Nine's still the one as Seven slips away
By Sally Jackson and Lara Sinclair
June 24, 2004
IT was meant to be Seven's year. But as the half-way mark approaches, measured both on the calendar and in television ratings weeks, media buyers already give the network nil chance of rivalling Nine for its number one mantle – and caution it may be lucky to stave off Ten for second place.
Keeping it fun as we wind up the half, though, are the handful of ratings wormholes that Seven has been able to bore into Nine's otherwise seemingly impregnable schedule – and Nine's attempts to plug them with thick wads of cash.
At its first attempt, the network put a potential $1 million a day up for grabs, launching a daily 30-minute version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire in the 5.30pm weekday slot. But viewers didn't bite, and this week Nine announced the closure of the Millionaire "Super Season" after just two weeks. From Monday it will be replaced by a new 60-minute "Super Showcase" version of The Price is Right instead, which will start at 5pm and offer daily prize money of $100,000.
On the surface, such change would seem unnecessary. In the year to date Nine has raised its share of the prime-time commercial free-to-air TV audience from 38.9 per cent at this time last year to an even more dominant 39.5 per cent. Ten's share is up from 28.5 per cent to 29.8 per cent. Seven's has shrunk from 32.6 per cent to 30.7 per cent.
Last week Nine had 39.2 per cent of the 6-to-10.30pm audience, Ten had 31.6 per cent and Seven had 29.2 per cent. Including all five free-to-air networks, Nine was first with a 31.2 per cent audience share, Ten second with 25.1 and Seven third with 23.2, followed by the ABC and SBS on 15.8 and 4.7 respectively.
The ill-starred Millionaire experiment was driven by Nine's need to deliver a better lead-in audience for its 6pm news. That's what Deal or No Deal and host Andrew O'Keefe are doing for Seven's news – which now regularly beats Nine's in the key Sydney market and last week out-rated it nationally for the first time (outside the 2000 Olympics period) in about a decade.
The wobble in the news ratings has a knock-on effect on the 6.30pm slot, with Nine's once-ascendant A Current Affair now neck-and-neck with Seven's Today Tonight. Last week fewer than 3000 viewers separated them across Australia. That has led in recent weeks to a whisper campaign against ACA host Ray Martin, reminiscent of the one targeting his predecessor Mike Munro last year, with anonymous messages being left on TV writers' voicemails predicting he will be tipped from the presenter's chair at the end of this year, if not before.
The other problem time for Nine is early mornings, when its Today show trails Seven's Sunrise. The whisper campaign against Today host Steve Liebmann has now grown to a muted roar, with the latest suggestion being that Nine wants to replace him with Tony Squires, who is currently hosting the underperforming 110% Tony Squires on Seven.
Nevertheless, outside of those recalcitrant 6-to-9am and 5-to-7pm periods, Nine remains unthreatened by Seven. Or Ten for that matter, although Ten says all it cares about is its target 16-to-39 demographic, in which it is level-pegging with Nine.
"Whilst news is a fantastic piece of good news for Seven, and they have had other little pieces of good news, it is not changing their ratings position," says Steve Allen of Fusion Strategy. "They are still falling behind in nearly all the key demographics."
Nine is also the clear leader in advertising revenue share. The official KPMG TV revenue figures for the first six months of the year are due out in a few weeks, but media buyers confidently estimate that metropolitan TV ad revenue will have grown by about 10 per cent in the June half. That would compare to 7.3 per cent growth in the same period last year, to $1.06 billion.
"The market has been incredible so far this year and I see no reason why that would change for the next six months," says Barry O'Brien from Total. "The indication from our clients is that ad spending will be very, very strong from now to the end of the year."
Industry sources believe Nine's portion of the ad revenue pie may at last hit the 40 per cent mark, up from 39.4 per cent in the same period last year. Ten is expected to edge a bit above 30 per cent, from 29.5 per cent a year ago. And Seven is expected to drop a bit below 30 per cent, down from 31.1 per cent in the first half of 2003, 32.6 per cent in 2002 and 36 per cent in 2001.
O'Brien expects that by the end of calendar 2004 Nine will remain the clear winner in terms of ratings, thanks to the final episodes of Friends, Frasier and Sex and the City it still has up its sleeve for the second half, and therefore in ad revenue share as well.
But he says Seven and Ten may be tough to split for second and third. Ten has its Big Brother and Law & Order franchises, plus Australian Idol to come. Seven has sport, including lots of rugby and, of course, the Athens Olympics in August. "(Seven) have got their fingers crossed that they get some kind of trampoline effect out of the Olympics," says Media First Melbourne managing director Peter Davy. "It's traditionally had a strong effect on their news within the Olympic period. They might well be able to use the Olympics to get more people to break the Nine news and current affairs habit."
But Mediaedge:cia media director Mike Porter says Seven is delaying previewing its post-Olympics programming. "They're very worried about revealing their hand to Nine and Ten," he says.
Seven says it is not relying on its US output deals to deliver big ratings winners and will unveil "three or four" new local productions after the Olympics to add to a number of observational dramas, like The Border and Forensic Investigators, that have already been announced.
Another idea it is said to be considering involves aping the success of series such as CSI and Law & Order by making its own, home-grown Blue Heelers and All Saints sexier and grittier. "They want to make it a cross between ER and Las Vegas," Davy says of All Saints. "They need to get stronger results from their local programming. Folksy doesn't cut it any more."
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9935424%255E7582,00.html
