TEN News timeline: a revolving door of confusion
Last month TEN News was a "priority" said Hamish McLennan. But TEN has a sorry history of U-turns & backflips.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News, Top Stories
While Wake Up‘s axing yesterday may have been the more-profile news story, the bigger news was actually in the gutting of the TEN News department.
Some 150 staff are expected to go in News, Operations and Engineering, decimating around half of the network’s news force. While locally-produced bulletins will remain around the country, it will impact at a grass-roots level and long-term employees.
And today it is the ‘faceless’ employees who will wear the brunt of management’s mis-management.
The cost cutting follows previous redundancies, totalling over 100 staff, under former CEOs Lachlan Murdoch and James Warburton.
For viewers, TEN has presented an on-again / off-again commitment to its News, with bulletins added, axed, reintroduced and axed once again. The faces of TEN News have undergone wholesale changes -thank God Sandra Sully is still there (but only if you live in Sydney).
Such backflips confuse the audience about what the network brand stands for, and reverberate across the schedule for years to come.
News directors, too, have changed, with Jim Carroll and Anthony Flannery gone but others such as John Choueifate and Peter Meakin arriving.
Even the current CEO, Hamish McLennan, who has been in the role for 14 months has made statements of support for the TEN News brand. But yesterday he was the bearer of bad news.
Only last month he told the market: “News and Current Affairs has been another healthy area for us in terms of ratings and News and Current Affairs has seen solid growth since Peter Meakin joined TEN earlier this year.
“News and Current Affairs are a priority for TEN and we will be making some key announcements in that area over the next few months.*”
Similarly in November he said, “We’re investing in news; we’re putting more news on screen than ever before. If you look at what we’re doing with Wake Up and [morning program Studio 10], we’re putting nine hours of live television to air every day. We’re actually adding to the head count.”
In February he said the News operation had “become stronger and more efficient” – a line that will likely leave many staff scratching their heads today.
There are also multiple statements from McLennan and TEN about their long-term commitment to breakfast television, mirroring statements by the former management about its commitment to the Paul Henry hosted Breakfast before it too got the chop. Last week the network blamed Wake Up when it failed to disclose political alignments of a pensioner talking to Tony Abbott. The writing was on the wall.
TEN’s pain began in late 2010 when then-CEO Grant Blackley and Programming Chief David Mott announced plans to broaden the primary channel and send their youth audience to ELEVEN. It hired news staff and announced plans for local bulletins and current affairs with George Negus.
Here are the dizzying key moves in the News and Current Affairs strands over the past few years.
Try to keep up.
Late 2010: Hires additional News staff.
2011 (on-going): Cost-control program introduced.
January 2011: Introduces 6pm with George Negus, 6:30pm Local News bulletins. National weekend bulletin replaced by Local bulletins.
March 2011: National weekend bulletin reintroduced.
April 2011: Local bulletins axed. 5pm News extends to 90 minutes. George Negus moves to 6:30pm.
June 2011: Head of News Jim Carroll resigns.
July 2011: Redundancies in News, Sales, Operations.
September 2011: TEN Late News axed. 6:30 with George Negus axed.
October 2011: The 7pm Project extends to 1 hour from 6:30pm as The Project. Weekend bulletins replaced with National bulletin.
January 2012: James Warburton begins as CEO. TEN News at Five reverts to one hour. The Project bumped to 6pm, the second move in three months, adds Sunday edition.
February 2012: Breakfast launches. TEN Early News axed.
June 2012: TEN Late News returns.
August 2012: Programmer David Mott resigns.
October 2012: Staff redundancies. Beverley McGarvey appointed Chief Programming Officer.
November 2012: Breakfast axed. Project Sunday edition axed. TEN News presenter sackings.
December 2012: The Project returns to 6:30pm.
February 2013: TEN sacks CEO James Warburton. Russel Howcroft appointed Acting CEO.
