★★★★★ 0/5

ONE to relaunch with entertainment in May

ONE will relaunch on May 8th with more drama, factual and movies in HD but retain its premium sports as it chases males aged 25-54.

111
Leave a comment

TEN has confirmed it will relaunch ONE in May with more entertainment.

The sports-channel will now include a mix of entertainment and sports aimed at males aged 25-54.

It will include a mix of premium sport plus additional drama, movies, and factual. Many will be in HD.

First run titles include Ricky Gervais’ An Idiot Abroad, Terriers, Lights Out, Breakout Kings, Everest.

It will also air Sons of Anarchy, new episodes of COPS, Airline, Long Way Round, plus shows that have already aired including Ice Road Truckers, Extreme Fishing with Robson Green

AFL, Moto GP and Formula One will remain on ONE.

The move follows the exit of sports boss David White and the failure of the channel to attract significant numbers on an on-going basis.

‘‘The bold, broad appeal of TEN along with the already proven performance of the distinctly youthful ELEVEN and now with the broader content offering for the male-skewed ONE positions us to capitalise on viewer and advertiser engagement,’’ chief programming officer David Mott said.

ONE has been trialling entertainment shows for many weeks and noticing an increase in its audience.

“We found that has already boosted our audience with a 27% share jump in those timeslots, so we know there is an appetite for this,” a TEN spokesperson told TV Tonight.

“Where we have things in full HD we will play them in full HD.”

Entertainment will air Monday – Fridays, with sport on weekends. ONE is aspiring to a 2.5% share with its new line-up.

TEN will also launch The Bolt Report, hosted by Andrew Bolt on May 8 on Sundays at 10am. Meet the Press will be move to 10.30am.

The announcements come on a day when TEN reported “unacceptable” half year results of
group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) before Non-Recurring Items was $106.0 million, down 9.8 per cent on the prior corresponding period.

Interim CEO, Lachlan Murdoch said: “The half year results are not acceptable and
immediate action is already underway to address them. Disappointingly for TEN’s 1300 employees and 22,500 shareholders, these results do not demonstrate TEN’s underlying strengths and potential.”

“TEN is at a crucial juncture in its history. Free-to-air television is an excellent business with strong growth prospects. However, TEN has been under-delivering and this must change.”

“Importantly, this change has already begun.”

This post updates.

111 Responses

  1. In one of the reports it said: TEN’s Net profit fell to $49.52 million for the six months, wish I could make 8.25 million net profit a month, then I guess that is a pocket money for shareholders.

  2. Looking at the strategy presentation TEN has on their corporate website, acouple of items took interest.

    Firstly, on the 3rd slide the last point states ‘The Company’s August 2010 3 year plan was unacceptable’. So does this now highlight that along with the now departed Blackley, David Mott’s programming vision for TEN was flawed? As Chief Programming Officer surely it was his input which contributed into the direction the network would be focusing on. Is the writing now on the wall for Mott? Have a look at that EBITDA margin – from almost 40% to a measly 20%. Oh dear. Talk about not getting bang for your buck. Love the big ‘Rejected’ stamp to drive home the message.

    Secondly, slide 6 had under ‘Outperform’ two key points; Brand Rejuvenation and High-performing Leadership team – does this mean TEN will be getting a major overhaul? New feel? New look? New logo? No more promo’s with the black background and tired old voice overs? No more ‘Seriously’? (which I haven’t seen for a little while). As for the high-performing leadership team, that must hurt the outgoing David White. Wonder who Warburton will be poaching? All this intrigue surrounding TEN is better than any TV show at the moment. I’ve got my popcorn ready.

  3. One lasted a lot longer than I thought, but eventually we got there. Good on Ten for giving it a shot tho. I suspect it’s too hard to compete on sport because of the costs involved in locking up content… so for Ten a music channel would have been a lot cheaper for a niche channel. Now we’re going to get yet another general entertainment channel. *sigh*

  4. Ridiculous. This was a great channel for Ten to have, now they ruin it by doing this. They better not change F1 in the future, it was great having it live and then the replays a couple of days later…

  5. Have to laugh at all the Murdoch/Packer conspiracy theories.

    Nobody was watching the channel because they have nothing to show, so they change what they show on there. Its so simple.

