Restoring media buyer confidence will ‘take time’, admits Ten boss McLennan
McLennan
Ten has declared it is “absolutely committed” to closing the gap between its audience share and advertising revenue share but admitted it will take time for media buyers to regain their confidence in the network following the “unpredictability” of its scheduling and poor ratings.
Executive chairman and chief executive Hamish McLennan told an analyst briefing this morning that a “collapse” in its ratings at the start of the year – when The Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance tanked – hit revenue and undermined market confidence.
But more stability in its scheduling, and a ratings boost since May thanks largely to MasterChef and The Bachelor, have paved the way for a greater sense of optimism, he said.
“We have good local drama”. Secrets & Lies – huge ratings failure. Wonderland – a catastrophe and to make matters worse they renewed it. WTF. Party Tricks – another failure and dying after two episodes. That is about 40-50 plus hours of drama with Ten expenditure at least 25 -30 million plus. You could have taken some intelligent risks with that kind of money and may have come up trumps. The only one which has worked is Offspring and even that could not average a million plus viewers even before Ten started its great leap downwards. I’m afraid Ten’s management has no vision and no idea and the prospect of them hugely improving the network is zero. Is there anybody out there prepared to buy it and sweep the place clean or are they just biding their time waiting for it to run out of money?
Cancel rubbish shows like Studio Ten. Good work on not renewing coverage of Netball aka restricted basketball.
Al this upbeat improvement talked about and only network to improve in 25-54 and September share of the revenue pie an 18.6. Any chairman would be sitting down with the sales leaders and demanding improvement or exit stage left. Blunt facts you can’t survive on an 18.