Imagine Leckie swooping in and using all the CBS money to turn Ten around. He has probably been bored of late and would like a cashed up ten to play with.
That article was spot on. If Grant Blackley was still there and the strategies they had put in place ten would;ve grown as a media company instead of collapsing in a heap.
And Murdoch/Gordon forcing the board’s hand has back fired big time.
Here is another good article which shows how much Gordon and Murdoch stuffed up and shows how ten dodged a bullet in a tie up with News …plenty of job losses:
For all of Murdoch’s faults, It was Blackley and his news revolution that was a complete and utter disaster that did massive damage to Ten News and the network. Had they continued with Evening News and George Negus they would’ve gone bankrupt years ago.
I actually disagree with that. I think that if they actioned the news evolution in stages, rather than in a massive hit - they could have made it work. But when new management was brought in soon after the news evolution began they didn’t allow enough time for the changes to set in.
I think that if you are going to take such a massive risk with launching a different product, you need to give it time to settle in and then build on from there. By the end of 2011 (if I’m not mistaken) - everything was gone again.
Your judgement is clouded by infatuation with the Simpsons.
It was a long game… to set up ten as a diversified and multi platform media company. Seven and nine ended up copying the strategy in their own similar way.
Hasn’t he read the Murdoch spin being pedalled by Sky News, etc. (emphasis on the ‘foreign takover’, ignoring the Murdoch US citizenship).
Putting a positive spin on Foxtel’s accelerating downward spiral:
“There will be more and more of these services… [and] ultimately Australian consumers won’t want to have lots and lots of them,” Mr Tonagh said.
“I think they’ll want to have an aggregator that does a lot of work for them. Our role is as the aggregator.”
Sure, we’re going to pay Foxtel’s overpriced subscriptions & continue to have them foist ads on us instead of picking which of the others have what we want to watch. No thanks.
Not sure if this has been discussed yet or not (a lot’s on here!):
Supported by heavily cross-subsidised content, Ten will have its $625 million cost base slashed in a way its executives could only have dreamed about.
That means it should be competitive in the impending and much more expensive bidding battle for Big Bash cricket rights.
Holding on to its other sporting staples like the Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix and the Wallabies should be easier too.
I think that’s a really important point in all of this (that somehow hasn’t weighted that heavily when I’ve been thinking about all of this): Ten’s current expenditure can now almost entirely be diverted to Australian content now that they don’t in effect have to pay for any CBS content.
Obviously they’re still keeping the FOX deal but it’s been substantially discounted:
It will now negotiate with Fox to keep broadcasting gems like The Simpsons, and CBS is in a very strong position there too.
If Fox won’t deal with CBS, it gets shifted back into the unsecured creditor pile and will receive a pittance compared to what it is owed — although that is a pittance more than Ten shareholders are likely to receive.
Honestly this whole takeover is just wonderful - particularly with the wrath that Lachlan’s having to face now.
CBS will want to see returns on their investment, one way or another, and even though it may be like playing with Monopoly money they probably will continue to expect their new subsidiary to pay their empire’s other arms for producing content.
If nothing else it’s important to be able to report on, fund/justify the content CBS produce.
There may also be tax reasons to pay licence fees for the content (perhaps to a licensing arm based in some tax haven, next door to Bruce Gordon).
In wanting to see a return, wouldn’t they invest more advertising dollars earned into Australian content (that’s proven to actually rate) rather than Ten’s previous efforts with US filler programming that cost too much?
Yes, it’s pretty clear that not having to pay for US content will be a significant help to Ten’s finances. Will it be the only FTA network with a US studio output deal (and possibly two) that can feed in to content for multichannels and daytime programs and post 9.30pm timeslots.
‘Supergrass’ on Triple M’s Grill Team doesn’t have a great track record of getting things right but for what it’s worth, he was speculating about the future of 60 minutes on 9, due to it being a CBS title. Also, speculated about ‘The Project’, apparently CBS bosses did not/do not like Waleed Alys anti American stance, particularly during the recent election.