Peter Cox has declared that TEN should drop the News Service.
The full video link is HERE https://youtu.be/Y7wA3s6_9EU
Here is my brief reasoning as presented to Media Watch.
Ten has had an array of famous owners over the years since 1987 including News Corp, Frank Lowy, Charles Curran, a Canadian media company, Jack Cowin, John Singleton, James Packer, Lachlan Murdoch, Gina Rinehart, Bruce Gordon to finally end up being owned by US CBS Corporation renamed Paramount.
Many of these owners had different programming strategies and target audiences and nearly all lost money over the years.
I had argued consistently during this period that there was not enough profitability to support three commercial networks in Australia and my analysis was reported by Media Watch and other television networks and newspapers. Evening News was traditionally broadcast by the commercial networks at 6.00pm and the ABC at 7.00 for thirty minutes. Ten News introduced the earlier news at 5.00pm for an hour followed by The Project for 16 years a more comedy version of News to appeal to younger audiences.
However, Ten News never had the credibility nor the audiences of Nine and Seven News. Over time the other commercial networks started the evening News programs earlier at 4pm in the afternoon which diminished Ten’s early advantage and The Project audiences continued to fall.
My view is that the three commercial networks have nearly identical stories, run downs and presenters every night. This is a total waste of expensive resources and no longer should all networks be required to provide a news service as part of their broadcasting licence.
The final nail in the coffin for the commercial and public broadcasters is the diminution in audiences caused by younger audiences largely getting their news from social media and the loss of drama and entertainment to streaming services decimating audiences and destroying the viability of the commercial broadcasting services.
In conclusion the 30 minutes of Ten news will be no loss and Ten News should be dropped altogether.
