Network Ten plans a shift in strategy as it looks to recover from the massive $243.3 million first half loss announced this morning.
The embattled broadcaster has revealed that it’s looking to move away from the strong youth focus of recent years to grab a share of the older market.
“We need to identify which audience it is we want to target,” said Ten's new CEO Hamish McLennan, who described the company’s financial performance as “unsatisfactory.”
“We’ve had a strong youth focus in the past, but I think it’s fair to say that these viewers are most promiscuous in market place.
“Without a major shift in strategy, we’re looking at a slightly older skew. We’re doing analysis at moment to see where the advertiser base sits … where the money is, and how that will correlate to our programming.”
McLennan added that Ten’s “extreme youth focus”, which led to the commissioning of progammes such as The Shire, “is not quite right for us”.
He described the current advertising market as “choppy” and said that there’s a bit of uncertainty in the market about what will happen around the federal election in September.
“We’re in the business to grow our market share,” said McLennan, who added that he's confident there’s still a viable role for Ten in Australia.
“More sport would be good for the network,” he added, “but we’ll only do it in a prudent, selective sense.”
