Tuesdata: Where the free to air networks won and lost in 2023

BY Tim Burrowes

December 4, 2023 9:21

Tuesdata: Where the free to air networks won and lost in 2023

Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly analysis for Unmade’s paying members.

Today, with the official ratings year now wrapped up, we take a look at how the commercial networks fared, and ask who truly came out on top.

Further down, a bounceback on the Unmade Index, with ARN Media on the up despite a setback in its Southern Cross Austereo takeover bid.

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As linear audiences moved away, Nine won the ad demos; Seven got best overall share and Ten looked to streaming

Nine sales chief Stephenson claims his network is more progressive than Seven

Seja Al Zaidi writes:

On Saturday, the curtain closed on the TV ratings year, with hostilities now officially suspended until February 12.

The networks have been hard at work claiming victories in their preferred battlegrounds.

While Seven narrowly claimed the crown for number one in all people, Nine contended that’s an archaic measurement for advertisers while Ten argued it’s the youngest skewing network. SBS pointed to its early moves into streaming paying dividends.

Each network produced their own analysis of the audience numbers produced by ratings body OzTam, and (with the exception of Seven), all of the networks put forward an executive to participate in this feature.

“I still hear people talking about ‘we won this many weeks’, or ‘we won this, we won the survey year’. These things are from a different era. We’re far more progressive,” claims Nine’s chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson.

“Sometimes I hear people talking about total people, which I think is a bit strange because advertisers don’t buy that. They just buy 16-39 year olds, 25-54 year olds, and grocery shoppers with children.”

Nine’s reslicing of the data across the three major commercial networks only

As it has for several years, Nine’s narrative was firmly centred around its dominance in the key demographics for advertisers.

Across primetime network share in the primary battleground of 25-54, Nine claimed a 39.2% share of the three-way commercial audience; ahead of Seven’s 34.6% and Ten’s distant 26.1. It was a similar story in 16-39 and the grocery shopper with children category too.

In total people, Seven was just ahead with 39.7% to Nine’s 39%. Ten was on 21.4%.

“For the fifth year in a row, we continue to lead in every one of those demographics in the five capital cities. And not by a little bit, but by a country mile,” says Stephenson.

Winning in the advertising demographics also maps closely to share in the overall advertising market, for both metro and national. Nine and Seven’s dominance has seen Ten’s advertising share squeezed to what is believed to be below 20%.

“What I see is a clear line of sight between the demographic dominance and revenue share,” says Stephenson. We’ve been the leaders in revenue share for many, many years as a result of the demographic strength of our schedule. That flows directly through into monetisation.”

In its September Upfronts, Nine put its main focus on the breadth of its platforms and on the Paris Olympics, which will cost the network $305m through to 2032 and guarantees quadrennial ratings spikes.

How Unmade reported the Nine Upfronts in September:

Meanwhile, Rod Prosser, chief sales officer of Ten’s owner Paramount, pushed the narrative that Ten’s third place position gave it the advantage of a more advertiser-friendly audience.

“Where the benefit comes for the advertiser is there’s less wastage – particularly as you get into the older demographics, there’s very much a big proportion of some of our competitors’ audience that sits in that area,” he claims.

“We know that consumers within an older age bracket, let’s call it 70+, are less likely to take out a home insurance policy, less likely to buy a new car. Many other big life stages happen with the under 55 audience. So, what the benefit for an advertiser is that we are highly targeted and efficient in the younger demographics because we have what I call less less wastage.”

Ten’s headline achievement in its pressers was that it boasted the ‘youngest’ audience of all the networks – claiming that 43% of its audience is 25-54, compared to 31% for its competitors.

He says: “Seventy five per cent of our audience are 18-54, which skews a lot younger than our competitors. So I think you always got to put some perspective on the third position.

“It gives us the advantage of being the challenger brand market in the ad market. But equally, what I would say is that we also have a really strong demographic profile. It gives our advertisers a really targeted and efficient buy.”

How Unmade covered Ten’s Upfronts in November:

Programming highlights

Seven’s communications focused on share victories in individual programs.

Seven claimed the lead for top morning program (The Morning Show), top breakfast show (Sunrise), top program overall in 2023 (FIFA Women’s World Cup) and top winter sport (AFL).

Meanwhile Nine claimed the crown for the number one reality television series – Married at First Sight – and number one daily current affairs program – A Current Affair.

Ten’s panel show ‘Have You Been Paying Attention?’ was number one 8.30pm show across networks.

“This year it was nearly pipped to the post by its sibling, Thank God You’re Here, which ended up being our biggest new comedy launch since 2019,” says Daniel Monaghan, SVP of content & programming, Paramount Australia.

Have You Been Paying Attention received 931,000 total national viewers, with 88,000 viewers on Tenplay, up 10% year on year.

Monaghan: Gladiators will be biggest change in programming schedule next year

“Amazing Race came back up this year. It was quite a success story. It was 20 percent up year on year, which is kind of unheard of, and reinvigorated the format and reinvented itself. Most recently, we spun off MasterChef, to Dessert Masters. That’s really carried us home for the past couple of weeks with some solid ratings – number one in its time slot in all the key demos. A great result for this time of year for us,” he added.

“Next year we have made quite a significant change to the top of our year. It’s quite a significant change with Gladiators coming in on Monday, January 8th. We know that Rodney’s team in sales wanted a big family entertainment format to sell to. We know the audience is crying out for something different to the sport that’s offered on the other channels.

“We’ve gone with Gladiators. It is an epic battle. It’s something for the whole family to sit down together and watch and enjoy, and a real alternative to sports. So that was our biggest change. Then we move into Survivor, which isn’t a change. We’re putting I’m A Celebrity back in that Easter time slot again, where it was so successful last year.”

