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?
I’d like to congratulate channel 9 for its initiative and its nice to see MuMbrella trying to keep them honest.
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?
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
I agree with jas, or donate 50% of revenue. Has nine donated any money yet?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.