Are all the cool kids really switching off TEN?
Yes. But it's a lot more complicated than that.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Two programming execs at Seven and Nine have commented on a story about TEN’s strategy to switch from 18-49 viewers to 25-54.
TEN CEO Hamish McLennan is already on the record as saying younger viewers are switching off Free to Air TV and it has to change its business model to survive. It’s a line in the sand from former failed TEN management.
Clearly it’s in the interests of TEN’s competition to talk them down, but here is what they’ve told Encore this week:
Angus Ross, Head of Programming at Seven says, “TEN is the only commercial network with a decreasing number of younger viewers. They are still watching TV in large numbers.
“TEN is trying to turn a TEN problem into an industry problem – you will find Seven and Nine are very pleased with their 16-to-39 performance.”
GO! / GEM programming executive Hamish Turner, says, “What TEN’s Hamish probably meant is that they are harder to get at because their viewing is so broad.
“They are quite industrious and seek out their own viewing. The content they want to watch is ubiquitous and they will watch it when they want to watch it.
“They will have their Foxtel Go apps, their ABC iView apps and all these things that enable them to watch across myriad platforms. It’s harder to get them sitting there at 8.30 on a Monday night. Having said that, if you’ve got event television like Big Brother then they’ll come in droves.”
Year on Year it’s true to say that younger viewers are switching off TEN.
It’s also true to say that Year on Year all viewers are switching off TEN. In weeks 7-29 (excl Easter) TEN is down 15% compared to the first half of 2012. 16-39s are down 18.5% and 18-49s are down 17.4%.
There is often talk that younger viewers are switching off broadcast television, but everybody conveniently overlooks the point younger viewers still want content. They still want entertainment, drama, reality and sport -but they want it their way. They want it in devices and times that work on their terms not the broadcasters.
I look forward to hearing more about TEN’s “anytime, anywhere” plan for viewing via other devices.
But I also find it curious that everybody forgets TEN’s woes began under a former management who sought to switch from being a youth network to a broader network. When TEN was firing all cylinders with hits like MasterChef and Talkin’ Bout Your Generation they tried to send all the cool kids to ELEVEN and broaden their main channel with News. We all remember how that panned out.
TEN used to boast it was never about being the highest rating network. But it was once the most profitable. It was the envy of other networks and I can’t help wondering if that’s a plan worth returning to.
Meanwhile, this week TEN launched This Week Live, content-wise one of its brightest new offerings in ages. Frankly the numbers were rotten, dropping from Offspring‘s 723,000 to just 338,000. Normally that would attract screaming headlines the next day and it will need to lift its numbers fast to avoid being branded a failure.
Hopefully the cool kids with the interwebs have already heard it’s worth catching next week.
31 Responses
were only turning off because of the way the networks treat us they think they know best but they don’t they need to spend more money get great American programming & not let 9 or 7 get them & stop putting shows on then taking them off e.g white collar & fix up eleven by getting rid of all the 70’s,80,90’s shows on the channel
whats with the sports channel One and the fact they put more movies and rubbish on there than any live sport? They have 2 other channels for old movies and repeats.
@Bazza – Spot on. They did that to my favourite show. Hawaii five-o. They showed it, took it off for a while, showed it again with little promotion and then changed timeslots with little or no promotion. I ended up having to watch it online as I simply lost track of TENs moves. No wonder people are not happy. What Ten needs to do is start again. Start with one night, say Monday and throw everything at it and go from there.
Today’s lesson is how to extrapolate the end of the world from a sample size of less than 0.001% of the population.
In any event, give the way Ten treats its viewers, would this actually be a surprise? Protip: You can’t start airing shows, then pull them two episodes in, or reschedule them randomly. That loses viewers.
This is all based on 2580 -so called OZ TAM tv meter readers. Oohh Please! Imagine only 7 & 9 on the airwaves? what a sad place FTA would be?
i applaud thinking outside the square. keep up the good work TEN.
Ten need to stop recycling the same few comedians from The Project into supposedly new formats. We don’t watch The Project so how you expect us to be excited about This Week Live especially when you stuff the promos up so much that you actually turn off viewers.
Ten used to be the Aussie version of the Fox network from the US but seems to want to be a bit of everything now.
Maybe The Bachelor will surprise everyone & be a giant hit!!!!
Maybe not too..
The key question is “when can I watch the cool stuff first”?.
Game of Thrones has proven that if people want to talk about the latest episode, it’s not available of FTA so “other means” are utilised so the next day, social media is awash with discussion. However MKR (with all its tabloid scurrilousness) is shown on FTA first so that gets all the viewers and is talked about that night.
The person they are describing is a lot like me…and I am wayy on the other end of the demo’s…I don’t bother recording…given that so many here report issues doing that….
I watch F1 on TV…some older series that are not on catchup….but mostly my TV is off…and I watch in my own time…catchup or DVD’s.
I’m a young guy who still loves Ten. There is no way 7 or 9 can satisfy me the way Ten does through programming.
Seems as thought all commercial networks have forgotten those people 50 and over …. and extremely Large demographic ……..you appeal to this demographic you’ll most likely have your numbers back ….. and more …..
Ten’s rating were dropping as the youth demographic fragmented.
Targeting 16-34s year olds with Eleven and a broader audience with Ten, is exactly the same as what Nine is doing. Ten just did it badly.
