TEN had eyes on Nine, Seven programmers.
Before TEN signed John Stephens it had considered Nine's Michael Healy and Seven's Angus Ross.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Before TEN signed John Stephens as its Director of Scheduling and Acquisitions it had considered Nine’s Michael Healy and Seven’s Angus Ross.
But both were tied to long-term contracts, so it went after Seven’s part-time veteran, John Stephens, 67, according to News Corp.
Last week in the courtcase between Seven and TEN, Hamish McLennan revealed a shortlist of potential candidates had originally included three names.
TEN was successful in signing Stephens before he advised a change of heart, attributing his initial decision to medication.
Last week McLennan was unable to name schedulers at public broadcasters ABC and SBS, indicating they were not relevant because they were not commercial networks -SBS Head of Network Programming is TEN’s former Melbourne Programmer Peter Andrews.
McLennan has since restated his confidence in TEN’s Beverly McGarvey despite previously noting John Stephens’ appointment was a “critically important addition to our management team.”
The case last week lay bare to much of senior television machinations including Seven asking Nine if it had alleged security footage of Stephens from 14 years ago.
Today News Corp has also published emails in which Seven’s Head of Corporate Affairs Simon Francis (including with his address) mocked the “‘young at heart’ TEN” while Seven execs were discussing strategies to retain Stephens’ services.
Seven CEO Kerry Stokes wrote that he was “pissed” at Stephens’ move despite being “really fond of him.”
A judgment on the case is expected in the next two weeks.
5 Responses
Thanks Pertinax for that summary. Although the mystery to me is why they like to ruin the shiny things with horrific use of computer graphics. Putting people off from staying loyal to TV.
I can get the logic of so called “brands” (except it doesn’t work that way on me ) also encouraging people to buy DVDs (again doesn’t work that way for me) . Plus really to prevent other channels from pinching footage without attribution. The latter could justify, News, sport, current affairs and interview shows having labels if minimal and tastefully done. I just envy everyone that can easily ignore it.
On actual programming I agree it is a tough job. Don’t envy anyone the stress of it.
At this stage Ten is just trying to damage Seven by blocking Stephens for working out the last two years of his career there.
Public Broadcaster and commercial FTA are entirely different. A public broadcaster is serving the all public to try and meet a charter. People DVRing or iviewing their shows is just good customer service.
Commercial FTA on the other hand is all about getting as many people in a target demographic e.g. 24-54 year-olds watching the ads to fight for a share of TV the pot of money from media buyers. To do this you break the ads up in to blocks and put pretty shiny things on in the space between them to tempt viewers to stay until the next ad break.
The Australian industry has 3 commercial FTA networks and is small. That means there are only a few people with the skills, they have usually worked at 2 of the 3 networks to gain their skills, they all know…
Maybe they should look outside the square, maybe cinema programmers or stop trying to poach other networks stars.
I am sure any of TV Tonights’ regular posters could you a great job if given half a chance.
I used to programme films for an independent cinema, and it sounds easy but in practice quite difficult, so I take my hat off to the successful ones in this land who are able to gauge public viewing tastes, and that is the real skill.
this just highlights how blinkered and short sighted execs are at the top of tv land really are, to chase one person so relentlessly in the vain hope he will save the network is desperately sad. To improve ch10 they could just cheery pick the best ideas from this website. Programmers are nothing special….
It would be a tough sell. James Warbuton and Adam Boland both had bright futures at 7, both possibly future CEOs. Both jumped to ten and ended in tears, out of the industry within a year. John Stephens signing with ten is not going to end well no matter what the outcome of this case.
Any future poaching is going to have to have an absolutely ridiculous salary.