COMMENT: Should Nine keep its telethon advertising revenue?
The Nine Network faces a big PR issue over Thursday night’s bushfires telethon, unless it treads carefully.
As Mumbrella reported yesterday afternoon, the network moved quickly to announce its Australia Unites appeal show, featuring athletes, entertainers and personalities, and fronted by its under-utilised Eddie McGuire.
Undoubtedly, it will raise a huge amount of money and do the victims a great deal of good.
But here’s where it gets difficult: will Nine keep the advertising revenue that it brings in against the show?
There’s a solid, and fair, business argument that says the network should. I’m told the advertising inventory is probably worth around two or maybe two and a half million dollars on a normal Thursday night. It’s a big ask that the network should forgo that – particularly when it is throwing all of its resources into making the telethon work. It’s not as if the TV business is particularly good at the moment.
But for the network, the show will have a huge upside. For starters, it’s going into the 20 to 1 and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares slot – which rated so badly last week that the station axed Ramsay. It will certainly be a much bigger challenge for Ten’s timetravelling cop drama Life On Mars, which rated very well on its debut last week. And also for Grey’s Anatomy on Seven.
Officially, Nine is saying nothing about what its plans for the advertising revenue are. I’ve put in three calls over the last 24 hours, and so far been told that nothing has yet been decided.
Via agency sources, I’ve heard that some advertising inventory is being moved out of the two hours, and that the station is not seeking a premium from advertisers on the undoubtedly much bigger audience. So they are not obviously cashing in.
But regardless of that, when the ratings for the week are calculated, it’s probably going to help confirm a big win for Nine over Seven. In the year’s ratings battle – which saw all of the networks go in hard right from the start this year, every week will count. And it will also probably deny Ten its only potential peaktime victory of the week.
So Nine may be doing the right thing by running in telethon, but it stands to gain too.
For the tsunami four years ago, all of the free TV channels did an ad-free simulcast, although I’m sure it was easier for them all to agree to that as it took place outside the ratings season. I’ve no idea whether Nine offered Seven and Ten the chance to get on board this time, or if it went it alone. If it is the latter, then again it leaves it open to accusations of ratings opportunism.
My guess would be that most viewers won’t have considered where the ad revenue is going. But I would also guess that if they thought about it, they’d assume that it was being donated. That debate is touched upon in the comments section of the TV Tonight blog.
As I say, the network may yet make an announcement on what it is doing so it remains an open question.
I’ve no idea what David Gyngell, Nine’s CEO, will decide. And I’m glad it isn’t me who has to make that decision – we’re talking shades of grey rather than black and white here. What do you think they should do?
Update1 : The show is now scheduled to run for the whole evening.
Update 2: Sources close to the production point out that the event is going to be an extremely high cost affair for the network, perhaps costing $1m to put together. They also point out that the network has reduced commercial minutage this week as it has been covering the tragedy.
And while Nine is one of the few media companies that has not yet made a public donation, they indicate that this will change during the broadcast. They add, plausibly, that the network’s only focus has only been on raising large amounts of money for the cause.
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I’d like to congratulate channel 9 for its initiative and its nice to see MuMbrella trying to keep them honest.
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I’d have been less suspicious if they hadn’t stuck it in their weakest slot of the week. Let’s face it, they were never going to bump Underbelly, were they?
Bit of a tough one for Seven and Ten though – they can’t say anything without looking churlish. Does anyone know if Nine offered to share with them or talked to them first?
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In an ideal world Id say be up front and keep enough ad revenue to cover hard costs, donate the rest. or even better take a hit for a moment and donate the lot. Only put crew on those shifts that are happy to donate their time too. ….Now back to reality
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I agree with jas, or donate 50% of revenue. Has nine donated any money yet?
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Mumbrella raises an interesting ethical and commercial dilemma. A fair solution would be to contrbute any additional advertising revnue gained from switching scheduled programming to the telethon.
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Are you guys for real? Channel Nine and their management should be applauded for the way they immediately jumped in to raise money for the families and communities impacted by the Victorian fires. And we are very proud to have partnered with them and Cricket Australia to raise over $6 million in association with yesterday’s match in Adelaide. Their team has worked non-stop since the weekend to do everything they can to assist the community and drive fund raising. Now’s not the time to be casting doubt over their integrity and intentions.
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Tim, I had a very similar experience with a newspaper today who were doing a ‘bushfire lift-out’ and not donating any of the ad revenue to the bushfire fund. I agree they should be able to cover production costs but the surplus should go to charity. I wrote about it here: http://anotheradvertisingwanke.....media.html
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There are both humanitarian and commercial motivations behind this decision.
No doubt people within both 9 and CBA want to help and both organisations have the infrastructure to organise the nation’s grief. So do 7, 10, NAB, ANZ and Westpac.
There have been enough similar recent events that 9’s response is both practised and calculated – initiative by definition only occurs once. Beyond the desire to rebuild lives, 9’s motivation is the same as CBA’s – wanting to influence how they are percieved by the public. That people in real need benefit makes it more palatable.
Both companies know that the nation will lap it up – so better us than our competition.
Does this stance devalue their assistance? Not in the eyes of the affected so maybe I shouldn’t be too cynical. But I would find it easier to believe their humanitarian interests outweighed their commercial gain if 9 did donate all the night’s advertising proceeds to the cause. Otherwise, 9 have simply been quicker than 7 and 10, both of which could have delivered exactly the same result.
But who is going to criticise a company for raising $6m by suggesting they are nothing more than opportunists riding a wave of public sentiment? Not me.
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Edward, it is rather cynical. Not about lapping up attention. We’ve lost staff members, their families and customers. Believe it or not, we are actually trying to do the right thing and give something back to the communities that we operate in. And actually it’s up to over $11 million now – in 48 hours.
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