It might be business as usual at Ten Eyewitness News: First At Five for now, but unfortunately I would probably still expect a major announcement about the future of the news service to be made by the network before the end of the year.
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If any new owner comes in and shuts everything down and ceases all Australian output for imported shit watch revenues decline and the network will be even worse off.
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There are strict Australian content quotas, so won’t happen.
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If worst case scenario no one woulda to but ten how can it keep operating ?
They collect $350 million a year in revenue. Their costs are more than that. So it’s at a loss. But clearly there is money to be made if the business settings are right.
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Some insight from Ten’s coverage of its entry into administration:
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Deals with ‘American Networks’ (presumably CBS and FOX) are already being negotiated down to half their original price and administrators may sell them off.
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There is “no chance” the channel will go to black.
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The most likely scenario is that Ten will be recapitalised and relisted on the market within 60 days.
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Well they could just start showing the NZ version of Family Feud and The Project…
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Chuck in Newshub including The AM show while they are at it. It would give them at least 4 hours more news content on weekdays than what they have now.
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With news late this arvo that Gordon and Murdoch have merged their shares - forming a 22% majority and most likely forcing a takeover bid… I expect one of the following scenarios to develop by the years end for the newsrooms…
- WIN News production moves to the capital cities (like they did with WIN WA and 9 Perth those years ago)
or - A full one hour state based bulletin with WIN reporters filing for the Ten service and scraping local news bulletins.
Either scenario would only occur if WIN took over Ten, it would not happen while they remain separate companies.
I also highly doubt that WIN would ditch its local 30 minute bulletins, that would just alienate regional viewers whose local news would be diluted into a statewide bulletin.
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as I said, if a takeover bid were successful. but you are right, most likely production of local bulletins could move to the capital cities.
A takeover bid may not happen for some months (regardless of passing media laws) as
- The shares “merge” agreement between Murdoch and Gordon stipulates that they will not “solicit or encourage any takeover offers for Ten”
- Anyone looking to takeover would want to wait until Ten is reasonably financially viable, they wouldn’t want to take on a money pit
that growth and transformation project Ten was bandying around could be a clear sign to Murdoch and Gordon that the company is viable and ripe right now for the picking.
If you can manage something better - why wait for the company to recover in value before purchasing?
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The poor people at ten. The network will go down further if they tie up with sky.
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Just to make a comment in one place on this,
Ten’s problems with News isn’t that it tried and failed with a revolution - it is that it has totally missed the boat on a multi platform news offering, yet still has all the costs of staffing newsrooms across the country.
Obviously it’s repetitious in this thread, but it’s a basic fact that Ten have done the expensive bit - but only get an hour’s news out of it.
NewsHub in NZ probably shows the future here - a shared newsroom across platforms. That doesn’t need to come with common ownership, it could take the form of spinning off Ten News and going into a joint venture with other media outlets all struggling with the same issues of viability.
Fairfax are struggling, radio news bulletins are decreasing in standard as Macquarie becomes seemingly the only provider to many radio operators, and the competition from Nine and Seven puts the viability of WIN’s regional news operations in question.
Nine and Seven both have strong and successful multiplatform news offerings - for Ten to keep providing a news service of their current quality and ideally to reverse some of the latest cuts - they need to find the path to relevance online.
Personally, I rarely see Ten’s news - 5pm as a timeslot means it’s already over by the time I get home from work. Likewise, their poor video player on their site and lack of up to date coverage means I’m not going to go to their website for news.
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Agreed, having one (which is increasingly losing viewers) bulletin at 5pm is no help. Nobody can watch that early as a main service. They should have had local news at a later time, away from competition as a point of different years ago. Totally agree re: sharing resources, they could have joined up with News Corp or Fairfax some way, but unfortunately their management just slashed and burned trying to find a way out of their issues.
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There’s little doubt in my mind that Ten will be under Murdoch control in the months ahead. This is all about the Murdochs consolidating and expanding their influence through the control of as many media outlets as they can get their grubby hands on. They already have an unhealthy level of power because they set the news agenda through their daily newspapers and use them to pressure politicians and shift public debate. Murdoch’s “blue horizon” is the influence of Sky News in every household in the country. This has the potential to be a disaster considering we already severely lack media diversity in this country.
Once they have their foot in the door, it won’t stop at editorial control of Ten’s evening news. You can guarantee Murdoch’s conservative commentators will start to fill slots in other areas of Ten’s schedule. What else are they going to schedule once those expensive US output deals are culled? I can already see them repackaging Paul Murray’s nightly rantings into a late night program for Ten.
You have to wonder if these billionaires have any concern for the collateral damage they incur in their quest for domination.
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