The mood music from SBS is up-tempo but there’s no sense of danger just yet
You can conclude a lot about the mood of a commercial network by how it stages its upfronts presentation.
My abiding memory of Ten’s event last year was watching them handing out portable televisions from the back of a lorry. In the style of an episode of Oprah, everybody who attended got one as they left.
Watching drunk media types wandering into the darkness of Sydney’s Hickson Road with electrical goods tucked under their arms, the image that popped into my mind was of the looters at the London riots a week before.
This year’s event from Ten was a less over-the-top, slightly more considered breakfast affair.
There’s certainly been an air of confidence about their production recently, I think they do the best promo segments of all the networks, and whoever picks the music for their spots does a great job.
SBS is Australia’s real gift to world TV. A tone, ethos and style you don’t get anywhere else. The rest for the most part is garbage or half-arsed knock-ups of old British ideas most of the time. The Project is one of the most amazing current affairs pop culture mash-ups anywhere in the english-speaking world, but its ratings aren’t great. do australians know good local tv when they see it??
It’s possibly a sign of the times, I don’t think investors would be happy if Ten was still handing TV’s out while they lost 66% of their money so far this year.