0/5

Morale up at TEN after CBS vote

Employees just didn't believe Murdoch & Gordon assurances that there would be no redundancies at TEN. They had long memories.

Lachlan Murdoch may have always been pleasant to deal with and made time to speak to staff but staff felt the company lost direction after he arrived, an article suggests today.

TEN employees unanimously rejected Bruce Gordon and Lachlan Murdoch’s bid for the network because they feared for their jobs, didn’t trust the two media moguls and wanted more media-ownership diversity.

The Australian Financial Review suggests staff partially blamed Murdoch for not halting the network’s long-term decline and felt Gordon had not supported the vulnerable network even though he was its biggest shareholder.

They did not believe assurances there would be no redundancies, with staff convinced the duo planned to outsource news operations to SKY News. Their bid had also planned to exit TEN office leases in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

“Morale has really improved since the sale to CBS was agreed,” one employee said on Friday. “People feel things are looking up.”

But Murdoch & Gordon may yet seek to challenge the creditors vote last week. The CBS bid still needs to approval of the Foreign Investment Review Board.

10 Responses

  1. Sounds like Murdoch and Gordon needed to do more to win over sceptical staff. But I agree, as exciting as it might sound for CBS to be the new owner, they are a corporation too and will make any cuts they deem necessary. Interesting times ahead.

  2. If staff numbers hadn’t been cut Ten would have been in even worse financial shape. And either the new buyer would have slashed staff or they would have folded. Murdoch and Gordon weren’t able to save Ten from the internet, and burnt several hundred million of their own money trying. But then CBS lost 13% of viewers year on year, Showtime is facing a rash of cord cutting and CBS is shifting its focus to sport and All Access, so they aren’t going to be a White Knight either.

    1. But they are still better At doing television then Foxtel or win are. The fact is cbs make their own content and are more advanced then win or Foxtel in what they do.

      Win: regional tv affiliate (plus Crawford)

      Foxtel: owns and operates pay tv network

      CBS: – owns some of its affiliates and runs those stations
      -owns cable tv channels including showtime and used to own and operate Viacom
      -owns a sports channel
      -owns a news channel
      – runs a stand-alone streaming service
      – owns radio stations
      – publishing companies

      Murdoch and Gordon were gonna run that place into the ground for their own companies interests. CBS however Is expanding into other things and evolving which is what ten needs. Tenplay is a embarrassment.

  3. You’re right when you say that Murdoch and Gordon planned to outsource operations at TEN to Sky News. I know for a fact that The Project was going to be axed and replaced with Andrew Bolt’s show.

      1. We all know Bolt is a lemon but the Murdochs love him. They would have had Bolt’s show in The Project’s timeslot as a form of virtue signalling, to reinforce their conservative credentials. Don’t forget that Lachlan had Bolt’s show on TEN for three years on Sunday morning despite it getting hardly any ratings and being constantly gazzumped by the ABC’s Insiders when it came to discussing politics and getting their interviews and other features mentioned in the other media.

Leave a Reply