Ten News making headway with shift back to local

While Seven and Nine battle it out for 6pm news ratings dominance each night, Ten has quietly repositioned itself as a locally focused news source, and the result is its biggest audiences in years.

Linear free-to-air television audiences are dropping. This isn’t news to anyone, least of all those within the industry, but it doesn’t necessarily hold across the board.

10 News First comes on at 5pm each night, up against two of the biggest programs on commercial TV: The Chase and Tipping Point, both game shows that appeal to audiences well past the work-commuting age.

While 10 News First doesn’t trouble these shows in the ratings — on an average night, Ten’s 5pm bulletin sits around 20th in the OzTam rankings — it is enjoying its best national ratings since 2022, with weekly audiences up 12% on the same week in 2024.

In addition, each individual capital city’s audience has increased over the past twelve months, with Brisbane’s 27% year-on-year leap the largest increase. According to ratings providers Oztam, the 10 News First bulletins reaches 3.27 million national total viewers each week.

Martin White, vice president of broadcast news at Paramount Australia, credits this recent success to its increasing regional focus.

“We have, over the last few years, moved towards even more local content at five o’clock,” White tells Mumbrella.

“We’ve got teams on the ground for big stories that are important to communities: state elections, weather events, bushfires, cyclones. We know that communities around Australia are going to need services to stay connected and up to date. And we are one of those trusted sources that they go to. We put huge value on local news.

“And if you look at the numbers – you can see that people are turning to us more when it comes to local news.”

Martin White

In 2020, as part of a cost-cutting exercise, Ten moved its Brisbane and Perth bulletins to Sydney, and its Adelaide one to Melbourne. Local camera crews, journalists and reporters were retained, but the decision wasn’t a popular one. In early 2023, production for the Adelaide and Perth bulletins was moved back to each respectively city, with Brisbane returning home last September. White said being local is “very important to communities around Australia”.

“We should be reflecting community issues, concerns, and having conversations so they’re relevant to our audience. But also, we’re aware that people want news when they want it. So we have to move the news on. We have to always be pushing forward and finding the latest things to put on at five o’clock so that they know that when they come to us, they’re getting the very latest information.”

In addition, Ten brought back its 10.30pm Late News bulletin in October 2023, and added 1pm and 3.30pm bulletins in early 2024. Viewers continue to increase for all three of these shows, with the 3.30pm audience up 47% compared to the 2024 average, and lunchtime viewers up by 35%.

“In a multi-platform environment, we know that people want news when they want it,” White explains. “So we have shifted. If you want breaking news that happens during the day, we have daytime news bulletins. If you want flagship local news in the evening, we’ve got our 5pm local service. And if you want a digital-first, contemporary news service, that’s late in the evening on 10play and YouTube and on all platforms, we’ve got the late news.

“We’re a multi-platform business, and we just don’t really think of ourselves as just a broadcaster anymore.”

This growth has led to the development of Ten’s investigative unit: a news team currently being assembled by the network, dedicated to meatier pieces.

“We are investing in a team that’s gonna work on longer-form stories, as part of our multi-platform news offering,” White confirms.

Over the weekend, White announced to Ten’s news staff that he had made the first hires for the team, with Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace defecting from Seven to develop ideas for 10 News with senior journalist Dan Sutton, who works in the Sydney newsroom.

Amelia Brace

“We’re looking at some ideas, we’re coming up with a few things, and we’re developing a few things,” White says, declining to go into more detail.

“We’re still working a lot of stuff out.”

One thing that doesn’t need to worked out is the timeslot for its flagship evening bulletin. While it may be assumed that Ten’s executives have looked at Seven and Nine’s continued ratings in the 6pm slot — not to mention the hefty competition they throw up at 5pm — and mulled a timeslot change, White says this isn’t the case.

“Honestly, we’ve never discussed leaving 5pm because 5pm is where viewers know us for,” he says.

“It’s a big part of our strategy to have our local news on at five o’clock. We’ve evolved and created more appointment news throughout the day. But, 5pm is a key foundation of our strategy.

“We play in our own space.”