Packer’s vote of confidence in Free to Air
Finally quoted amid a flood of media speculation this week, James Packer is giving away nothing about his ideas for TEN.
- Published by David Knox
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Finally quoted amid a flood of media speculation this week, James Packer is giving away nothing about his ideas for TEN.
“I’m happy to be back in free-to-air TV,” he told the Sunday Telegraph. “For our company, it’s a good investment. It’s a great investment for all shareholders.
“This is a vote of confidence for free-to-air television. Multi-channels have surprised everybody with their outstanding success to take advertising dollars from other mediums while pay-TV stays strong.”
The newspaper reports Packer was tight-lipped about plans for TEN’s immediate future. Staff are awaiting updates on the future of the news revamp which involves a news block from 5pm to 7pm and extra evening bulletins, for which it has already hired more than 100 staff including veteran journalists Chris Masters and George Negus.
Meanwhile, Negus tells the Sun-Herald, ”It’s all systems go – I have no reason to believe otherwise. Television business is television business and television journalism is television journalism.
“I don’t know any more than what I have been reading myself.”
Source: Sunday Telegraph, Sun Herald
10 Responses
It’d be pretty foolish to make Ten scuttle their news plans that they should’ve done a few years ago, especially if one looks at the current abysmal ratings
their 6pm Simpsons repeats and Neighbours are both delivering for Ten.
Can’t see how the ACCC will possibly allow him to keep it.
Unless he comes out directly with a quote of “ONE will not be axed” then I have grave concerns.
Surely it is a conflict of interest with him owning Fox as well. He is clearly doing this to get rid of sport on FTA (And news as well by the look of it).
I agree with Chris. I’m a 30 year old male, I love Ten’s new direction with news. Though not a huge sports fan I can see that One, TEN and Eleven combine to offer true diversity of choice for the viewer. I think Ten is on to a winner here and will likely be the number 1 network in the very near future… watch out 7 and 9.
I feel sorry for the team of (formerly) happy campers at 10 who have been delivering interesting and risk-taking programming across all genres as well as being a profitable network. Packer is a dullard and a wrecker and the network did not need him and does not want him. Imagine having all that money and you cannot think of anything original to do.
Look Ten might not be setting the world on fire with Digital channel One, but I consider it a slow burn. More and more sports are coming to One as they become available. Moreover, Ten has the most compelling of all multi-channels beginning Jan 11. Eleven will be an absolutely fantastic channel. The Fox8 of FTA. It has a great series of titles. it has been planned and launched apporpriately. So by Jan next year, Ten’s digital strategy will be fully realised and all the doomsayers will be very surprised.
And personally, I cannot wait for their news offerings in 2011, I am 30 so in the Ten demo and this news strategy is what I have been waiting for. perfect for my arrival home from work each night.
The success of multi-channels have only surprised the insiders, the supposed ‘experts’ – TV execs and network owners like the Packers – who were only interested in maintaining the status quo. Their nice little five-channel pond with nary a ripple to disturb their Wednesday golf game. If they’d ever asked the viewers they’d have known years ago that multi-channels were the way to go with DTV. But they put their heads in the sand and refused to see what was obvious to any outside observer.
The lesson has been loud and clear for years from the UK DTV experience – viewers prefer many SD digital channels to a few HD channels from the existing networks. Australia’s big mistake was pushing HD as the main selling point for DTV when what would have excited the audience (and greatly sped up the DTV transition) was greater choice in programming, even if only in SD. What we’ve ended up with is a compromised mish-mash of existing networks pushing multiple channels, many full of endless reruns, combined with increasingly anachronistic HD broadcasts. But at least the existing FTA networks (and Foxtel) haven’t been inconvenienced, and that’s the most important thing isn’t it?
The quote “Multi-channels have surprised everybody with their outstanding success” would not bode as poorly for Ten’s plans as the news outlets would have you believe.
Basically he’s coming in when the price wa slow and will sell out whe high whether or not that means takeover or significant influence probably doesn’t matter. I don’t think he wants to be bogged down in FTA like it was at 9 but if he sees an opportunity to cost cut and offload lets say +4-5 years away then that’s he’s aim, otherwise he’s sees strong cashflow/profits for FTA for the forseeable future.
All I read was “Uhh-duhhh”.