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Will Nine launch another multichannel?

While 7Food may give Seven bragging rights in Total People, Nine's focus is on primary channel revenue.

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Tomorrow Seven will launch its fourth multichannel, 7Food.

The specialist channel, available in 5 city metro and Seven-owned 7 Queensland markets, will add to Seven’s daily ratings share (notwithstanding that tomorrow is also the final day of the 2018 ratings year).

But in a game where numbers are everything, enjoying extra Total People share could be enough to make life much tougher for Nine -especially if it translates to an additional 2% or 3% every day.

So is Nine about to counteract with a new multichannel of its own? Not neccesarily.

Nine told TV Tonight it had done a lot of modelling on launching a new channel, but walked away from the idea for now.

Nine Programming Director Hamish Turner says there are several considerations, including a question of available bandwidth.

“We will have a look and see how it goes and then survey exactly what we can do in terms of our capacity,” he said.

“We’re not ruling anything in or out, but we won’t be running into anything right now.

“Another channel means incremental costs, and obviously that can mean cannibalisation. So we need to fully understand all the metrics and what the right business decision is for us moving forward.”

Nine is also focussed on 25-54 viewers and not Total People, followed by 16-39 and Total Grocery Shopper + Child (aka families) demos.

“At the end of the day it comes down to: does that incremental audience lead to incremental revenue?” Turner continued.

“Our priority is still our primary channel and making sure we are delivering maximum share on our primary channel for 52 weeks a year.”

It’s little wonder Nine’s focus is on the primary channel. In the past 12 months $1.42b was spent in revenue on commercial primary channels, compared to $271.7m on all the multichannels. Notably, it has moved away from commissioning for multichannels. 9GO!’s Love Island is moving to its primary channel in 2019.

Elsewhere, CBS-owned 10 already trails all networks with one less multichannel than, and from tomorrow will trail Seven by two less. It has not made any noises to market about launching a third multichannel, but will introduce subscription-based 10 All Access streaming before the end of the year.

Nine’s newly-launched Your Money channel, a joint venture with News Corp, but does not contribute to OzTAM ratings share.

While Nine is keeping its options open for a fourth multichannel, Turner says there are plenty of genre choices still possible, should it decide to pursue that path.

“It always comes back to what the audience wants. What do they want to see?,” he asked.

“In this world of fragmentation there are a plethora of options.”

20 Responses

  1. TEN should just stay as they are, hang on for the distribution/airing rights to expire and then swoop on the CW and CBS shows that TEN’s previous management passed on or let go. Boss could become basically various types of procedurals, Daytime they’d have Medium, Murder She Wrote and etc., into the night and get back the whole Law and Order franchise coupled with the NCIS ones. Throw in some light early evening fare if they still have USA Network rights, Psych, Monk, White Collar, Covert Affairs, Burn Notice etc., get Suits as well, still run some of the old like MacGyver, throw in old Magnum PI and Jack Lords Hawaii Five-0. Turn Peach into basically a CW network type one get again some USA titles such as Mr Robot, The Purge, they’d have They have CW’s The Flash already, throw in Arrow, Supergirl, Legends Of Tomorrow and the upcoming BatWoman, they have old and new Charmed, get…

  2. I watch a few of the home renovations shows on Ch94. I’d love to see the home reno & travel have its own station (say 93) and the reality stuff have its own (94). Just my 2 cents worth! 🙂

  3. I’d like to see either 24/7 music channel, cartoon channel with predominantly 60s, 70s & 80s content (less pokemon), or as someone mentioned in another thread a game show channel featuring old shows, shows from overseas (Japan,USA, Europe), maybe some new content.

  4. All the networks use the primary and their multichannels for advertising their other programming..so it clearly works as you are increasing your overall network audience..and presumably advertising will follow

  5. Funnily enough Seven started boosting about Total People when Nine started beating them for Total Revenue with the demographics advertisers want. There is very little money in multichannels, but since the Government is now giving the spectrum away, and the food and lifestyle ones have tie-ins to magazines, websites, and supermarket promortions they can make a bit of money out of them.

  6. “”Nine Programming Director Hamish Turner says there are several considerations, including a question of available bandwidth.””

    Ha..too true, compare Seven HD(?) to Nine HD, you can only fit so many channels into the available frequency spectrum (bandwidth) and still be able to broadcast a reasonable HD signal.

    Anyone who viewed Paramedics on Nine HD last night were treated to the best that full HD transmission has to offer.

    Please Nine, do not add another channel.

  7. We need a ‘real’ sports channel, what OneHD promised but never delivered. 7 is really the only once who coudl provide this with all their recent sports acquisitions. 24hr Rage (or music) channel would be great, but would lack any revenue. And no more shopping channels!!!!

    2. I agree, we do need a sports channel on free-to-air, just like OneHD used to be. I am personally happy that the One branding is gone because it was ruined by Foxtel when they had a minority stake in Ten. But we need to remember that One was digital-only, and not everyone had digital television at the time One was a sports channel.

      I would like to see Nine have a sports channel.

      And speaking of One, remember the cross-over between basketball and trampolining that One aired at 6:00pm weeknights when it was just sports?

        1. Something like an Australian version of the Talking Pictures (UK) and METV (US) channels. Lots of long lost films and TV. Would be better than a lot of the stuff filling the multi-channels now!

  8. Tens all access is the future in my view. They will generate lots of revenue with this service. It will depend heavily on what content they will have.

    1. There’s a thing called an affiliation agreement. What, specifically, is the issue? Agree their rip-off regional news, both content and presentation, would be an embarrassment to what regional stations used to produce in the 60s-70s. Seven needs Prime as much as Prime needs Seven, but no doubt Bruce Gordon would love to swap places with them.

  11. I don’t understand the total people thing across all multichannels. Do advertisers have to pay more on the main channel if there are a few dozen people watching something obscure elsewhere?

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