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Ten in 2019: Four Pilot Week programs, including Trial By Kyle, to return, along with SVOD service and new audio arm

Ten has revealed four Pilot Week programs will return to air next year: Trial by Kyle, Taboo, Kinne Tonight and Rove McManus’ Bring Back Saturday Night.

In addition, Australia’s third commercial broadcaster has confirmed the impending launch of its subscription video on demand service, Ten All Access, and a new audio arm, 10 Speaks, as part of its plans for the upcoming year. 

Ten’s Bachelor in Paradise, Hughesy We Have a Problem, Show Me The Movie and Pointless will all return, alongside well-known programs Masterchef Australia, Australian Survivor: Champions vs Contenders, and The Bachelor and Bachelorette series.

Trial By Kyle pulled 385,000 viewers on its premiere night, and will return next year

Like its rivals, Ten has also invested in local drama, revealing Five Bedrooms, My Life is Murder and The Secret She Keeps among the Australian productions. Ten will also premiere a new comedy series, Mr Black, on the network.

Ten’s chief content officer, Beverley McGarvey, admitted each of the Pilot Week programs were selected for different reasons, alluding to the fact that another might be announced later down the track.

McGarvey has announced the return of four Pilot Week programs and 10 All Access content

“To start with [Trial By Kyle], in terms of being on-brand and a bit cheeky, Kyle [Sandilands] really fits with our brand and we thought Kyle’s show had a lot of potential in it. Obviously these shows are pilots, we wouldn’t expect them to be 100% there, so we think Kyle has a lot of potential,” she said.

“Kinne [Tonight] we love because we want to get into that comedy space and we do so well with other comedies, we wanted to do comedy that appeals to the younger end of the segment. The ratings from that show were pretty solid, as were Kyle’s. Rove is returning because we believe there is room for an entertainment show on a Saturday night. The bad ratings on Saturday nights are partly chicken and egg, in that there is nothing on, so therefore nobody watches.

“We think Rove is the man to reinvent that Saturday night and bring back Saturday night again.

“Finally, we are doing Taboo. Really interesting things again when you look at some of the data. We think it’s a good way for younger audiences to engage with some more interesting subject matters. Getting those smarter, younger viewers on the channel is important.”

McGarvey would not reveal the fate of new shows Game of Games and Blind Date, which are currently running on Australian screens. The two shows premiered with audiences of 536,000 and 487,000 respectively, despite high hopes. McGarvey told Mumbrella it was “too soon to tell” with the programs currently on air.

However she said Ten would be happier if the shows were performing better.

“It’s so hard to launch new shows this late in the year and people have made their commitments,” she added. “We are doing better than we were doing this time last year and that’s really interesting. Also what we find often with the new shows is that we have to be a little bit patient because it’s just such a cluttered environment.”

Paul Anderson said the new audio arm is about reaching consumers in places where Ten previously hadn’t touched

Also returning in 2019 to screens is Dancing With The Stars, a show which ran on Seven for 15 seasons before it was axed in 2016. Like Ten, Nine and Seven have both revamped formats this year, with Seven to relaunch Wife Swap and and Nine to bring back drama, Seachange.

McGarvey said while everyone had “new ideas”, it was about balance.

“Everyone is bringing brand new ideas but also announcing re-commissions of established formats which is probably a good thing. The reason we are doing Dancing [with the Stars] is that at this point, there has been 300 series of Dancing with the Stars around the world. It is one of the few genuine super-brands that has aired in virtually every market,” McGarvey said.

“We definitely think the format has lots of legs in it. At Ten, we often take things that exist and make them our own – subtle things like casting, staging and production value. We think we can make Dancing with the Stars a very Ten show, but it comes with the safety net of incredible production expertise and a long and established record of what it takes to make that show work.”

Ten’s entertainment lineup also features new shows Chris & Julia’s Sunday Night Takeaway and Bachelor in Paradise. Those entertainment shows will work alongside Ten’s sports lineup, which will include the A-League, motorsports and The Melbourne Cup.

Chief sales officer Rod Prosser and CEO Paul Anderson both agreed Ten still had a strong sports lineup, despite the absence of the Big Bash, which will now run on Seven.

“They [advertisers] get our strategy around having an alternative. All they say to us is as long as it’s a strong alternative that is highly integrateable and noisy, 100% of Australians don’t want to be watching cricket,” Prosser said.

As Ten gears up to launch Ten All Access in December, the CBS-owned broadcaster also announced it would debut three CBS All Access originals in Australia: Tell Me A Story, One Dollar and Strange Angel, as well as the first season of CBS All Access’ The Good Fight.

Anderson told Mumbrella he believes there is room for another subscription service locally. Ten All Access will become a competitor to the likes of Netflix and Stan in Australia, as well as niche platforms like Hayu.

“There are a number of other more niche streaming services that exist in this market already. With the nature of the way technology is moving and all devices being connected including the majority of new television now, then that’s the way premium video will be watched in the future,” Anderson said.

“We have the great advantage of the benefit of CBS’ platform which they’ve had for five years in the US and Canada. Yes, is the short answer [there is room].”

Other CBS hits to air on the All Access platform include The Good Wife, NCIS, Frasier, Cheers and American Survivor, as well as Australian programs including Neighbours, The Bachelor Australia, The Bachelorette Australia, The Living Room and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.

Ten’s McGarvey added if there was a local program that would suit subscription video on demand, Ten would be open to launching it on Ten All Access.

