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ONE to broaden its horizons

ONE will be adding more general entertainment in a closer battle for eyeballs with 7mate.

In recent weeks ONE has been playing everything from Ice Road Truckers to The Manchurian Candidate, neither of which are sports-related.

But soon the channel is expected to reveal its plans to incorporate more general entertainment aimed at males. It will pit the channel in a closer battle for eyeballs with 7mate.

The moves are in response to the soft figures for the sports channel, while Seven and Nine are on the attack with three stronger channels.

ONE is likely to retain big sports events, but will add entertainment programmes, including Sons of Anarchy.

Head of Sports David White announced he would be departing after 14 years with TEN. The channel will reintegrate its scheduling, promotions, publicity and marketing into the Network Programming team.

Programming of ONE will fall under the domain of David Mott and his team.

White has not indicated where he will wind up, but some observers note Premier Media is looking for a new CEO after the resignation of David Malone.

TV Tonight is hearing whispers to the contrary that could see him remain with a commercial network.

If TEN can sort out ONE at the same time as fixing its revamped news hour, and roll out MasterChef too, it will be better positioned to compete.

Source: The Australian

46 Responses

  1. What an absolute disgrace. If they actually showed decent sport, it wouldn’t be failing in the ratings. I see that Channel 7 have purchased the rights to Wimbledon. Why didn’t ONE purchase these rights? Wimbledon, along with the other Grand Slams, would be the perfect kind of thing to show on ONE.

  2. Hey kazorama, if you’re still reading, head to the Camelia grove Hotel in Alexandria – Several AFL supporter groups including Collingwood, Richmond, Hawthorn, West Coast & St Lida watch their games there – the Pies v Blues game is on live this Friday night.

  3. If they had just listened when they decided to scrap 10HD for One they could have been leading the digital pack ages before Go! or any of the others launched. Guess I have to add One back into my EPG. Sounds like they have the rights to prisonbreak now, I hope they show the first season soon.

  4. @ sam – we agree totally!

    My partner is an AFL fan and it’s kinda pointless to show ‘before the game’ at 1am after the game(s). Why they showed a film rather than AFL on Saturday night was confusing as well – since we’re in Sydney, it’s hard to find a pub/club, etc that will show AFL on foxtel (on a single screen) rather than league.

    And UFC has disappeared from their schedule completely….

  5. About time somboby came to there senses and realise
    you can only take so much sport. It was a total waste of a high definition channel
    as most of the programing was std definition

  6. Wednesday nights seem to be movie night. I’ve said this elsewhere before but the channel should be more like 7mate and by the looks of things it could very well be. their Wed movies are even FTA premieres like The Marine, Hitman, Assault on Precinct 13, The Comebacks and this Wed is Jarhead. yep, all movies aimed at the blokes! I’ve seen them play old classics too, whenever theres no sport to be played they throw on movies. theres so many shows they could play like Walker Texas Ranger (meant to be on 11) 24, Prison Break, The Unit and of course Sons of Anarchy. playing sports is fine… if theres no live sport to be played but why not throw on some shows and movies!

  7. as long as sport remains the priority and they don’t delay live sport for anything stupid, aka anything not live sport, then I don’t have a problem, this looks like a move to keep the channel operating as close to it original intention as possible while gaining a higher audience share.

    I have been fearing that they might scrap One entirely and re-launch it as something else ever since I noticed its weak ratings from the very beginning

  8. ONE HD has been the only channel left on FTA that shows consistently decent HD programming. I hope it doesn’t become like the so-called HD channels of 7 and 9 and just show mainly SD dross.

  9. Normally I’d be opposed to this sort of thing, but as long as they keep sport during the day, they don’t delay sport in favour of drama series and continue to have quality sports focused shows like One Week At A Time alongside the other ‘bloke content’ it should be okay.

    Also, who can be mad at anybody willing to put Sons Of Anarchy on the air?

  10. I think ONE sort of have the same problem as SEN radio station: It has a solid base to draw upon (Sports fans) but it struggles it expand from that core audience. I’m not sure if adding non-sports related material is the answer, it will just annoy the sports core base in my humble opinion.

    I think they should try re-scheduling their programming and focus on the core sports events. For example, they have fishing shows around the 6:30 or so timeslot, they should move that to weekended.

  11. An absolute pox on Ten/Eleven/One. Have been enjoying a Ten/Eleven renaissance of late, inc GN at 6.00pm but am very disappointed about the news Sons of Anarchy that were promised for Eleven are now going to One. Can not PVR One (because more and more now days programs of interest are conflicting in the schedule) – had never seen the need because there is no interest in all the sport it showed and the other stations HD channels were meh! Now they announce heading in the general entertainment direction while saturating their primary channel with sport.
    Sorry, but looks like another excursion to find it somewhere else.

    Bugger

  12. I wish they would close the channel down and give the sport back to foxtel. Im sick of trying to watch the F1 and having a million commercial breaks and then not even showing practise sessions.

  13. Yeah 7mate does have some pretty good stuff like Xena, Engineering feats, Axe man, Nbc Today. One HD just struggles with “entertainment value”. UFC, Nascar, Netball, are probably all great sports but are boring to watch! As for watching movies on One,
    I’ll stick with GO!.

  14. I think Mr Mott does a great job. While it’s a nice idea to have a dedicated sports channel, it is somewhat unsustainable in the competition for ratings and advertising dollars. I trust that ONE will keep its commitment to bringing us significant sporting events, and I think that adding general entertainment is the way to go.

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