Nine will use its new multichannel 9Rush to build the male audience it’s missing.
The channel, in partnership with Discovery, will launch next week with a focus on reality TV targeting men, such as Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and the local Dirty Jobs Down Under.
Speaking to AdNews, Nine program director Hamish Turner and director of network scheduling Geoff Dyer say 9Rush will target 25-54 year-old males.
“If you look at Nine’s suite of channels there is a bit of a hole there within that space,” Turner tells AdNews.
“We don't have a channel that specifically targets that demographic with that style of content.
“So when the opportunity arose and the deal was proposed, we just thought it added something different to the mix than what we have already and provided content and an availability to an audience that we currently don't have access to probably outside of live sport.”
Dyer, who helped spearhead the new channel, says while 7Mate is 9Rush’s closest competitor, the new channel will stay committed to reality TV.
“We did a fair bit of modelling when we were looking at the channel and trying to find where its audience would come from, and the overwhelming thing was just bringing men back to free-to-air TV,” Dyer says.
“7Mate started this way and has evolved over time to have to play a fair bit of AFL and movies and that sort of programming. Whereas, this channel will sit in the male-skewing reality 24 hours a day.”
The launch of the channel comes as free-to-air TV is hit by the lack of live sports, with most competitions, including the NRL and AFL, suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. Turner says this gives 9Rush a boost in the short-term as audiences, particularly men, go looking for alternative content while house-bound indefinitely.
Launching the channel on April 5 is a new season of Top Gear, exclusive to Nine, with broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD) offering 9Now used to complement the linear channel.
Turner says while the BVOD platform has done well with female audiences, the new content from Discovery will help it build out a bigger audience.
“What this does is provide a complete alternative to that and what we'll find is that what advertisers are looking to do is to increase the daily active users (DAU) on the site. They want to see an increase in users and the best way to increase users is to provide a real diversified offering,” Turner says.
“Providing a core male audience that we currently don’t have outside of sport will do that. And what we'll find is that there'll be more of those individuals in the audience coming in and consuming for longer periods and sitting on the platform for a longer period of time, which will increase new DAUs on the platform.”
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