“That’s something we will talk about down the line, but if that’s something that makes sense, then absolutely, it’s something we have talked about.

“We have their originals,” she added. “That is original content for that platform and the interesting thing about streaming services is, they all, while some have local content – Netflix has less – in terms of driving audiences, the areas that drive the audiences are what we are focused on in the beginning.”

Ten All Access will launch in December

For McGarvey and Anderson, it’s more about getting a ‘core-cutter audience’ onto the platform.

“Really what it’s about is capturing audiences in the Ten environment and then making sure they stay with our environment and they watch shows in our environment,” McGarvey said. “Really that’s what the benefit to advertisers is.”

“CBS Interactive, with their five years of knowledge, are extremely good at driving audiences around their ecosystem and extraordinarily at working out how to acquire subscribers as well,” Anderson added.

The price of the service is yet to be determined, but will be announced ahead of the launch date in December. Outside of Ten’s well-known platforms, including Ten Daily, and Ten Play, the broadcaster will also launch an audio business, Ten Speaks.

Anderson said it was about providing sales with “another trick”, but also about playing in spaces Ten has not been able to previously.

“We have a lot of content that just exists there at the moment and lends itself to that platform. Whether it’s The Project, bespoke content around The Bachelor and contestants. The one space we can’t play in at the moment are things like the journey in the car in the morning and on the way home. We have a whole bunch of talent that are willing to either provide or curate that content,” he said.

“It comes back to this vision of ours around producing premium content that’s different, that our competitors, which goes to all of the work we have done around our brand, and making all of that content available across all of the devices and when people want to watch or consume that content.

“It’s a natural extension and it may not necessarily be podcasting – some of that audio may appear on Ten Daily, hence why we’ve called it Ten Speaks. A large part of it will be on podcasting but that’s not the only way we can utilise it or monetise it.”

10 All Access originals:

  • Tell Me a Story: Tell Me a Story takes the world’s most beloved fairy tales and reimagines them as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Set in modern-day New York City, the first season of this serialised drama interweaves “The Three Little Pigs,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel” into an epic and subversive tale of love, loss, greed, revenge and murder. The cast of Tell Me a Story includes Kim Cattrall, James Wolk, Billy Magnussen, Dania Ramirez, Danielle Campbell, Dorian Missick, Michael Raymond-James, Davi Santos, Sam Jaeger, and Zabryna Guevara, with Paul Wesley. From Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment, Tell Me a Story is written and executive produced by Kevin Williamson alongside Aaron Kaplan, Dana Honor and Liz Friedlander, who directs and executive produces the first two episodes.
  • One Dollar: One Dollar is a mystery thriller set in a small rust belt town in post-recession America, where a one-dollar bill changing hands connects a group of characters involved in a shocking multiple murder. The path of the one-dollar bill and point of view in each episode paints a picture of a modern American town with deep class and cultural divides that spill into the open as the town’s secrets get revealed. The cast of One Dollar includes John Carroll Lynch, Nathaniel Martello-White, Christopher Denham, Philip Ettinger, Kirrilee Berger, Gracie Lawrence, Joshua Bitton, Nikẹ Uche Kadri and Hamilton Clancy. Greg Germann, Sturgill Simpson, Aleksa Palladino, Jeff Perry and Leslie Odom Jr. round out the cast with recurring roles. One Dollar is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Anonymous Content. Craig Zobel (Compliance, The Leftovers), Matt DeRoss, Alexandre Dauman, Graham Gordy and Jason Mosberg serve as executive producers, with Zobel directing all 10 episodes
  • Strange Angel: Strange Angel is a drama series created by Mark Heyman (Black Swan, The Wrestler). Based on George Pendle’s book of the same name, Strange Angel explores the dramatic intersection between genius and madness, science and science fiction. The story follows the life of Jack Parsons, a mysterious and brilliant man in 1930s Los Angeles, who by day helps birth the entirely unknown discipline of American rocketry, and by night is a performer of sex magick rituals and a disciple to occultist Aleister Crowley. Strange Angel is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Scott Free Productions. Mark Heyman, David DiGilio, Ridley Scott, and David W. Zucker will serve as executive producers; Clayton Krueger will be co-executive producer, and David Lowery (A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon) will direct and executive produce.

Network Ten In 2019

What’s New?

  • Bring Back Saturday Night*
    Celebrity Name Game*
    Chris & Julia’s Sunday Night Takeaway*
    Dancing With The Stars*
    Changing Rooms*
    Five Bedrooms*
    Kinne Tonight*
    Melbourne Cup Carnival*
    Mr Black*
    My Life Is Murder*
    Murphy Brown
    One Dollar
    Strange Angel
    Taboo*
    Tell Me A Story
    The Conners
    The Gilded Age
    The Secrets She Keeps*
    Trial By Kyle*
  • Returning Favourites:
    Ambulance Australia*
    Australian Survivor*
    Bachelor In Paradise*
    Bondi Rescue*
    Bull
    Formula 1 2019 Australian Grand Prix*
    Gogglebox*
    Have You Been Paying Attention?*
    Hughesy, We Have A Problem*
    I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!*
    Jamie Oliver
    MasterChef Australia*
    MotoGP World Championship*
    NCIS
    Neighbours*
    Pointless*
    Rugby*
    Show Me The Movie!*
    Supercars*
    The A-League*
    The Bachelor Australia*
    The Bachelorette Australia*
    The Graham Norton Show
    The Living Room*
    The Project*
    Todd Sampson’s BodyHack*

* Homegrown

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