoria in 2014. The ABC bats on covering the local rugby union Shute Shield in NSW in 2014. There's a bit of a theme developing there, hey?