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Nine concedes “own worst enemy”

Going head to head in genres impacted audience share as Nine became their own worst enemy.

RR2801 Reno Rumble with Scott Cam

Nine has conceded it became its own worst enemy this year by going head to head with Seven in similar genres.

Nine’s group sales and marketing director, Peter Wiltshire, said at its financial results presentation yesterday it had been a tough year, especially in the second half.

“It was also during this period that Nine’s ratings were impacted by the two leading networks programming formats of the same genre head to head,” he said.

“To some extent we were our own worst enemies. As we competed aggressively this caused pressure on overall audience for FTA TV and specifically Nine’s share of that audience.”

This year Nine pitted Reno Rumble against Seven’s House Rules. In July it also set The Hotplate against Restaurant Revolution, which has led to a copyright claim.

Meanwhile CEO David Gyngell was asked about the future for local Drama when streaming services were attracting those with an appetite for binge drama.

“I believe they will come back, especially the large advertisers who are trying to get out in front of their competitors, who are nipping at their heels,” he said.

“Because they are larger and they’ve got more money they will spend on television and buy exclusives and buy those things.

“Us having more locally owned content is going to create more value and it is what is going to define us.

“There’s no better content in this place than news and current affairs. That’s what we will continue to put a lot of investment in.”

He said Stan was holding its own against the might of Netflix.

“(We’re) seeing if we can carve out a profitable alternative and a local alternative to what Netflix will be, and that’s yet to be seen,” he said.

“Netflix is yet to be seen if it’s going to make money.

“We don’t see Stan being the saviour of this company long term, we see it as an adjunct to content acquisition and original content deals.”

Source: AdNews, News Corp

9 Responses

  1. This isn’t exactly something new, I remember back in 2002 as an extra getting days worth of work on the new 7 drama “Marshall Law” (I know, blink and you’ll have missed it, it was the Lisa McCune drama post Heelers for her), anyways, it was helpfully slotted in for 9:30pm Tuesdays…. Up against Stingers on 9, and MDA on the ABC, needless to say it stood no chance in such an adversarial and competitive time slot, this stuff is definitely not a 2015 phenomenon – has happened since the start of television

  2. I don’t think that people like me, who are interested in quality drama but have no interest in fake reality/competition shows, will come back. And if we don’t come back, any advertiser that can do basic arithmetic won’t be back either.

    The Seven and Nine networks and, to a lesser extent, Ten, have shot themselves in the foot with the way that they have treated their drama audiences over the last few years. We have gotten sick of waiting 10-30 min for our show to start only to find that enough people gave up waiting that it gets bumped to a later timeslot the following week or taken off altogether. Nine’s habit of refusing to play finales is just bizarre and shows a complete lack of regard for their viewers.

    Frankly, I’d be happy to see the commercial networks cease to exist so that we can use that part of the spectrum for something useful.

  3. This is coming from the network who have scheduled another season of The Block to air this year, stripped back or not. They really should have left it until the new year to start again. They won’t learn

      1. Which is exactly why I don’t watch the Nine Network, it’s either renovating or Big Bang. They should have had the foresight to realise that airing 3 renovating reality shows in the one year was never going to end well. Hard to feel sorry for them when they’ve done it to themselves.

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