March 2013: Hamish McLennan begins as CEO.
September 2013: TEN Eyewitness News rebrand.
November 2013: Wake Up, Studio 10 launch. Natasha Exelby exits Wake Up. Producer Adam Boland on leave for ill health.
December 2013: Mal Walden exits.
January 2014: Adam Boland resigns from TEN. Mike Munro joins TEN News.
February 2014: Head of News Anthony Flannery resigns. Peter Meakin begins as Head of News and Current Affairs.
March 2014: Chairman Lachlan Murdoch steps down, Hamish McLennan appointed.
May 2014: Wake Up, TEN Early News, TEN Morning News, TEN Late News axed. Staff redundancies in News, Operations and Engineering expected to total approximately 150 people.
* TEN has subsequently hired Matt White for its V8 Supercars and another project yet to be announced.
Wake Up, TEN Early News, TEN Morning News, TEN Late News will all end tomorrow.
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- Tagged with Studio 10, TEN Early News, TEN Eyewitness News, TEN Late News, TEN Morning News, Wake Up
34 Responses
As others have said, so annoying that amongst all the wreakage at TEN today Andrew Bolt still has his Liberal Party love-fest on Sundays. And replaying it again in the afternoon is just insulting.
As for Eleven being successful. The reason for that was because it was aimed at the same audience as the channel that owned it. When Eleven was first launched, Ten’s primary channel shares went into decline. Seven and Nine launched multichannels and aimed them at different audiences to their main channel. Ten launched a multichannel, and aimed at their own audience, then tried to change their main channel audience with disastrous consequences. What’s the point of having a successful multichannel if it keeps cannibalising your main channel?
@George 100: Ten’s ratings in 2010, when they were ‘being attacked by GO and 7mate’ were a lot better than what they were under Blackley’s news expansion strategy. Shows like MasterChef, The 7PM Project, TBYG were successful because they fitted the brand well. The Negus show and the extended news bulletins did not. Channel Ten has never been a news channel. For their entire history, they have always been a general entertainment channel. You can’t present yourself as a serious news channel, when your post-7pm schedule includes shows like TBYG, Glee, Modern Family and a bunch reality tentpoles. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Great article, David. Thanks for taking the time to put it together, especially the timeline.
Frankly, it beggars disbelief when you consider the repeated poor decisions taken by Ten senior management. This is not hindsight, many seasoned commenters on this site correctly predicted that taking on 7 and 9 with more news at 6pm was not going to work, that Paul Henry was an albatross, that constantly changing The Project was stunting any growth, and that Wake Up had lost of issues.
I said in the other thread that it’s sad that some 150 people will be losing their jobs because of these most recent bad decisions. However, it’s a travesty that the people who made the bad decisions will get to keep theirs.
” News and Current Affairs are a priority for TEN and we will be making some key announcements in that area in the next few months”
Did we misunderstand this seemingly now ‘true to form’ statement, as with any Murdoch/News Corp associate/affiliate (such as in previous [current ???? associations] and sadly also very ‘true to form’ for ‘many of those’ offered the might and power of News Corps support and ‘promotion’.
So in a ‘true to form’ context, did Mr McLennan deliberately or otherwise? forget to finish his above statement with, “” and by this I mean that we will be asking 150 plus staff to hand in their ‘key’ to the Network Ten front door””
Now if we swap some of the words such as ‘News-Current Affairs-TEN’ in his above statement and insert ” Stop the waste – Stop the boats – No New Taxes – No cuts to health and education – No cuts to pensions -‘ Me’…
Speaking of revolving doors – Peter Meakin was TEN Sydney’s first News Director – then went to Nine, then to Seven, and now – back to TEN.
I’d love if Sandra left 10. 7 would probably snap her up in a heartbeat.
@NicH perfect clip! LMAO
Hamish McLennan is the Tony Abbott of network tv. Both good at stuffing up their ‘kingdom’.
