Nine To The Dozen

The Nine Network, which dominated the top of the ratings as well as the advertising revenue over many years, has struggled in both areas over the past couple of years.

Television advertising appears to be stagnating with revenues only increasing by less than 1 percent over the first six months of this year.

While rival Seven is taking almost 40% of the available advertising revenue, Nine has dropped 1 percent over 12 months to sit at 31.78%, according to Free TV Australia figures compiled by KPMG.

Reports industry publication B&T Weekly:

Nine Network CEO David Gyngell claimed its figures were at the top end of expectations, given the time lag between performance in audience share being matched by revenues.

He said the numbers were based on deals made in 2007 where Nine suffered an audience drop of more than 15% in key advertising demographics, where as the network was now up 5.6%.

One of the things Nine is doing to help bring some stability and better opportunities for revenue growth, is refining its daytime line up.

The Nine Network has finally settled on a daytime strategy, more than a year after axing its ratings disaster The Catch Up.

The all-women talk show was killed off in June 2007, at the same time its creator
Mia Freedman quit the network. The short lived show had been based around the format of the US show The View. And the network will now turn to the original, broadcasting the Whoopi Goldberg-hosted show at noon every day.

The View, produced by ABC TV in the US, will be followed by talk show Ellen at 1pm, presented by comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

Up to now, the network has been filling the time slot with a variety of old movies. But Nine CEO David Gyngell told B&T the strategy, which produced a different demographic virtually every day, was not working for advertisers.

He said: “It could be anything from soft porn to 70s movies. It's better to give consistency to advertisers.”

Soft porn?

Really?

At midday?

Why not? Considering that Nine is anchoring its early evening entertainment on the US comedy Two And A Half Men screening at 7pm. A recurring theme of the show is conflict between house sharing brothers over ones endless parade of casual sex partners past the other's 11-year-old son.

The show screens at 9pm in the US where the network programmers appear to understand the concept of adult programming.