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Nine to stick with one hour News

Extended news scores for Nine and is here to stay -but it raises so many other questions.

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2013-10-30_0007“7’OBlock” is no more…

Nine has confirmed it will stick with a one hour news format.

News Corp reports the extended bulletins will be permanent with A Current Affair to shift to 7pm and reality juggernauts The Block, The Voice and Big Brother to 7:30pm.

Nine had big success with the extended bulletins on Monday with convincing wins in Sydney and Melbourne over Seven News.

In Brisbane Nine had slight wins over Seven, while Adelaide and Perth remain Seven strong-holds.

Nine strategically coded its one-hour news into two thirty minute programmes with OzTAM -a ploy that pushed Seven News into third place, and one that is likely to cause heated debate. The numbers indicated Nine News in Melbourne actually rose in the second half hour, bucking the trend of all other cities. Whether that was a one-off or not is unclear.

Even TEN won’t be happy with the move given it will impact on The Project. But at the risk of moving The Project yet again, there is a golden opportunity for TEN to restore its Reality shows to 7pm and create a major point of difference. It could well be the way forward for the ailing network. What happens to that unnamed “6pm family entertainment show” is another dilemma but given it’s untested, the benefits arguably outweigh it.

Having the extended News for Nine will help it address its post-8:30 schedule where it had been lacking compelling content too often. Shows like The Block and The Voice can now be pushed out to 9 and 9:30pm, which helps lift overall network share.

But it also means The Block will go head to head with My Kitchen Rules, instead of enjoying the 30 minute head start. Good luck with that….

Should Seven now match Nine is the question on everybody’s lips? Short of boldly moving Home and Away to 5:30 it seems the only solution is to stick with convention, or possibly merge Today Tonight into Seven News as it had done last summer.

But first OzTAM needs to address coding issues with the brazen 30 minute Nine News segments creating inequity.

In 2011 CEO Doug Peiffer told TV Tonight that OzTAM was concerned over such coding issues because there’s no consistency.

“I don’t think we want to start chopping the News down into quarter half hours,” he said.

“It’s just about getting all the providers of programme names to be sensible.

“People are raising it, media buyers, people inside Programming, and the ones who are really raising it are the users –the ones who run the software who try to come up with a sensible average for a programme, and they’re the ones who seem to be doing the hard leg-work trying to put it back together.

“So we’ll discuss it and see if we can come with an industry agreement on it.”

Over to you, OzTAM.

45 Responses

  1. The obvious solution to a lot of the various issues with OzTAM reporting is to simply aggregate the minute-by-minute ratings into half-hour segments.

    Currently the data is recorded in that format and then converted to program titles based on often inaccurate program schedules. The ratings then have to be corrected (not always publicly) to account for late starts and over-runs, or a completely different program actually having been broadcast.

    Reporting this way would provide a direct comparison between networks at each and every time-block. This is pretty much how the industry operates anyway. All the proclaiming about total viewer numbers and peak audience spin is just dangling the shiny to get more eyeballs next time (and ÔÔ = $).

  2. The Project rated 378k last night, less than halve of the top programmes over the 6.30-7.30 time slot. A clear sign it needs to be cut back to half an hour or axed in order for ten to improve. Agree that TBL would be effective at 7pm for 10.

  3. I think it would give Nine a point of difference at 6.30, particularly in their under performing Perth and Adelaide markets, but could hurt them at 7pm. I think viewers prefer entertainment at 7pm over ACA.

  4. Programming in Australia is like an episode of Survivor, If this network does this another network will counter with something else.
    I think all this talk is taking away from what really matters (to me at least) which is the viewers.

  5. They find it hard to fit enough stories into 30 minutes let alone an hour. As for the coding that is complete bull. It shouldn’t be allowed and yet Nine will probably continue to get away with it. They code their reality shows split all the time and now news. IMO this gives Seven a chance to try and capitalize on the situation. We don’t need more news! We have enough through the whole day and if we really wanted to watch news we’d watch ABC News24.

  6. We’ll never know for sure. But I’m pretty certain excess baggage would have gone the way it did regardless of how TBL was scheduled. But even if TBL was the sole reason EB flopped, at what cost was that success? Was it worth screwing up The Project and their 8:00 onwards for an entire year?

  7. As for ten moving reality to 7:00. No no no no no. How quickly people forget 2012 where ten did that to combat Excess Baggage, that was the beginning of the end for them. The main problem being the 8:00 slots. Ten have no content there and that move derailed their primetime every night. And plus The project is finally getting relatively good ratings (relative to ten standards) and should not be disturbed. The Project is a long term year-round solution and should take priority over realities which only last 12 weeks a year and in TBLs case is probably on its last legs.