Surprised no-one has considered rebroadcasting the old tapes of Good Morning Australia – just think of the savings!
Time to bring back No. 96 !
I think this says it all;
youtube.com/watch?v=JrxwQ7zVt7c
They aren’t backflips. Ten tried an evening news & current affairs lineup and Breakfast twice. Viewers just weren’t interest so they’ve been axed.
Wake-up has 30k viewers out of the 750k viewers watching breakfast TV on FTA, the morning and late night news do little better.
They are keeping the early Evening news which has 600k viewers, and the Project which viewers.
Great news that The Bolt Report still dominates poltical discussion. It is a haven of soft right common sense against the tide of mad left vitriol. AB should replace all the axed programs. Hey maybe that is ch10s big plan….. !!!!!
@George 100, It seems Eleven’s success is at the expense of Ten. A terrible strategy.
Channel Ten, please stop creating another early news program. If you have a program which is expensive and has dire ratings, then your show will face the axe. I feel that Channel Ten should go back to US Programming and Repeats – the one back in December 2012.
And that’s why I am not watching early news programs on Ten.
Man, they are bad at what they do when you look at it on a timeline. Not that I thought they were good.
@Bazza, fair call but I also reckon you can (sadly) apply the same argument to 7 and 9.
“January 2011: Introduces 6pm with George Negus, 6:30pm Local News bulletins. National weekend bulletin replaced by Local bulletins.”
And in having their national weekend bulletins at 6pm, they lost their key branding of ‘First at Five’ to Nine! Crazy, crazy move…
And yet, Hamish Maclennan is responsible for buying I want to marry Harry, a program which certainly belongs to the previous demographic that they are trying to get away from ………. It’s time to ask for Hamish’s resignation …….
Any network that scraps this much news content and so many talented journalists & technicians but retains The Bolt Report deserves the complete disdain of viewers. Since the Murdoch, Packer, Rinehart intervention, TEN has found it impossible to maintain a balanced new service. Politics, politics…..
Very good summary David, Ten for whatever reason lost their nerve on more than one occasion, Guven the number of bulletins 7 and 9 now produce, it’s clear there is a market for news.
Contrast Ten and it’s experiments with News, and the way DMG launched Smooth FM, it’s not hard, say what you mean, and mean what you say.
It seems to be a case of feast or famine at Ten. They axe all their news programs, then start up a whole raft of new programs at the same time and then axe them all again.
What an absolute mess and mis-management.
David – good story but I am conflicted with your comments specifically about Mott and Blackley and frankly don’t agree.
It was Mott and Blackley that invested in the business of Eleven that has proven very successful. It was being attacked by 7 Mate and Go and Ten protected it’s back door by launching Eleven.
In turn Ten had to get stronger and develop more broader content which these two blokes did in spades with Masterchef, Bout Your Gen, Bondi Rescue, The Project etc. Their investment in News strengthened Ten (albeit Negus was not best first choice – but this is easily changed).
Interestingly both Seven and Nine now airing extended News and Ten would be well served to have further developed this path rather than swapping and changing the Project, News Directors, Presenters …blah blah…
I always felt the best program in the morning is music. As a travelling salesman a program like this playing in the background would be ideal. No need for presenters although a very short interview here n there wont hurt. Some news scrolling along the bottom along with gossip items aimed at a youth audience. Basically radio on TV…….
This is very symptomatic of a ship lost at sea with no idea of where land is.
A job with ch10 is certainly not a long term career move.
What a crippling waste of money Breakfast & Wake Up turned out to be. All future ideas for early mornings should be floated on this website and the feedback listened to, so many contributors to this site prediced this disaster well in advance. It almost seems cruel to say “we told you so”
Base your network primarily on garbage reality TV, treat viewers with contempt by axing and rescheduling shows without warning, abandon quality drama and comedy… Then act surprised when it all turns to shite? Sounds reasonable.