Nine Upfront: A dozen iterations, no revolutions

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Unmade, written a few hours after Nine wrapped up its Upfront event, held at Sydney’s Luna Park in front of the media industry’s biggest live audience since before the pandemic.

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We’ll come on to the substance in a moment. First let’s get the sizzle out of the way.

The purpose of upfronts used to be to reveal the coming year’s programming slate, in order to lock in annual share deals. In more than a decade of attending Nine’s upfronts, I can’t recall one where less new detail was revealed about the next year’s schedule. The point of these events has changed, particularly for a multi-platform company like Nine.