Murdoch and Warburton’s attempts to specifically target 16-34 year olds for Ten was even worse. That is a niche approach best left to Eleven, Go!, SBS2, ABC2, Fox8.
Seven and Nine don’t specifically target 16-34s on their main channels. They make shows that attract a large audience that everybody wants to watch and have a good spread of numbers from 16-54. And they now have 80% of the TV advertising market between them.
What Dodge said.
Replacing Video Hits with Andrew Bolt’s diatribes must rank as one of the worst scheduling decisions ever made.
This is yet another reminder that big event Live sport and also quality exclusive content is crucial if the networks want to remain viable. The Ashes ( first test) and the two soccer exhibitions were all on multichannel and secured the night for the respective network on each occasion.
TV is just not exciting anymore! – I am young
@ Quebec. I totally agree. The starting times grate with viewers of all ages. But viewers that have been around TV for longer may be more used to the TV as an entertainment option. Whereas the “younger folk” (demographic) have not paid for music if they use illegally downloading sites and can access it when they like, so the idea of waiting for networks to air shows they like is not considered an obstacle when they can access it else where.
I am more used to TV as my viewing for shows so I either watch it live, or record it and watch at my own time or considered the networks past record and that influences me whether I bother beginning a show. (e.g I have been burnt by White Collar on 10, so I have recorded all of the Americans so far and will watch it if all the season airs). Similarly with 7 or 9, I think, nah that have stuffed about airing a similar show and I just never bother.
The idea of younger folks “wanting to watch what they want, when they want” must ring alarm bells within the FTA networks as it probably also means that the younguns won’t be watching advertisements. Whilst networks can rightly say “2.4 million people watched the latest episode of “insert program name here”, the mobile world will probably filter out all those ads. You’d better believe that company marketing execs are well aware of this and will be driving FTA ad spot costs down.
If TWL was aimed at the younger demographic (anyone under 60), then the numbers would suggest Ten have yet to read this market correctly. I fear Ten is not alone in this regard.
Yes, TEN should go back and do what they were doing a few years ago. The only problem is that they let Big Brother, Idol, AFL, Xfactor etc.all go and it will take years before they build up another group of these shows up. They maybe need to get really innovative and devise new Australian reality shows or something. Maybe TV Tonight can get some of their readers to suggest new program ideas for TEN. TV Tonight bloggers seem an intelligent bunch.
Perhaps the cool kids have tired of all these panel-type shows that keep popping up with no real point of difference?
You just have to look at how far behind we are with some shows, for example “White Collar” we are still waiting for Season 4 and Season 5 commences in October.
I would gladly pay a fair price to get the content I want and I do not want pay tv. I will buy the series on DVD but illegal downloads seem to be the only way that you can get some of these series. The TV channels and producers are shooting themselves in the foot, by withholding release dates for series and not screening them. Instead they are showing endless “COPS” etc.
Thanks to TEN for Under The Dome, TV as it used to be you have to wait for a week to see the next episode.
They stuffed around the scheduling of Talkin’ Bout Your Generation way too much and ran too many repeat episodes during new episode runs. Not that we watched much Ten, this was one show we did watch. The problem is, if Ten brought it back, it most likely won’t rate anymore. Now if Seven or Nine were to bring it back, I bet it would rate! The thing with Ten, it has stayed stuck very much in a 80’s/90’s mindset and has not moved with the times like Seven and Nine have. Both Seven and Nine today are not recognizabble from even ten years ago. Seven and Nine now, to get viewers, you need to spend money. Ten never really has spent money, always looking the cheap nasty cousin that it always has.
TEN don’t need to be “young” but they do need to be innovative and take risk with bold new formats that capture people interest.
Nine and Seven can say what they want but really they have always just waited for TEN to take a risk… And then copied it.
For example:
Idol… X-Factor
MasterChef… MKR
Stripping shows at 7
Nine relaunching BB
I hope for our sake Hamish continues TENs trend of taking risks on new and fresh formats.
Ten made a big deal of having that Paul bloke at breakfast and Andrew Bolt. How do they appeal to kids?
At university where I am studying film and TV producing, at least 90% of the students are planning on moving on from the idea of producing content for traditional television and focusing more on producing content for the online distribution companies (eg: Netflix).
The feedback from students in the degree is simply because they feel that it’s a more attractive opportunity with less roadblocks and is where the future lies given that consumer demand for online on demand content is growing quite quickly.
So, I think it’s just a case of time moving on and consumers are just simply moving on from the past and looking towards the future to get their film and TV content.
Last year TEN had nothing but crap to offer. As well as the year prior.
After 24 months of poor programming you can hardly expect people to be in a rush to come back.
SYTYCD should have made a return by now. As well as Aus Idol should be on in the gap between The Voice and X Factor (now)
And how Nine managed to get Big Brother and TEN failed is still worth shaking your head at. TEN needs to start building their brand again.
We’ve switched off because we’ve grown up having networks that don’t care for us. We’ve found other ways to watch shows. American TV will be dead on Australian network television within a decade. It’ll be as popular as ever, but we certainly won’t be watching it on Seven, Nine or Ten. Because we’re certainly not now. Start catering to us now with a variety of genres and start to provide it on platforms that we want. We’re your future audience, act now or be prepared to never see us again…