10 Daily to close this Friday
Ten’s online news and short video site, 10 Daily, will close on Friday, almost exactly two years after its 2018 launch.
The site’s senior reporter Josh Butler announced the news on Twitter, drawing attention to the team that will be out of work due to the resulting redundancies.
Sad news – @10Daily is being closed from Friday
There will be a lot of people left without jobs – news, lifestyle and entertainment journalists; editors; video editors; social staff. They’re all guns
If you need people, please DM me and I can recommend you a few legends to hire
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) May 18, 2020
In a statement, Ten told Mumbrella: “Network 10’s digital media strategy is evolving to capitalise on our momentum and match the new global operating model. That means an increased emphasis on streaming services and social media.
“Over the past two years, 10 Daily has established a strong presence and a loyal following, thanks to a passionate and hardworking team producing great content. We are grateful for their efforts to drive that success.
“As a result of the strategic change, however, 10 Daily will cease to exist as a standalone website. Some of the 10 Daily roles will remain. Some of the 10 Daily content will also transfer to 10 Play and our social media brands.”
The 10 Daily launch team included Sandra Sully, Lisa Wilkinson, Melinda Cornford, Liz Baldwin
The 10 Daily team was led by editor Chris Harrison, managing editor Mel Cornford, executive editor Lisa Wilkinson – who defected from Nine’s Today, and joined Ten’s The Project the year before 10 Daily’s launch – and managing news editor, high profile Ten newsreader Sandra Sully.
At the time of the site’s launch, a year and a half after it was first flagged at the network’s 2016 upfronts, Ten’s Liz Baldwin said it would compete with the likes of Punkee, Buzzfeed and Mamamia, which leveraged Ten content like The Bachelor franchise to produce popular recaps and listicles.
“I think that their coverage really talks to how noisy and talkative and viral our shows are, and any other media outlet that wants to help celebrate our shows, we welcome their participation in the social landscape on that front,” she said in 2018.
“But yes, we absolutely want to take back some of that noise ourselves. We think it’s a real opportunity for us, because the one thing that we have is exclusive access. So we’re happy for them to go forward with their recaps, but we’ve got The Bachelor and we’ve got Osher [Gunsberg] and we’ve got the access that they don’t have.”
Just last week, Ten announced it would be launching a new multi-channel focused on content from its owner, ViacomCBS. The parent company was supportive of 10 Daily at the time of its launch, with the site’s readership first revealed last April. Nielsen figures showed a unique audience of 716,073 for the month.
The platform was a year old at the time, with editor Harrison telling Mumbrella: “What we’ve managed to do with the 10 Daily platform is integrate all our national network products and put them through a sieve if you like.
“We’ve got Studio 10 and The Project and you could argue those are very different demographics, but we’ve managed to pull those two products together and sit them on the website and appeal to a very broad reader base and demographic by choosing the best bit of each.”
Chief sales officer Rod Prosser added at the time of 10 Daily’s first birthday that: “We can be really different and creative when it comes to advertising on 10 Daily.
“We’ve seen a lot of success with commercial content opportunities like native advertising, particularly when it’s aligned to a broader show partnership. It’s a hat-tip to the great content the team puts together, the young, digital-savvy audience the site attracts and the way this audience likes to interact with brands.”
ViacomCBS expanded Ten CEO Paul Anderson’s remit in January, seeing him also become executive vice president for ViacomCBS Networks Australia and New Zealand. But just two months later, Anderson stepped down. His role was not replaced; instead, Beverley McGarvey was promoted to the role of chief content officer and executive vice president across the combined Ten and ViacomCBS operations.
The closure adds to a string of redundancies various media companies have made since the onslaught of COVID-19, including last week’s shuttering of Buzzfeed’s Australian newsroom.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Sandra Sully
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