It will take more than a horse race to save Australian TV
First Tuesday in November and here in the Lucky Country it’s Melbourne Cup Day. This is the day the country stops everything and downs tools for a very long, liquid lunch and a horse race on the TV.
On Melbourne Cup Day the only thing that matters is what horse you have drawn in the office sweepstakes and if your glass is full.
So it should come as no surprise that, on the day of the nation’s biggest horse race, the Australian Commercial Television Networks have quietly announced they have managed to gamble away AuD$3 Billion in a punt on the MobCon.
The SMH reports that the Seven Media Group has cut more than AuD$1.5 billion from the value of its television network, pushing the company to a AuD$1.9 billion loss . While PBL Media, the owner of the Nine Network, has also reported a loss of nearly AuD$1 Billion. Only the 10 Network came through relative unscathed after posting a loss of just AuD$89m.
Up until recently Television thought is was immune from the creative destruction that is ailing the Newspaper industry.
Viewer numbers are still strong and Australians still spend a significant part of the day “Glued to the box”.
After today’s announcements, the shareholders of Australia’s TV networks are very much aware of the financial impact of the MobCon and how it’s not just destroying shareholder value in the newspaper game but across the whole media industry.
Business Insider’s Henry Blodget pretty much said it all earlier this year in his post Sorry, there’s no way to save the TV Business.
Today television is struggling to discover a future for itself.
Ironically the challenge isn’t distribution, there are more channels than ever before and the arrival of digital has improved the AV quality. The challenge is in content. A future of professional sport, 24 hr news cycles, reality TV and endless repeats isn’t going to cut in the long-term.
The challenge TV also shares with Newspapers and Magazines is to make their linear and cyclical programming formats relevant in an increasingly asynchronous world. Their audiences simply don’t have the time to sit around and wait for TV to deliver linear content. They want it all and they want it now and they want it free.
Oh and if you’re wondering who won the horse race? Well one look at that AuD$3 Billion loss and picking the winner today was very easy:
It was Shocking.