    Also what would that mean for the 7 months a year that ten do not have a tent pole reality? Are they to move the project back and forth from 6 to 6:30?

    1. Some valid points, but I recall Biggest Loser beating Excess Baggage -and that’s when it had genre competition. When TEN had Reality to themselves at 7pm they were very strong and made 9 follow suit.

  8. I predict this move will advantage 9 at 6:30 to 7 but be a strong advantage to home& away and MKR. H&A has always lost about 100k when 9 had strong reality competition then those 100k come straight back one the reality shows end like was seen in the final weeks of 2013, so an entire year without competition will do them wonders.

    The Block:all stars had some pretty dire numbers at the start of their season, that 30min head start was their lifeline, and was really utilised to increase the rating to a respectable level. MKR will be happy with this setup.

  9. Would a fairer way of doing ratings be to report on half hourly increments rather than per show. The network can then spin it whatever suits their show and defeats the seperate coding of things like news breaks etc

  11. Surely the agreement must be “Oztam must be coded the same as what’s on the EPG”.
    Could Nine’s 7:30 starts be good news for 7 & 10? No spread of Nine’s shows from 7pm across shows starting at 7:30. The starting line’s equal at 7:30.
    With H&A generally pulling close to 1m I’m thinking Seven may morph the hour into one “news” as they toyed with recently. That, of course, makes the TT presenters redundant. TEN can be flexible here, and gain the 7pm advantage, if they are smart. Yes, well…..

    1. Tezza: I don’t think I have ever asked TEN what they got in their second half hour of news, and that’s been coded as an hour for decades. However, I have no problem in only ever reporting the lower of the two numbers and ignoring the higher, which is what I’ve done before for split-coding.

  12. Move home and away to 530PM bad move because not everyone able to watch most people will be coming home from work or cooking dinner homework 7PM better I say.

    I know it repeat news but I would rather 530PM news move to 6PM and have the 7PM news still on ABC1 then making news longer on channel9. Rick Susannah been since I was born keep good work up you to on channel7

  14. Nine had another strong 6-7pm hour last night. Interestingly, Nine News n Adelaide at 6.30 bettered the local Today Tonight. I don’t believe 9 in SA would have won that timeslot for a number of years. 7 need to act and refresh their news asap. In Sydney, the graphics and feel are looking stale and the set constantly looks cramped!

  16. Why did they have to do this! I liked having the block on so I could tape MKR and watch the block from 7-8/8:30 and then watch MKR. This is really frustrating! And plus 1 hour of news is to much in my oppinion 30 min is just right. I guess I will be switching to 7 news now.

  18. I do not believe that 9 News should be split into 2 halves. I don’t even think reality shows should be split either with sections like ‘winner announced’. You either watch it or you don’t 🙂

  19. Nine is just trying to cover its lack of depth at the moment as they pack their schedule full of old movies and repeats of TBBT and TT is beating ACA down into 5th.

    It reduces the information available to the public by pushing one show of the bottom of the list. Media buyers won’t care too much they look at peak figures and per minute data anyway.

  20. If Seven were to change anything I think Today Tonight would move to 5:30pm or disappear altogether. With an hour long news 6pm-7pm and Home And Away at 7pm.
    For regional viewers who have 6pm local news they could join their state based news bulletins live at 6:30pm-7pm.
    I personally think 7 shouldn’t follow the crowd. Also 7 already have 7News At 7 on 7TWO.

  21. This is a clever move by Nine (except the stupid coding). Seven now have an almighty dilemma. I can’t see them moving H&A.

    Absolutely agree that this is Ten’s chance to capitalise with a return to 7pm event programming. But do they have the smarts?

  22. Well, this is really going to stuff things up for me when Home & Away comes back. And people who like to watch shows at 8.30 will be annoyed too, some people will find 9.30 too late to watch shows.

  23. Do people agree this is bad news for The Project?
    I would think they wouldn’t share a huge amount of people with nine news, plus they will no longer be slayed by The Voice etc.
    thoughts?

  24. I don’t see the problem with the split-coding. It helps make easy timeslot comparisons with the shows starting at 6.30pm. If it wasn’t being done, you’d have the author and readers of this site asking for the data.

  25. I agree David that if 10 brings their reality forward to 7pm it would work in their favour hopefully locking people in so they won’t move channels at 7.30. The project has long needed a cut back to 30 mins which might actually help their figures

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