Michael Horrocks, the executive producer of comedy at Seven Studios, is departing.
1 Like
Who is going to buy Seven Studios when the talent is leaving?
6 Likes
TV Tonight also understands Seven Studios recently vacated its purpose built offices at Bay 15 North Wing, Eveleigh, handed them back to its landlord.
1 Like
The report referred to in the TV Tonight piece was a Guardian article published on Friday which reported that 50 production staff were either made redundant or didn’t had their contracts renewed - some of them worked for Seven Studios
This line from The Guardian piece is also worth highlighting because of how it highlights one of the reasons why Seven find themselves in the position they’re now in:
Other industry sources also criticised Seven – whose largest shareholder is mogul Kerry Stokes – for being slow to adopt digital and streaming technologies, with a former employee saying “it never felt like they moved with the times”.
6 Likes
Apart from the old ‘If it ain’t broke’ train of thought, I wonder what made Seven feel afraid to innovate technologically. Like would they lose a large proportion of viewers? Or was it considered too expensive because of the price they paid for their sports deal? They’ve really been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital era by their competition which is embarrassing considering they could’ve been the leaders in innovation like the early 2000s.
3 Likes
Fairfax went into decline during the 1990s and the early 2000s for being slow to adopt digital technologies. That eventually resulted in the merger with Nine in 2018. Looks like SWM is repeating the same mistakes Fairfax made.
3 Likes
Anyone who thinks that the AFL deal will turn things around has rocks in their head - the sport has been a good performer for them and it makes sense to retain it (especially if they’ve been able to negotiate a cut in payment) - I wonder if the AFL sought any assurance or protection against Seven going under
Can’t exactly say the other two commercial broadcasters have done any better in this space
I think its a larger issue that comes back largely to their ratings performance - they’ve stagnated in a number of areas and allowed the competition to catch up (and overtake) and its hit them hard. Chasing can often be easier than leading.
Their offering has to be a hard sell to advertisers in what is already a really difficult market, it cant help that the frontman for one of your biggest products (Pete Evans & MKR) is basically a loose cannon.
The competition has also cut their cloth to better fit the emerging situation - thats not to say they still arent at risk of failure.
4 Likes
If it happens, I wonder if Nine and 10 could bid?
1 Like
Really? Nine has been much more innovative than Channel Seven in the streaming and digital era over the past decade.
5 Likes
Certainly. Moving away from NineMSN and onto their own platform of nine.com.au has been a massive success. 9Now, Stan, 9news.com.au, HD live streams and programming are also successful case studies of Nine’s technological innovation.
Seven’s only reacted very recently to the technological movement with the introduction of 7news.com.au and changes to 7Plus. Granted they did have Presto in the early days but it failed. They never cared about HD and were mostly dragged into the digital era because of the competition.
Though it has to be said that it’s better late than never. Some of the biggest business successes out there have been ‘late to the party’ so to speak, like Nokia and Apple. The problem is for Seven, it seems like they don’t know how to innovate. They do things that seems innovative from the perspective of a 60 year old person, which shows that they’re out of touch with the modern audience.
6 Likes
While Nine has proven itself technologically, Seven just feels more modern imo
I feel like 10 is the most ‘modern’ (can’t find a better word to express it) than both Seven and Nine. While Seven’s recent refresh is decent enough from the last package but overall it still feels like the same old formulaic Seven from 2000. Nine feels distinctively dated as well visually (though they’re moving soon so they might be working on a relaunch at the same time).
Seven’s biggest problems are their shows. They didn’t innovate them when they were at their peak and they messed up the successes they had for many years. Their drama slate is bare and all they have cared about in the past year or so is romance reality shows which are just unwatchable.
4 Likes
Nine’s streaming was garbage until 9Now, 9jumpin wasnt designed for streaming (and it showed)
4 Likes
You only have to look at the (now defunct, thank goodness) AFL-coverage related two tier system for HD broadcasting as an example of that.
I also suspect that Seven got the idea to have two HD channels from Nine, which had softly launched 9GemHD six or seven months before Seven decided to have both their main channel and 7mate in HD after the demise of 7Food Network.
As far as graphics, On-Air Presentation and overall branding are concerned, yes. But technologically and in the digital space, I personally think Ten are being whipped by the public broadcasters let alone Seven & Nine.
Only now is there vaguely credible talk about a 4th channel from Ten (although content wise, I’m still rather skeptical about the need for one), compared to Nine who are on their fifth while this viewer fully expects a relaunched 5th channel from Seven to compliment the main/TWO/Mate/Flix before overly long. That’s even without getting into how Ten are starting to trail the ABC in areas such as HD news…
Hopefully there’ll be something really special in-store for North Sydney but if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s to expect disappointment.
Yes, I think we can all agree about that.
Speaking directly about 9Now, it is still garbage IMO. 9Now is very glitchy where I use it frequently compared to the likes of 7Plus (I can get any episode of a show almost instantly) and I don’t find 10’s streaming too bad either
1 Like
Seven’s only real digital success IMO was working hard on the Live Streaming, when they had the tennis in particular, but also Rio 2016 was excellent and the Melbourne Cup, Pyeongchang 2018 and Gold Coast 2018.
3 Likes
They also have 12 live streams on 7Plus, that’s 4 x as many streams as 10 does.
I can’t say I have used their BVOD service much, but the library seems pretty expansive.
And from what I’ve seen online and in here too, their promotion for the streamer looks the best.
7 Likes
I thought NineMSN (PBL’s joint venture with Microsoft) was a success on its own too, which led to Seven forming relationship with AOL then Yahoo.
Was this a missed opportunity for the network? A lot of pressure on Warburton at the moment.
1 Like
What a bizarre statement, of course it was bad until they had a good product.
But 9Now has been around for ages now, it’s a stable product and most importantly people know it exists and 9 markets it equally with linear channels.
You watch the upfronts and it’s clear nine is the only commercial network that sees streaming and catchup as their core product, not just an add on like 7plus or ten play.
NineMSN was great for the era when people weren’t used to the internet and online news and Nine cut it loose at the right time, 7 was a joke for holding on to yahoo for so long and their dozen or so catchup services.
9 needs to keep evolving 9now though so it doesn’t stagnate like ten play. ABC and SBS can add functionality to their on demand services every year.
4 Likes