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TV bosses prepare for a bumpy year ahead: ‘with consumer confidence comes marketing confidence’
With the three-way TV tug-of-war between Australian Idol, Married At First Sight and Australian Survivor set to take place tonight, Mumbrella's Darcy Song checks in with executives from Nine, Seven, Ten, SBS and Foxtel about their goals and strategies going into 2023.
With January barely behind us, 2023 is already gearing up to be an eventful year for television as the networks usher in new titles, formats, schedules and ad platforms for advertisers.
Seven and NBCUniversal’s 7Bravo launched earlier in the month with an international content slate and the ambition to become the go-to destination for women under 50s. Ten’s new format The Bachelors went head-to-head with Nine’s Australian Open, although perhaps better ratings were expected for both. Meanwhile, other players, including SBS and Foxtel, have made it clear that they have different plans than adding to the noise their three free-to-air peers have created.
As Nine’s Married at First Sight, Seven’s Australian Idol and Ten’s Australian Survivor all enter the program boxing ring tonight, Mumbrella asks TV bosses their strategies for the year ahead.
Nine
While Seven finished 2022’s Oztam rating period with a total people crown, Nine was the winner of key advertising demos: the 25-54s, 16-39s and grocery shoppers with children. Nine’s chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson, tells Mumbrella that this year’s strategy is consistent with the past few years, which is to maintain “domination”.
“At the top of the year, of course, is the Australian Open, then straight into the biggest show of the year, which is Married at First Sight, All of our premium content flows off the back of that: you’re into Lego Masters, you’re into The Block, then you’re into Love Island.
“A part of our strategy is to be focused and obsessed with delivering content in a total television world. So it’s the combination of live linear television, alongside live streaming and on-demand consumption, that creates that dominant platform that our television has always been known for.”
In 2022, Married at First Sight or MAFS received backing from Arnott’s Tim Tam, Buddybet, Bupa, DoorDash, KFC, and Simmonds Homes, Snooze, Suzuki and Youfoodz.
For the tenth season of the program Doordash, KFC and Suzuki will be retuning, along with new sponsors Suntory Beam 196, Instant Scripts and Nine’s own subscription platform Stan.
When asked about Nine’s competitive advantage, Stephenson says it’s the abundance of local content and formats that resonate with audiences the most.
“The way in which we choose what to purchase and how we create that schedule is all about delivering against the demographics that matter. And when a program doesn’t, then we obviously let that go and move on.
“There’s no better format in the country than Married at First Sight to do that. When it kicks off next week, it’ll go nuts again.
“Australia leads the world in terms of reality-based formats, because we’ve got this obsession with seeing into other people’s lives, and that’s what Married at First Sight does more so than singing shows – this is about real people.”
Some of the participants in the new MAFS
Stephenson admits that the network is quite competitive, and at the end of year, its success consists of a few goals.
“It’s our expectation that we’ll continue to lead the way from a linear sense in the demographics that matters most to advertisers …. Then the commercial success is continuing to lead the way in terms of revenue share, which we have done for quite a number of years.
“From a BVOD perspective, it is increasing streaming minutes, the number of daily active users. And of course, it’s monetising that audience.”
Seven
If 2022 was the year of acquisition for Seven, then 2023 is the year of implementation, according to Seven West Media’s chief revenue officer, Kurt Burnette. “Everything has been brought on as a very clear strategic positioning around what it is we’re trying to do for the future,” he says.
“Our strategy was to have 52 weeks of news, which we’ve had for many, many years. We are now clearly leading and growing our gap on new competitors. And with sport: the number one winter sport with AFL and the number one summer sport with cricket, underpinned by motor racing and horse racing.”
The network wrapped up talks with AFL and Australian Cricket in 2022 to hold onto both broadcast rights to beyond 2030. Additionally, it is the free-to-air partner of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand, with many eyes on the event’s performance on the back of SBS’ World Cup ratings.
For entertainment, Australian Idol is followed by The Blow Up, Million Dollar Island, The 1% Club and We Interrupt This Broadcast. Combined with recurring series such as My Kitchen Rules, Burnette said Seven has between 35% to 40% of minutes in new shows this year, which is as much as the network has ever had.
Australian Idol 2023
On demos, Burnette says the top priority is always trying to get as many people watching as the network can. “News is the number one show every week, leading in seven years, and that’s a show that brings in mass,” he says. “Is it a demo driver? No, but is it a mass audience driver that big brands like insurance and auto want to be part of? Yes.”
When asked about how the network measures its success at the end of year, Burnette says Seven will continue to look to total people as guidance and set itself up for long-term growth.
“It doesn’t stop at the execution of strategy: what’s interesting is we’re not only setting up for now – our thinking is out for the next ten years.
“We’re in the second year of a five-year strategy, and we haven’t even started the next meeting. In terms of what that entails, that’s even more exciting.”
Ten
Compared to Seven and Nine, Ten’s strategy in 2023 is a more focused one. The network’s chief sales officer, Rod Prosser refers to the younger demos as Ten’s “sweet spot”, which gives it the advantage of having less duplication when it comes to a combination buy between competitors.
While The Bachelors, which saw Ten introduce a new format for the franchise, has seen a lukewarm rating in the total metro audience, it has scored a few wins within the 16-39s demo since launching. Prosser thinks the show performed well, especially on BVOD, and is said to be a good launchpad to Australian Survivor, which airs this evening.
