Source: Amanda Meade, The Australian

THE Nine Network is in turmoil once again after new boss Jeff Browne offered news chief Garry Linnell’s job to a young gun from Seven.

Behind Linnell’s back, Browne has been trying to lure the 31-year-old executive producer of Sunrise, Adam Boland, to join Nine when his contract with Seven runs out in February.

Browne has told Boland he has the mandate of the PBL board to hire him to revolutionise the way Nine does news and to "smash the Nine news culture", which he believes is expensive, outdated and is full of "dead wood".

Sources say Browne’s grand ideas to give Nine a point of difference include shifting the 6pm news bulletin and developing a nightly news and entertainment show starring his best friend Eddie McGuire.

Browne believes McGuire, who stepped down as CEO in May and is now earning $5 million a year, is "the network’s No1 priority".

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Popularity: 1%

Source: Richard Gluyas, The Australian

DRAMATIC changes in the news cycle and the advent of social networking websites such as MySpace meant newspaper companies had to completely reinvent themselves, News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said yesterday.

Mr Hartigan said the challenge for traditional media was to spread its brands and become part of the online scene, where consumers wanted to be part of the process and not just passive receivers of content.

"Customers are contributing their own content, and the line between the traditional content producers and consumers starts to blur," he told the annual Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association conference in Melbourne.

"We are moving from a speech to a conversation."

Mr Hartigan said the extension of print brands on to other media platforms reflected the arrival of a 24/7 news cycle that was changing the industry dynamics "forever".

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Popularity: 1%

Owner of regional network WIN Television, Bruce Gordon, has renewed his threat to dump the group’s affiliation with the Nine Network in the lead-up to negotiations over a new program supply deal.

Mr Gordon said WIN could obtain programs itself if the two companies failed to come to an agreement.

“We’re out of contract and they keep threatening to turn us off,” Mr Gordon told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We said, ‘Go ahead: take your programming off’, and we think it would be a lot of fun if they did. We can program this network. When I bought this network in 1979, there were no affiliation agreements.”

Negotiations were due to be resumed this morning after stalling in June.

PBL Media, owner of Nine, wants WIN to pay 40 per cent of its revenue in return for programming, up from the 32 per cent it pays under the current agreement, which officially expired on July 1.

Mr Gordon wants the fees reduced to reflect poor ratings and to bring them into line with the 29 per cent of revenue that WIN’s main regional competitors, Prime and Southern Cross Broadcasting, pay their partners at Seven and Ten.

“Affiliation fees could come to somewhere in the area of $170 million for our group, and that on a 10-year period is $1.7 billion if we were to pay it, but we are certainly not going to,” Mr Gordon said.

The 78-year-old, who divides his time between Bermuda and Wollongong, headed Paramount Pictures’s international television sales division for 23 years and says he knows “a thing or two about programming”.

He said Nine had made some “ridiculous” programming decisions over the past year, including replacing a popular US soap opera, The Young and The Restless, with a daytime chat show, The Catch-Up, which was axed in June, and airing the late-night show Quizmania.

Popularity: 1%

Most watched programs:
1 Prime News Monday to Friday PRIME 80000

2 Seven News Monday to Friday PRIME 70000

3 RSPCA Animal Rescue PRIME 58000

4 Medical Emergency PRIME 57000

5 McLeods Daughters NBN 54000

6 Cold Case NBN 53000

7 Deal or no Deal PRIME 52000

8 All Saints PRIME 49000

9 Sea Patrol NBN 49000

10 Without A Trace NBN 47000

Station ratings:

                    Week 31
2007     Week 31
2006     Prog
2007     Prog
2006

NBN                 29.1                 34.2                     30.3             33.2

PRIME             31.6                 30.7                     31.9             29.8

TEN                 23.2                 19.0                     19.8             20.3

ABC                 11.6                 11.9                     13.1             12.3

SBS                 4.5                     4.1                     4.8                4.4

Popularity: 1%

Southern Cross TEN had it’s  best week of the year last week thanks to the Big Brother finale and Thank God You’re Here, giving the station rare Top 10 placings.

