Ten loses bid to stop programmer John Stephens returning to Seven
Network Ten has lost a legal bid to prevent programmer John Stephens from working for two years for rival Seven Network after it alleged he breached a contract with Ten.
Seven accused Ten of trying to buy an “uncompetitive result” by attempting to stop the veteran programmer from working for either them or Nine for two years, after he signed a contract with Ten in April, before changing his mind and deciding to remain with Seven.
Today in The NSW Supreme Court Justice James Stephenson handed down his judgement in the case, ruling the Ten agreement remains “on foot”, however dismissed its claim for relief including preventing Stephens from working for Ten’s rivals for the next two years.
He also found that Seven actively set out to get Stephens to change his mind about the Ten contract and offered him a matching offer at Seven and that this behaviour was a “contributing cause” and a significant factor” in Stephen’s decision to back out of the agreement with Ten.
Unbelieveable waste of time and money by Ten.
As Meakin says “revenue is down the toilet” and we see Management adopt a view to vindicate themselves and spend serious time and money ruining their reputation and spend money they don’t have.
Stephen’s was always staying at Seven – take it on the chin Ten – you lost.
The aftermath is an unsettled team at Ten, no new programmer and a little poorer for the experience.
was it all worth it?
– embarrassed the Ten CEO as he showed his lack of knowledge around programming when quizzed
– demonstrated amazing lack of self awareness as Ten fired 150 ppl but then offered a guy $400k+ to not even turn up to prevent him working elsewhere
– wouldn’t have done anything to boost confidence of McGarvey
– showed the market Ten exec team are out of answers and Stephens was the only one to “save” them
– Stephens comes out now and basically says the job is “too hard” and that is really why he declined
– large legal fees
– no winner
– large waste of what are limited resources at a pivotal point for the future of the network
Ego led not rational behaviour.
McLennan is just shuffling deck chairs on the titanic !
So they didn’t stop Mr Stephens from returning to seven. You can’t win them all. Just look how many they stopped returning to ten.
Peter Cross – Your dead right , next thing we will be reading that Hamish is turning the now empty wake up studio at Queencliff into his Permanent water view office .
It just keeps getting better over at ten
I thought he was with Noiseworks?
…..or fiddling while Rome burns.
Couldn’t some headhunting firm find some young gun, promising, think outside the box type programmer from overseas who’d be willing to move to Australia for a few years and really shake up Aussie TV with some great new ideas at Ten. Why does Hamish think the only answer was with some old guy from 7?
Another classic mess at 10. Surely when you add up the stuff ups after 15 months McLennan is like the program 24 – the clock is ticking. John is 67 Peter M 65 and he joined as head of news, and 3 months in they shed 150 jobs. How long do you reckon he will want to work there?
McLennan starting to make Blackley and Warburton look like TV geniuses…..
Will the Captain go down with the ship ! . I suspect not