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Ten fires back at Nine accusing CEO of being ‘rattled’ following Gyngell’s revenue comments

Network Ten has said it is “flattered” Nine Entertainment Co sees it as a threat after CEO David Gyngell said he expected his rival to “fall into a bit of a hole” in the latter half of 2015 during Nine’s revenue results presentation today.

Gyngell

Nine CEO David Gyngell during today’s presentation

After Nine had reported a $592.2m net loss after a series of asset writedowns, Gyngell took aim at Ten with his own analysis of how the rest of 2015 would play out from a revenue perspective.

“We’ll be a 38 (share), Seven will be a 38 and a half 39 and Ten 23, 23 and a half”, said Gyngell. “We have a couple of Voices in there so we will hold up. Seven will pull forward some revenue because of the Olympic Games coming along, they will write some extra advertising and Channel Ten will pick up bits and bumps around Masterchef but will fall into a hole coming in to the end of the year.”

Ten fired back with a spokesman telling Mumbrella: “We’re flattered that David took time out of presenting his company’s financial results to discuss Ten. Clearly our strong ratings and revenue growth this year has rattled him.

“Ten is the only primary channel that is growing in 2015, while Nine is the fastest declining primary channel. We are continuing to focus on improving our performance, launching innovative shows and building on the success of proven hits such as The Bachelor Australia, which is up 28 per cent year on year.”

According to SMI, Ten has lifted its revenue share significantly in the last year as of July this year the TV network enjoyed a 23.1 per cent share, up from 18 per cent last June.

Source: SMI

Source: SMI

While it has improved significantly the TV network remains well behind rivals Seven and Nine, which have both hovered around a 38 to 40 per cent share for much of the year.

Gyngell also commented on the video streaming wars telling analysts: “We are up against the hottest brand in the world right now in Netflix. We have the deepest library, we have launched the most original content every day we have launched a new program to Stan.

“I am pleased and proud of the offering that the team has put together and Mike Sneesby the managing director is doing an excellent job there and we are in the right position in a tough category.”

Peter Wiltshire

Wiltshire on-camera at today’s presentation.

Nine sales boss Peter Wiltshire in his presentation also noted that it had been a “tough year.”

The TV group sales and marketing director also commented on the impact that Nine and Seven’s reality renovation war, with Renovation Rescue and The Block.

“(In quarter four) Nine’s ratings were impacted by the two leading networks programming formats being in the same genre head to head. To some extent we were our own worst enemy as we competed aggressively,” said Wiltshire.

“This caused pressure on audiences on free-to-air TV and specifically Nine’s share of that audience. The size and magnitude of these changes coincided with advertisers moving to shorter term buying decisions and immediate ratings history to support their actions.

“This clearly worked against us as buyers worked to Q3 ratings in allocating Q4 revenues.”

Nic Christensen 

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