Ten's 2012 Flops

TV History Ten
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Not sure if this is worthy of its own topic. But since it’s almost a decade since that particularly bad year for Channel Ten, I figured that enough time has passed for a dedicated thread in the TV History section to look back on all those new shows from 2012 which didn’t really go anywhere except into the Wikipedia archives.

First cab off the ranks is quite timely with the 50th anniversary special for this program airing on Ten tomorrow night, the 2012 reincarnation of Young Talent Time.

I seem to remember this being the centrepiece of Ten’s big relaunch for 2012 with a new On-Air Presentation package and ill-fated 2D logo. Over that fairly cool, wet Summer of 2011-12, viewers of Ten were bombarded with promos featuring the soundtrack of Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling” - there were even versions which had horribly autotuned vocals from key members of the new Young Talent Team!

Anyway…the first episode of YTT 2012 (which was part introduction to the new team, part reunion of the old - competition element didn’t begin until Episode 2 IIRC) received over 1 million metro viewers, but it was downhill from there.

By the end of March, Ten’s much hyped “Super Sunday” had become “Same Old Sunday”. Due to poor ratings in Total People and key demographics, Young Talent Time was bumped to Fridays as former Sunday night program The Biggest Loser took its place. That move didn’t save YTT, with just under 350k metro viewers (bad by current TV ratings standards let alone those of 2012) still tuning in by mid-April: Bold & The Beautiful at 4.30pm in the afternoon actually had higher ratings at that time! :open_mouth:

Young Talent Time 2012 finished on May 4 and just scraped into the Top 20 with not only Friday Night Football on Seven/Nine, but the ABC’s Friday night lineup receiving more viewers than YTT’s finale!

NSW dance group “Lil’ Banditz Krew” won $100,000 in the competition portion of the program, the 2012 Young Talent Team seemed to enjoy reasonable success ​with a sell-out live show tour, but I think they would’ve disbanded after that. One of the older talent team members Lyndall was a contestant on The Voice back in 2015, but I’d imagine that she (like the rest of the 2012 YTT…and almost all ex-contestants of The Voice) has since faded into obscurity!

I’ll probably look back at some of Ten’s other 2012 failures at a later date, but in the meantime hope people enjoyed that first installment (and especially the research/searches of the TV Tonight database which went into it)! :slight_smile:

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At least three things come to mind when revisiting Ten’s terrible 2012:

  • the failed Breakfast show, which was launched on a Thursday to cover the Federal Labor leadership spill which Julia Gillard just survived. After months of very poor ratings, the show wrapped up on 30 November.
  • the loss of the AFL broadcasting rights, leaving a massive hole in its Saturday schedule.
  • the sackings/departures of many journalists from the News Department, including, among others, Ron Wilson, Bill Woods, Helen Kapalos, Nathan Templeton and Bill McDonald to name a few.
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Probably Ten’s Worst Second Half of the Year Performance since the Ill-Fated 10 TV Australia Game Show Failures back in 1989, Who remembers I Will Survive, Everybody Dance Now, Don’t Tell The Bride Australia, The Shire and Being Lara Bingle?

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What a great flashback.

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Perhaps one of the most questionable moves by Ten in 2012 was moving the Formula 1 races on Sunday nights from One to the main channel. That meant that the races were no longer shown in HD & were therefore downgraded to SD, as was the case at the time.

For the first Sunday night race which was held at Bahrain, it was shown on delay in SA, WA & NT, and fans in those states were clearly not happy. Even sponsors weighted in on the issue.

By the time of the Spanish Grand Prix that was being held 3 weeks later, a compromise had been reached, in which Formula 1 was being shown live & in HD on One in SA, WA & NT, but was still being shown on the main channel in SD in NSW, VIC, QLD, ACT & TAS.

When Fox Sports acquired the Formula One rights in 2015, leaving Ten to have only 10 races in simulcast with Fox, fans around the country finally could finally see it in HD. When the main channel became available in HD from March 2016, fans in the eastern states without Foxtel could see the Sunday night races in HD, whilst those in SA, WA & NT had it downgraded to SD, as One had become an SD channel. That arrangement lasted until September 2017, when Fox Sports gained exclusive rights to all live Formula 1 races outside of the Australian Grand Prix in the wake of Ten having gone into administration & was about to be bought by CBS (now ViacomCBS).

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Don’t Tell the Bride, hosted by Kate Ritchie from H&A. Lasted only 6 episodes before getting the axe.

Edit: From what I read on Wikipedia, a lot of their new shows started in mid-to-late August.

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Yeah it was always a hard time of the year for 10. It wasn’t really until the bachelor and survivor that they found something that worked

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Ultimately it was 2012 that brought about their receivership a few years later.

If they had stuck out the 2011 strategy for longer and invested in that instead of pulling it apart things may have been very different.

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Similar to 7 in the 2000s when the network lost the AFL rights

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After losing the AFL, Ten were chasing the rights to broadcast the NRL during that year for a new 5-year broadcasting deal, covering the 2013-17 seasons.

Unfortunately, it was all for nothing, as Nine & Fox Sports retained the rights to broadcast the NRL for another 5 years, which was announced in August that year. This was despite Nine’s then financial situation being in a dire state, in which they nearly went into administration.

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They had the wrong backers in Murdoch and Packer, both of whom were useless and screwed the place over. If Canwest still owned 10 and went with Blackley’s strategy they could’ve gone somewhere with their plans.

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2011 vision went too far with George Negus’ self indulgent show. They could have done a younger skewing lineup of local news and kept The project as their current affairs program. But they thought they were SBS.

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Lachie Murdoch was the acting CEO in 2011 which was their downfall. The only success was the 7pm Project which continues until today

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Ten really struggled during the second-half of 2012.

It’s interesting, because if you look at the ratings from the first-half of the year, Ten were actually still quite competitive and even out-rated Nine (in total percentage share) on a number of occasions. Take a look at the ratings for the 13th March; they achieved a 23.4% total percentage share for the night and had two shows finish within the Top-10 most watched programs. Even on Thursday, June 7, when they achieved 3rd place, they still had two shows achieve 800K+ ratings and finish within the Top-10.

Fast forward to October 1, however, and the main channel had a measly 10.9% percentage share, with the network languishing 4th for the night. By November 6, their highest rating show for the night placed at #16 and Tuesdays were a night where they had generally done well earlier in the year.

They’ve been on a gradual decline since 2011. Personally, I would have liked to have seen them invest more resources/time into “Breakfast” and make tweaks to the format. I actually believe it had more potential than “Wake Up” ever had, and I think Ten swung the axe to quickly. It’s a shame to see the network in the position that it is in today. Obviously we all wish we had the benefit of hindsight, but Ten really self-imploded based on certain decisions they made back in 2011/12 and they’ve never recovered from it.

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Inb4 they shouldn’t have moved Simpsons at 6

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When they launched all those reality shows that bombed one after the other. I Will Survive was the weakest.

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Their struggles in the early 2010s led to their second administration in 2017 before being bought out by ViacomCBS

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The news revolution could probably have it’s own thread too haha. That era had so many changes as well. A shame how badly they botched it up.

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Particularly as just months before it launched Murdoch and Packer came in and started tinkering. Balckley was still there initially but then he lost their support 3 months into the 2011 strategy.

They probably didn’t even want to pull out of AFL bidding either. There were so many things that were sabotaged and you can’t in hindsight analyze what happened given the mess Murdoch created thinking his strategy was going to work.

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I vaguely recall reports at the time that some of those reality shows like Don’t Tell The Bride and The Shire etc were destined for Eleven where they were probably better suited, but for some reason (probably a change in management?) landed on Ten

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