How Unmade reported the Seven Upfronts:

One crucial missing ingredient missing for Ten is top tier sport.

Nine has the rights to tennis in the summer and NRL in the winter; Seven has some of the cricket rights and AFL.

Last night, Amazon Prime surprised the market by snapping up multiple international cricket rights including Cricket World Cups, T20 World Cups, the Champions Trophy and the World Test Championship Final until 2027. Previously those rights were spread across Seven, Nine and Foxtel.

Summer sport are the launchpads for the year for both Nine and Seven, even though it takes place before the official ratings year begins.

“We kick off with the Australian Open, the event that kicks off the television year,” says Stephenson. “Of course, you go straight into Married at First Sight. The strength of The Block this year has been incredible,” he adds.

Sport dominated the top rating programming of the year. Seven picked up from Optus the free-to-air rights for the Matildas games in the women’s FIFA World Cop, which ended up as the most watched television of the year.

Nine and Seven’s programs dominated the top 25 of the year | Source: TV Tonight

In individual show ratings, the Australian Open Men’s Final was Nine’s fifth highest rating program of the year with a total TV audience of 2 million. In its 19th series, The Block achieved a total TV average audience of 1.4 million per episode. An average of 294,000 viewers watched each episode on 9Now.

Total TV became the new metric in May, with OzTam finally launching the merged system of overnight linear and streaming numbers. It came against a backdrop of rapidly declining overnight numbers for all networks.

Married at First Sight achieved a total TV average audience of 2 million per episode – an increase of 71% on its overnight audience. An average of 669,000 viewers watched each episode on 9Now.

“The strategy won’t change next year. That strategy of being always invested in local Australian content, in new sport and entertainment. The types of content that we’re looking for doesn’t change dramatically,” Stephenson adds.

Fink: Alone Australia was SBS’s most successful commission

Semi-commercial SBS averaged 8.5% of the TV audience, 7% of the 25-54 demographic and 5.5% of the 16-39 demographic.

Alone Australia was SBS’s most successful commission of 2023, and in the network’s history. It has been renewed for 2024, this time shot in New Zealand.

In the two months since the debut of Alone Australia, the first episode of the show saw a 356% Total TV uplift, driven mostly by viewership on SBS on Demand.

“It was the most successful commission for SBS in our history and also did really well with the 25-54 market, and delivered across both On Demand and linear,” says Kathryn Fink, SBS’ head of television.

“I think it’s one of our key strengths that we have an audience that is distinctive, that is incremental. We have audiences that advertisers aren’t going to reach anywhere else, and that is our strength, that is our secret sauce. We compete in a different way to the other networks.

The transition from linear to streaming is something SBS was ahead of the curve with.

“SBS was really smart to get into On Demand early and treat it as a destination as opposed to a catch up service from the very beginning. It’s a very comprehensive catalogue of programming and constantly refreshing with new fresh hours, 15,000 hours available to all Australians free to air. We’re just continuing to increase things like the level of personalisation we’re doing within the service. We’ve recently integrated an audio channel into the On Demand offering, SBS Chill, and we’ll be continuing to move that down that path in 2024.”

Stephenson acknowledges that the transition to streaming from linear would make understanding total tv numbers a more difficult undertaking.

“The thing I’m proudest of this year is managing the transition between linear and BVOD. There’s absolutely no doubt about it that the future of television is scheduled, delivered through the internet. So managing that transition on a total people basis, as audiences move between terrestrial and digital, is very complex and important. Getting that balance right is important and I think our team’s doing an excellent job.”

Stephenson noted the ‘creative optimisation for advertisers’ built over the last 12 months as one of Nine’s core achievements in the arena.

“As we move towards digital enabled television, winning in the demographics will become increasingly less important because advertising on 9Now will be bought against our first party data. So people will be buying audience segments as opposed to age and sex demographics. This total media is just a vehicle if you like, that gets us from the old world to the new world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to be the leader as you go through there, which of course we are, by a significant margin, but our focus really is on the future.”

Despite the benefits of the transition, Stephenson pegged measurement as one of the core difficulties that would make deducing advertiser value more complex.

“Through this period of adjustment, we’ve got to manage linear television and BVOD together, because that’s how people will buy their audience. It’s the reason why Voz is so important, because that’s the tool that brings the two together. So launching that as a currency and getting that right is going to be one of our biggest challenges, but also our biggest opportunity and not just for Nine, but for our industry, for advertisers, for agencies.

“It’s a game changer and we’re very close now, which is incredible. The second challenge is going to be pricing. Because television in a traditional sense is bought on a different basis to what video advertising is bought on, as you move into an impression based world. So measurement and pricing, I think, are the two big challenges, but also super exciting at the same time.”

Prosser confirms an ad-supported streaming tier would hit Paramount+ ‘sometime in 2024’.

“We’ve seen some incredible growth with a younger demographic, so I think that’s going to hopefully allow us to bring incremental revenue into our streaming platform. And then we will, bring ad tier on to Paramount+ at some point next year,” he added.

“Of course, selfishly, I want it sooner, rather than later.”

ARN rises despite takeover setback

Tim Burrowes writes:

Despite what seems a setback (or perhaps because of it) in its attempt to take over Southern Cross Austereo, the market capitalisation of ARN Media rose back above $300m yesterday, with the share price improving by 2.58% to its best since August.

Yesterday ARN said it would contest a ruling from The Takeovers Panel that it would need to sell nearly half of the 14.8% stake it bought in SCA. Meanwhile, SCA’s price sagged by 1.45%.

At the top end of town, Nine’s share price rose by 2.1%. Meanwhile Seven’s share price has not biudged since Monday of last week – an unusual total of six trading days without movement.