  6. Wow, ONE HD Sports is just a normal loser commercial channel from 08MAY11. Goodbye my fav channel, I won’t be back.

    So now it’s only ABC1 and 2, News 24 and SBS, quality tv in Aus is slowly but surely disappearing. 🙁

  7. I think they should retitle the Ricky Gervais thing, Idiots Boardroom. This could be very bad for a channel that was brave enough to go with something different. I’m reasonably happy that we’re still going to get dedicated AFL & F1, but I agree that the channel needs WWE, Ten/Wrestling classic fit.

    I’ll wait and see if this is a good thing or not.

  8. as i have been saying on here for a while this is what was planed all a long people.
    who owns a big stake in ten/one? who owns foxsports on foxtel? yep the same two guys- packer Jnr and murdoch Jnr and where is the money? yep by making people pay to watch sport , so what to do? yep get rid of sport on one hd . and by doing that who does it help by getting rid of ur only competion ? yep you people learn fast FOXSports.

    its 101 of business – have a competitor? buy and close them down. job down.

  9. The Packer/Murdoch coup has worked, and Foxtel is protected as always the plan.

    Hopefully One will still look to buy more sporting rights when they come up and be a sport-focussed entertinment channel. One’s big problem was that they couldn’t even bid for many of the rights, as rights haven’t come up for many competitions since One has come ino existence. A lack of mid-week prime time sport is a problem as well. If the A-League rights had been up, mid-week games could have been on One : but that is largely ove the non-ratings period anyway.

  10. So now they’re admitting what most readers of this site have known for a fair while, which is that the One HD concept has been a loss making disaster, as you need very deep pockets to compete with what Foxtel offer in sports.

    As they had 3 seasons they could’ve shown, it’s on this channel Ten could and should’ve screened the Friday Night Lights and Army Wives shows at an 11
    or 11.30 pm timeslot, instead of stupidly onselling FNL to ABC2. They could also show the shows Psych, Monk, In Plain Sight and Eureka, if they’re not seen as good fits for Eleven.

  13. @Ruddeger — A follow-up to An Idiot Abroad called ‘An Idiot Abroad: the Bucket List’ has been confirmed and has started filming. Go to Ricky Gervais’ blog on his website for more details.

  14. Meh………..they ruined the station by putting on Ax Men and other nonsporting shows. I only watch the channel for the baseball and NFL – I can live without netball, golf etc.

  15. What a revelation… The masses don’t want wall to wall sport.

    Entertainment takes many forms, sport simply isn’t one of the major ones. Ask anyone born prior to 1970 what “Sunday TV” used to be like.

  16. Counting down the days until we have Foxtel installed in our house in Perth and I believe that Foxtel will have it’s London 2012 broadcast on dedicated channels such as Athletics, Gymnastics, Football (Soccer), Cycling and Swimming and their coverage better than Nine’s which I’d expect will be delayed into Perth.

  18. Beckala says:
    April 7, 2011 at 2:03 pm
    New eps of Long Way Round – have they made another one?

    Nope, not as yet, I would suggest ONE is repeating it(has already been on sbs).

  20. @alfagirl, sexist??… I call it a ratings winner!
    if I’m not mistaken they are aiming the entire channel at young men???
    what do you suggest men like to view??

    ps. Anyhow, feminism is on the way out.

  22. @ Bass, I’m a huge WWE supporter– but the main problem with WWE on free-to-air television is that it always builds towards PPV’s which are only available on Pay-TV.

    I reckon the WWE could potentially gain approx 200,000 for Raw/Smackdown for a few months with non-regular viewers interested, but the moment they realise they don’t see the best quality stuff the viewership will go down again.

  23. Terriers and Sons of Anarchy finally, and maybe some other F/X programming. Fantastic news. As long as F1 stays live I am happy.

    What a shame they wasted HD spectrum in prime time for the past couple of years.

Leave a Reply