Ten chief programming officer Beverley McGarvey has hinted the broadcaster is looking at new genres to address the rush of local drama and reality shows which are now at capacity for TV viewers although she said there was no audience cliff fall coming for these genres.
“We’ve seen an awful lot of drama this year so I think there’s been a cap on how much people can watch,” McGarvey said. “Big continuing reality shows are probably at their max. We will tap into that slight shift. Those things – Australian drama and reality – have a lot of people doing them. We’ve probably hit a point where you will start to see us doing different things - different types of scheduling and different types of shows. You will see that next year.”
Nine Network has already hinted to media buyers on its recent national roadshow that it has two big new TV formats it will launch for 2015 although it was tight-lipped on the details.
McGarvey said catch-up and online video viewing numbers for Ten’s flagship shows like Masterchef proved there was still strong demand from viewers for content spinning off established formats. Masterchef this year, for example, hit 16 million video views on Ten Play.
Ms McGarvey said Ten was also in the early stages of looking at second and third screen audience engagement strategies when formats were in their off-season. She said the work British TV producer Harstwood Films was doing with its global franchise Sherlock in digital formats such as mobile screen gaming apps was “really interesting. It’s something we need to be looking at.”
Working on the underlying principles of “transmedia” production – in which content, often with different or additional material, is developed for specific screens and platforms - Australian-based digital production group The Project Factory has created a number of transmedia programs for TV shows in their off-season for European broadcasters. The results have seen consistent audience lifts of 20% for TV shows when they return to the big screen.
In the case of Sherlock, not only are producers trying to keep the audience connected to the franchise while it’s off air, the idea is to also reduce the marketing resource and dollars required to rebuild awareness for the series when it launches again in individual markets.
“Hartswood was looking at how they could develop this massive franchise with great talent into something that could extend the Sherlock brand,” The Project Factory’s Guy Gadney told AdNews in the August 22 print edition. “Sherlock is basically three 90-minute telemovie episodes and then that’s it. So you get these huge gaps like Game of Thrones - shows that people love but there’s a vacuum. It creates a problem because when the show comes back the marketing division needs to prime the pump again and spend money to bring audiences back for it.”
The Project Factory launched a gaming app in August for Sherlock with a “freemium” distribution model in which Gadney expected “millions of downloads” worldwide. Sherlock has 60 million viewers in China alone.
You can read more on the Sherlock off-season audience strategy and the transmedia trend here.
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