Most watched programs:
1 NBN Evening News Sunday NBN 112000

2 Sea Patrol NBN 101000

3 Thank God You’re Here TEN 96000

4 Big Brother The Winner Announced TEN 95000

5 Friday Night Football Bulldogs v Eels NBN 90000

6 NBN Evening News Monday to Friday NBN 89000

7 Getaway NBN 85000

8 A Current Affair NBN 84000

9 Big Brother Finale Night TEN 84000

10 Spicks & Specks ABC 83000

Station ratings:

                    Week 31
2007     Week 31
2006     Prog
2007     Prog
2006

NBN                 31.2                     37.3                 35.1                 36.9

PRIME             23.1                     21.4                 25.0                 22.5

TEN                 23.4                     18.9                 17.8                 19.5

ABC                 15.6                     16.7                 16.2                 15.6

SBS                 6.7                         5.7                 5.9                   5.5

Popularity: 1%

Source: SMH online

Channel Ten should have won last week, with Thank God You’re Here and House riding high and Big Brother reaching its climax over two nights. But these hits weren’t enough to counter Seven’s lock on older viewers who love fly-on-the-wall documentaries and Nine’s lock on older viewers who find Lisa McCune’s acting credible.

At week’s end, the average prime time audience shares were: Seven 27.9 per cent, Nine 25.9, Ten 24.3, ABC 16.3 and SBS 5.6.

What Australia watched, week ending August 4
1 BIG BROTHER – WINNER ANNOUNCED Ten 1,902,000
2 THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE Ten 1,844,000
3 BORDER SECURITY Seven 1,693,000
4 MEDICAL EMERGENCY Seven 1,689,000
5 RSPCA ANIMAL RESCUE Seven 1,685,000
6 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,655,000
7 SEA PATROL Nine 1,601,000
8 BIG BROTHER – FINALE NIGHT Ten 1,581,000
9 HOUSE Ten 1,538,000
10 60 MINUTES Nine 1,537,000
11 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,536,000
12 GETAWAY Nine 1,471,000
13 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,463,000
14 ALL SAINTS Seven 1,453,000
15 BIG BROTHER DOUBLE LIVE EVICTION Ten 1,435,000

Popularity: 6%

NineMSN’s reign as Australia’s most popular online news website has come to an end, with traditional newspaper mastheads experiencing surging Internet traffic at the expense of broad-based portals.

The National Nine News website was overtaken in terms of unique browsers, acknowledged as the most accepted form of measuring Internet traffic, by the Sydney Morning Herald website in July, the first time the National Nine News website had been beaten.

Since January this year, Nine News traffic has grown only 12per cent, compared with the Herald’s 76 per cent.

In terms of domestic page impressions, which are used to determine with internet ads are sold, National Nine News is beaten by the Herald, News.com.au and The Age, according to Nielsen’s monthly Market Intelligence Report.

The Australian says that NineMSN’s sagging is a concern for PBL Media’s majority owner CVC Asia Pacific, coming on the back of poor ratings and earnings results for PBL Media’s Nine Network and slower growth at ACP Magazines.

This has raised questions over how well the group can service its high level of borrowing if PBL Media’s main businesses continue to underperform.

It is understood that NineMSN was valued at more than $1billion in the CVC deal last year.

Nine News unique browsers fell 5 per cent in July compared with June, while the Herald rose 11 per cent.

Other news websites to experience strong growth last month included News Limited’s The Daily Telegraph (up 20 per cent on June), news.com.au (up 14 per cent) and Herald Sun (up 10 per cent).

Rounding out the top 10 in total unique browsers after the Herald and Nine News were The Age, news.com.au, Herald Sun, Fox Sports (News), The Australian (News), The Daily Telegraph, Realfooty (Fairfax) and Weatherzone (The Weather Company).

Popularity: 1%

Prime Television has added two more radio stations to its growing regional radio network by spending $33 million dollars for two Sunshine Coast stations, and is planning to buy more stations in areas where Prime broadcasts as the Seven Network’s main regional affiliate.

Prime purchased Hot 91.1FM and Zinc96FM on the Sunshine Coast from the privately owned AMI Radio, run by former managing director of DMG Regional Radio Rob Gamble.

Gamble will invest the proceeds of the sale into Prime shares, and his management team will lead the enlarged radio group, which will join already has stations in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone, and run out of the Sunshine Coast.

“They have paid a pretty big price for a couple of stations on the Sunshine Coast but we would not have got that if it was just a ‘here’s the keys’ deal,” Mr Gamble told The Australian.

“They have someone to head the network on a long-term basis, an instantaneous senior management team and they’ve bought two FM stations in a great market so they can rationalise the price on three fronts.”

Gamble has said that Prime are not interested in the Queensland radio stations put up for sale by Macquarie Media Group after purchasing Southern Cross Broadcasting, who own regional affiliates of the Ten Network.

He stated that this was due to the stations being in lower-growth markets.

Prime chief Warwick Syphers said the company had been committed for some time to expanding its Queensland radio network.

“Hot 91 and Zinc 96 in a very short time have attracted a phenomenal listening base due to the experience, commitment and talent of its staff and management,” Mr Syphers said.

Popularity: 1%