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Discussions continue at TEN

New TEN shareholder James Packer met with TEN executive chairman Nick Falloon and CEO Grant Blackley in Sydney yesterday afternoon.

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New TEN shareholder James Packer met with TEN executive chairman Nick Falloon and chief executive Grant Blackley in Sydney yesterday afternoon.

The Australian reports that Packer is believed to have requested board representation and outlined his concerns with TEN’s costs and multi-channel strategy.

He is understood to have the support of WIN TV’s Bruce Gordon (who holds 13 per cent), Perpetual (9 per cent) and Paradice Investment Management (4.8 per cent).

Speculation continues that Packer wants TEN to return to a focus on the 16-39 market and has concerns about ONE and ELEVEN.

Outdoor advertising business, Eye Corp, is also tipped to go.

The timing of the Packer raid is hardly in TEN’s favour. It is well-advanced on its plans for an additional hour of news led by George Negus and state-based hosts. There is now less than five weeks remaining in the current ratings year. Summer schedules will already be in place ahead of the 2011 ratings year. TEN is usually first cab off the rank to indicate its summer schedule, but that is potentially up in the air.

Last week TEN strategically announced the launch date for ELEVEN as January 11 and issued Press Releases talking up its new US acquisitions. Anything to reaffirm a strong position.

James Packer, who ran a leaner, meaner Nine than his father, is unlikely to have been bothered by the tactics.

He is expected to have more discussions with Falloon, the man who was sacked at Nine by Kerry Packer.

Source: The Australian

24 Responses

  1. P.S. to Tasmanian Devil – didn’t occur to me at the time, as the first memory triggered was that of “The Entertainment Network”, but in actual fact the official channel logoes for both ten and one are written in all lower-case.

  2. Ok, James packer may axe ONE & replace it with a 24 hour SKY news channel. Why ?? ABC News 24 has all the news we want free so why axe ONE. Packer should make changes to Channel 10 & leave ONE alone

  3. Tasmanian Devil – probably dates back to when they used to promote themselves as “The Entertainment Network”. It’s not nearly as annoying as 9 putting absolutely everything in caps in their EPG headings.

    KFed – re “4” viewers of One, One still holds the record for 2nd largest audeince of a secondary channel (F1, only beaten by Big Bang repeats on Go). It’s a case of “if you build it, they will come” – it’s shown it can get viewers, but doesn’t have enough content to keep it up all the time. To date, it’s been profitable as it is, and they’ve not been concerned about outright wins, but with Packer coming in….??

  5. I agree with ryaneco

    The only way TEN will increase profit will be to increase audience share. The News hour between 6 & 7pm will help do that as will ELEVEN.

    Companies can’t keep trimming the fat decrease cost in an effort to increase profit. It doesn’t work. Nine did that and it resulted in Seven poaching all the quality staff at Nine thus making the Seven the number 1 network for the last few years. Unless the other shareholders are aiming to pull out when the stock price gets higher as JP is, i don’t see the point.

  6. I really hope the plans for all the extra news on Ten go ahead most of all. I’m really looking forward to 11 also, it does sound like it will have plenty of shows I will regularly tune in to watch.. One I don’t care for too much, but, I can see it’s value and think that the three channels together give Ten the strongest offering from the commercial networks. Packer should at least wait to see how 2011 goes before changing things too much.

  7. I hadn’t taken much notice of it until now, but why does Network Ten always write the names of their channels in all caps? Reading this article just made me notice how irritating it is to read. It also comes across as sort of arrogant, not that they seem arrogant compared to the other commercials…

  8. @ Russell says: October 27, 2010 at 5:37 am
    I don’t understand how a guy who has what – an 18% stake in the company, can bully it into doing what he wants.

    Have you seen a photo of young JP lately? He’s beginning to make his dad look positvely dainty by comparison, that’s how! 🙂

  12. No matter how annoyed the four (approx) viewers of One get, unless they can work out a way to clone themselves in very large numbers, the channel will be in danger of a reformat at very least.

  14. I hope Eleven goes ahead because I’d watch it if they choose sensible timeslots for shows I like to watch. Or maybe have repeats late at night if it doesn’t work out. That’s what I like about the second channels.

    Ten killed all the shows I was watching by being unreliable like the other two commercial networks (Medium, House, Smallville, Supernatural and Stargate Universe). I was hoping Eleven would do the opposite and be reliable. Also the others also have three channels. It’s about time Ten also has three. It’s the one I was looking forward to the most (i.e. Eleven).

  16. One is already doing well financially, perhaps Packer is more concerned with being #1… or simply beating 9. One would do better with more live shows in primetime. We’ve already seen that Before The Game and Thursday Night Live appear in the top 100 sometimes, but some nights there’s nothing live on in primetime. More weekly shows like Before The Game for other sports would be good. e.g. NFL. They’re showing NFL Total Access, which I’m enjoying, but it’s not helpful for people new to the sport (not to mention they keep moving it around). If they want to improve ratings, they should have a local show which specifically has content for people new to the sport. 1/2 hour a week with Q&A via text/web would help new people get into it, instead of just watching the Super Bowl once a year (which is the only time we get local hosts). My feeling is Ten are happy with how it’s going, but Packer isn’t.

  17. I was wondering what this meant for the summer schedule too – if he is going to dump Eleven, then those shows will have to air over summer non-ratings (or pick up late slots)

  19. Maybe he can sort out ONE, there is a lot of nothing on there at times. As a HD chanel it could be used for so much more. Last night at 8.30 there was a replay of an old US basketball game from the 90’s which probably attracted 5 people. Give us some HD movies as well as sport.
    Movies and Sport work well together !!

  20. Argh! Not what I want to hear. Out of the commercial networks, Ten have managed their multi-channel policy the best. They’ve picked a timetable and stuck to it – not rushed something together at the last minute to try and beat someone else – and picked a specific genre for one of their secondary channels, instead of having 2 channels of repeats and “not good enough for the primary” (would like ot see more genre-specific channels on FTA – music, doco’s, movies come to mind). The only other network to do as well is the ABC (though I disagree with a news channel being the HD channel, but that’s another matter). I want my One HD!

  21. ELEVEN has to go ahead.

    For one, CBS is involved, im sure they wont make it easy for TEN.

    Also (clcihe aleart) Neighbours, does TEN really want it back on the main channel?

  22. I would just sit back and wait; all you have to do is go take a look at the network ratings; even on a strong night Ten Network is whipped by Seven Network with their combination of a strong news hour on the main channels and a combined total of anywhere between 4% and 8% coming from their two digital channels.

    Ten simply can not compete with that; they need to strengthen their early eveninga and get a good rating digital channel off the ground.

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