Australian Survivor: Heroes V Villains cast
“We know that we’ve got a really loyal and dedicated audience that follows the show. We know that because we can see how they consume Survivor and the franchise all on BVOD,” he says.
“It does skew younger than our competitors’ formats, and that’s not dissimilar to most of our formats, which means that the cost of entry will be lower.
“I think the overall market television market was, to be fair, a little bit challenged across January, so I think we’ll all see a different market to what we had last year.
“But certainly, from my point of view, as we look forward into the quarter and beyond, our pacings have improved dramatically, which I think comes from consumer confidence, and with consumer confidence comes marketing confidence.”
When it comes to new formats, Prosser says there’s definitely a “fine balance” in getting the right mix of new experiments and consistent tentpoles, to keep advertisers excited and confident at the same time. He teases that there will be a “risk-taking” format similar to last year’s Hunted, which will be announced later in the year, but in the meantime, the upcoming Taskmasters is another exemplification of Ten taking an “educated risk”.
However, overall, Prosser stresses that Ten is much more than just a linear business. The Paramount-owned network also has SVOD channel operations, fast channels and consumer products.
“Measuring just one part of that it’s not really doing anyone justice, so for us, success is how we bring all those assets together and effectively monetise them and build on the audiences,” he says.
SBS
Another free-to-air network that’s shaping up for some exciting offerings for advertisers this year is SBS. Embracing the commercial side of its hybrid-funded model, the public service broadcaster announced a slew of drama, documentary, and food programs at its Upfront last year.
Alone Australia will take place in Tasmania
The network’s director of media sales, Adam Sadler, says SBS’ strategy is not to “go head-to-head” with networks like Nine, Seven and Ten in terms of programming.
Off the back of the World Cup in 2022, SBS’ upcoming content highlights include Rogue Heroes, from the creators of Peaky Blinders, and Alone, the Australian adaptation of a successful international survival format.
“I think the distinctiveness of our drama, movies, documentaries from all corners of the world attracts a worldly and well-travelled audience, and people that I would say are genuinely inquisitive about what’s going on around the world.
“People want to see the best of content from Nordic through to Asian countries, and SBS has been bringing this content to a more contemporary Australian audience, which is distinctively different from Seven, Nine and Ten.”
On the commercial side, Sadler says the network’s BVOD service SBS On Demand is an important part of the offering for advertisers in 2023, especially with its improved user experience (UX) design, which he believes to be a “new contested battleground” for distributors.
The platform is said to have passed 11 million registered users in 2022, and Sadler says its growth will be one of the key metrics in evaluating the network’s success at the end of 2023.
When asked whether Australia could see more large-scale marketing campaigns directed towards multilingual audiences, Sadler says there are still questions remaining to be answered.
“It was reassuring to see advertisers return to year in, year out, investing in multilingual learning strategies, or sponsoring our World Movies channel. While I still question whether the OzTam survey boxes have been placed in specific multilingual communities and areas, we see marketers and big brands, continue to return to perennial work, so they’re obviously seeing the commercial results.”
Foxtel
Meanwhile, another player who has big ambitions this year but was nevertheless taking January a bit more easily is Foxtel. Its CEO, Mark Frain, tells Mumbrella that as most of the industry chose to take a long break, “you have to have the start of 2023 done well before you left in December”.
Grand Designs Australia
Nevertheless, Frain says a good cricket year on Fox Sport has helped get 2023 off to a great start. “It’s frightening to think that we’re not far short of a month away from the NRL starting in the first week of March. So once those big guns are back, I think you’ll see another step change in our growth moving forward.”
This year’s Upfront saw Foxtel Group coming to market for the first time with a holistic offering. Across all of its Foxtel, Flash, Kayo, Binge, and Fox Sports touchpoints, the focus this year will be on watchability and connectivity.
The goals for Foxtel Group in the new year are twofold, says Frain. “In terms of strategy from the Foxtel Media side, it is number one about growing and accelerating our streaming performance, that is unquestionably where the big wins will come.
“The second pillar would be, as we’ve turned it internally, to unbind from old ways, we are unshackling ourselves from linear thinking around TV and TV advertising to allow us to grow and accelerating streaming.”
For Foxtel programs such as Selling Houses, Grand Designs and Love It or List It, Frain says there are between 10 and 15 brands are already involved mostly through ongoing partnerships, such as Compare The Market, BMW and Nick Scali.
“The integration we do is very neatly whipped into the content. Almost all elements of our promotional elements within shows are about how we actually use those products and demonstrate through the fabric of the show how good the brands are in their own right, in their categories,” he says.
But for scripted shows, such as The Last of Us and Upright, it’s more about “subtly attaching brands to the success and social noise of those shows”, says Frain, similar to the water-cooler effect seen around White Lotus.
For commercial outlooks, as Binge sets to launch its ad tier at the end of the March quarter, Frain says the group has big goals for subscriber growth.
“If I was to make a prediction, that in terms of ad revenue and success, Binge will probably achieve what Kayo has done in half the time, given the sentiment of the market kind of taken to it already.
“In terms of success for us, that will be about being the fastest-growing video network in the marketplace, and outgrowing television as a total asset. With the growth we’ve seen in Kayo and the launch of ad tier on Binge, we’ve got some big milestones to allow us to deliver on that promise.”
Darcy Song was a reporter at Mumbrella, covering media owners, adtech and social platforms. She left in October 2023.
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