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Channel Nine aims to keep key demos in 2014 two-horse race with Seven

Ahead in key demos

Ahead in key demos

Channel Nine is heading into a two horse race in 2014 with the aim of holding onto key advertising demographics as younger viewers fall away from Channel Ten, sales boss Peter Wiltshire said at an upfronts event in Sydney yesterday.

Launching a slate of new drama, reality shows and a “premium brand” current affairs program, the network aims to build its audience in key demos on the east coast and build audiences in Adelaide and Perth where a lower audience and revenue share drags down strong ratings on the east coast.

However with wins in every demographic under 65  this year, Andrew Backwell, Nine’s director of programming, said the network it has delivered on its promises for 2013 by growing audience share by five per cent in the key demographics at one of 10 scaled down upfront sessions ahead of its IPO.

Backwell said: “Our ratings are up over five per cent in every demographic and Ten is down 12 per cent in every demographic so we have obviously picked up Ten’s younger audience. Seven skews so old Ten’s traditional audience isn’t gone to Seven.”

Peter Wiltshire, group sales and marketing director for Nine, said the network is “very happy ” with its position and “exactly where we want to be” in what he said is essentially a two-horse race with Seven next year.

“It is a two horse race,” he said. “It’s a Nine/Seven ding-dong. Seven established themselves and have been consistent and done a very good job for seven years. We’ve had the chance to grow at Ten’s weakness, and Seven have done a good job at defending what they had.

“I don’t think Ten will go any further south, I don’t think they’ll get much better, but at the same time I don’t think their ad share can get any better either. If you went deep into the commercial world there’s not any metric says that they can get any stronger from a revenue share point of view.”

As it takes on Seven Nine will need to build share in Perth where it writes around 30 per cent ad share compared with 46 per cent for Seven, Wiltshire said.

Part of this will be tackled head on through experimenting with scheduling programs for different tastes on the east and west coast.

Michael Healy, Nine’s director of television, said he the network will continue to experiment with the one hour news bulletin in Sydney and removing Top Gear from TV schedules in Adelaide and Perth.

New programming slated for next year includes the launch of Inside Story, an hour long program in which different reporters will focus on a different story for each episode.

The Voice will return for a third season, with Kylie Minogue and Will.i.am joining the judging panel in place of Seal and Delta Goodrem, and a new franchise, The Voice Kids, which Goodrem will judge with Madden in a short-run series featuring talent aged eight to 14. Darren McMullen will return in 2014 to host both shows.

Meanwhile Australia’s Got Talent, which the network bought after it was canned by Seven last year, has not yet been commissioned as it is still under review, Healy said.

Nine has also bought two new reality formats. When Love Comes to Town, by Big Brother producers Southern Star, will feature women touring Australia in a bus looking for love. And the Danish format Married at First Sight, will show eight Australian singles matched into four couples by psychologists, and they will meet for the first time at their wedding and then have three months to decide whether to stay married or divorce.

The Block will return in a “fans versus favourites” format, featuring previous contestants renovating homes from scratch and Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year will be in South America next year.

Drama is heavy in the lineup with Love Child, a series about young women and midwives in 1969 Kings Cross set to launch early next year with the second series already in pre-production, and TV film Schapelle about convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby, promised again.

Appealing to the Perth market will be two part miniseries Gina about the life story of Gina Rinehart, produced by Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder.

The producers of Underbelly will launch another new miniseries, Fat Tony and Co, about notorious criminal Tony Mokbel, and new dramas Gallipoli, dramatising the ANZAC battle and Mayday Mayday, telling the story of Qantas flight 32.

Logie-winning drama House Husbands will be back, and we can expect more from US imports such as The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, and 2 Broke Girls, and a new sitcom from the makers of The Big Bang Theory called Mom.

As the network reported a share point increase of 1.3 per cent year on year in people 25-54, 1.4 per cent in 18-49’s and 1.9 per cent in 16-39’s as well as increase of 1.4 per cent in all people, the network aims to maintain those demographics as it builds audiences in Adelaide and Perth.

“I think our schedule for next year is fantastic and our expectation would be that we will win all the demographics again in 2014,” Backwell said.

 Megan Reynolds

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