Early evening makeover
TEN's early evening makeover signals big changes in News but raises questions about maintaining local content quotas.
- Published by David Knox
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TEN is yet to reveal how it will address the loss of drama quota points when Neighbours shifts from TEN to ELEVEN next year
The announcement yesterday comes hot on the heels of the Network throwing an anniversary celebration for the long-running soap. On the day of its #6000th episode cast and crew are facing headlines that say “Dumped to Digital.” It is a soapie twist even a scriptwriter couldn’t have dreamed up.
The move will leave TEN with two primetime dramas, Rush and Offspring, both yet to be confirmed for 2011, as its current drama quota generators.
Yesterday CEO Grant Blackley would not be drawn on its future plans for new drama announcements, or whether the network plans to lobby the government to allow content on digital channels to qualify. Right now it’s probably difficult to know who to lobby anyway…
TEN has had some success with telemovies such as Hawke and A Model Daughter: The Killing of Caroline Byrne, which yield 4 times the drama points than a serial episode. Others such as Emerald Falls and The Informant haven’t been quite as well received.
The network has crunched the numbers on audience trends and says there is a significant switch-off by viewers at 6pm, with many not returning until 7:30pm. It hopes to address that by investing heavily in News.
Next year TEN will follow News at Five with a national 6pm News bulletin and a 6:30pm local bulletin, followed by The 7PM Project.
It is hiring an additional 100 employees, around half of whom will be Journalists / Presenters and forking out $20m per year to step up its News output.
It plans more live eye vehicles, SNGs, on air sets and graphics, a broader affiliation with global news providers and promises the return of local news to each state.
Presenters are expected to be announced at its 2011 Programme launch in mid-September.
41 Responses
For the drama points, a drama has to be shown on the Main channel (i.e. can’t be one of the secondary digitial channels) between (I think) 5 or 6pm and 11pm. So Neighbours can’t count if it’s on 11 and can’t count if it’s shown at an ungodly hour as some have suggested with a prime time repeat on 11. Will be very interesting to see how Ten/Eleven move forward with this – the drama points are going to be very interesting now.
SNG = Satellite News Gathering for those of you who, like me, have never heard the therm before…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_news_gathering
Whatever happened to the new Jennifer Byrne show slated for 6.30pm?
They should forget about Rush and Offspring and instead put a two hour a week 8.30pm adult drama/soap that is more in line with the 25-54yo demographic. That way if it succeeds it’s two hours of high ratings in primetime spots each week.
I still think ten should of gone with
5.00 ten news at 5
5.30 neighbours
6.00 ten news at 6
7.00 7pm project
On 11
6.00 the simpsons
6.30 neighbours encore
7.00 friends
Hmmn, maybe we will see Kellie Connolly on Ten??
Replace Neighbours with Degrassi The Next Generation
school shootings, fights, romance, teen drama, who wouldn’t watch?
As someone said yesterday, Neighbours has a core audience of half a million – it has never dipped below this, even on its weakest night. Do people really think that this core audience isn’t going to be willing to press one button on their remote to watch the show on another channel? Neighbours will have at least 400k on 11, taking into account a small loss of audience due to an absence of access to digital TV. TEN are banking on this – Neighbours and The Simpsons are 11’s flagships.
A whole evening of News from 5 to 7? What very bland programming. I’m sad that they are moving Neighbours to a secondary channel. I would rather have seen it end, than fade out this way.
6pm News based programme or 6pm News Bulletin? It’s probably the former, however two documents from TEN yesterday conflicted slightly on the wording:
a) Flowing from TEN’s dominant News at Five bulletins, the Network will introduce a new half-hour national news-based program at 6.00 pm weeknights targeting viewers seeking a smarter, more informed, considered and insightful approach to the stories, issues, events and news-makers of the day.
b) 6.00pm News Bulletin – target Australians seeking a more informed, considered and insightful approach to news and news-makers of the day
Ditch the 5pm news hour and move it to 6, people will follow!!
If 6pm is national, and 6:30 local…what’s News at Five? Surely not the same stories?
Ten can’t even fill its current news hour without regularly resorting to cross-promotions and other “non-news” (almost always reported upon by Angela Bishop). FiIling two hours whilst still appealing to Ten’s core demos is going to be a nightmare.
The success of the extra news services will depend on the points of difference between them all. If it all looks like 2 hours of the 5pm news, then nothing will change for Ten.
The idea of another local news bulletin at 6.30pm is good for those who get home from work between 6 and 6.30 and want to see news.
Surely we don’t need this much news from Ten, we have 24 news with the ABC if we require it. Ten would be better to stick with it’s entertainment based offering.
What’s to stop Ten screening Neighbours at some ungodly hour of the morning but keeping it’s prime time screening to Eleven?
No, not much local content.. Apart from that little show… MasterChef??
Surely Neighbours still counts towards their drama quota? Just because it’s not on the main channel, this seems silly to me.
I wonder how local the local news is. Adelaide’s Ten News at Five has been filmed in Melbourne for many years now.
how is Neighbours going to be able to attract Aussie talent both behind and infront of camera, on ELEVEN?
I would guess ratings will be betweem 150,000 & 200,00; any one care to make a bettrer informd one?
I think all that news is overload
Hmm, I wonder if that local news will find its way to Tassie.
Our TDT (Tasmanian Digital Television) is currently its a joint venture between Southern Cross and Win which is practically a simulcast of ten Melbourne. I suppose the reason we never got local news was because it was a digital only channel and it was still in its early days, but now that that number is much higher, we might see some change.
Ten have shown over the years they will take risks in their programming, Big brother and Masterchief for example. You have to give them credit for trying something new. Next year will be very interesting for them, and in a lot of ways with 11 coming on line, it will be a new Ten network. They have to do something to get out of 3rd place.
Good on them!
The yet to be named ‘The 6PM Project’ is Not a news bulletin. It is a ‘news-based program’. Won’t that mean either current affairs or a news-based hybrid?
And I think The Informant’s results were all Ten’s fault. A telemovie with hardly no promotion and in a dud Friday night slot was never going to do well.
Sorry but a news program followed by a news program????Ridiculous.
All Ten need to do is say farewell to Neighbours & put something fresh & spunky in it’s place,such as Dance Academy or even an update of Heartbreak High which was a good show.
Just how much news do we need?It’s all bad usually.We need more laughs/variety i say.
I reckon there are about 12 x NZ telemovies that TEN could buy, where every 2 hours counts for 8 points which is 96 points; and the next 13 hours of Go Girls would get 32.5 points. And 13 hours of Offspring is 39 points with 22 hours of Rush 66 points. So they just need a couple of more NZ dramas (whatever replaces the now ending Outrageous Fortune) and they’ll be ok.
I know they should just make more Australian drama …
Ten are taking a huge gamble with a solid 2.5 hour news block,it remains to be seen if this will work for them.