Ten’s new weekend news strategy fails to deliver.
Ten’s return of news to the 5pm weekend slot has failed to dislodge Nine’s audience grab for the timeslot.
In January, Ten moved its state-based bulletin from 5pm to 6pm.
The move opened up a gap at 5pm which Nine dived into.
But last week, Ten announced an additional 5pm bulletin hosted by Natarsha Belling with programming boss David Mott saying: “We have long held a prominent news position at 5pm in the weekend schedule and we are not willing to give up that ground any longer.”
And although the audience was down for Nine’s 5pm bulletin, Ten was still a poor second.
Last Sunday saw Nine’s 5pm news bring in 654,000. This was down to 429,000, according to preliminary metro ratings from OzTam.
But Ten’s News at Five bulletin only rated 280,000.
Ten’s 6pm bulletin did little better, rating 303,000, down from last week’s 335,000.
By contrast, Seven News at 6pm rated 1.287m and Nine News at 6pm rated 1.077m.
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Whoever decided to dump the 5pm weekend news bulletins on ten should be shot. Fullstop.
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