I honestly can’t think of a genre or type of program that would work for Ten on Saturdays.
ABC goes old & British and Ten would never get those viewers. 9 and 7 often have sports. 7TWO and 9Go seem to do well with UK drama and movies.
The problem is the younger demos that watch Ten are not watching broadcast TV on Saturdays.
I think the only option is to go broad appeal movies - and schedule promote and market them with limited commercials. They can’t give the weight and marketing needs to launch or promote series on Saturday nights.
So I would run Bondi Vet or Feud repeats 6-7. Then go with a branded movie block from 7pm of two movies back to back with limited commercials
“Movies & Chill”
Promote the fact there is a movie every single Saturday at 7 and 9.30 - with 50% less commercials.
US cable networks are reducing commercial loads by 50% on same nights and seeing a big spike in ratings and charging a premium for those advertisers as there is less commercial clutter. Only 3 ads per break. They are selling ads for moire and getting more viewers.
9GO is practically showing what Ten used to show on Saturdays with 16-39 content, and despite being a multichannel, is beating Ten on Saturdays.
Ten needs to go back to 16-39 content. In 2009 and 2010, Simpsons Marathons on Saturdays in non AFL states did very well from memory. 200k in Sydney. Now they can barely rate 200k nationally.
I think its the family audience they need to focus on. Variety. Something live. Graham Norton could slot in nicely. All star family feud as well. Forget Bondi Vet its a complete dud.
Call me stupid but wasn’t Hey Hey a cheap knock off? I wonder whether the expensive part of the show was the amount of hosts there were and their contracts. I am pretty sure Ten could replicate something similar, or better, with someone without so many zeros on their check.
Outside of live sport, free to air TV on Saturday night, Friday night and to some extent, even Thursday night will never be as big as it was in Australia 20-25 years ago for reasons that don’t need explaining…
That’s the attitude the networks have and that is why ten only get a 5% share on a Saturday night. Rolling over isn’t going to fix the problem. I know Hey Hey worked. Didn’t Young Talent Time once air on Saturday nights as well?
In other news: It is quite embarrassing when an 8:30/9:00 show on your main channel is sponsored by TenPlay. NCIS rpts are obviously not enticing the advertisers so something needs to change here ASAP.
I like the ideas. Obviously you couldn’t call Red Faces Red Face. But yeah I like the idea. The other thing is if you are producing Australian content it needs to be an hour in length to justify the costs. Could could potential swap it around and have a regular or best of family feud at 6:00. 6:30 Red Faces 7:30 Game Shows 8:30 Graham Norton/Saturday Magda etc.
I’m pretty sure that Young Talent Time did used to air on Saturday, even before Hey Hey It’s Saturday moved from the morning children’s timeslot to primetime.
Seven tried that on Sunday nights back in 2008. Guess what? It quickly tanked in the ratings once Nine ran some strong competition against it in Domestic Blitz (from what I remember).
Realistically, the only locally produced programing that Ten (or any network for that matter) would even think about running on Saturday nights are programs like All Star Family Feud that can be recorded in advance. In this day and age, the blockbuster programs will always be reserved for Sunday-Wednesday.