Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade, focused on yesterday’s Nine Upfronts. And further down, the investment market seems to like Vinyl Group’s plan to use AI to create ten times as much editorial content.
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Nine’s low risk Upfronts: ‘Fundamentally we are still a premium content long-form business’
It’s already been a long Upfronts season. Yet until yesterday afternoon’s Nine Upfront, none of the free to air TV players had set out their wares.
In the podcast accompanying this post, I talk to Nine’s new chief sales officer Matt James.
It was also Matt Stanton’s first Upfronts as CEO. And although he didn’t come on stage, it was the first for Peter Tonagh not just as a Nine board director but incoming chair.
So the event, ultimately, was a vibe check. After the sale of Domain, this was the first look at how Nine is facing the future in what has been a depressed advertising market.
On the new content side, this was the least ambitious Nine Upfront I’ve been to since 2008 (the year the best content they had to talk about was Gordon Ramsay and Two and a Half Men).
Not that this worried the audience - marketers and media agency people who prefer certainty when they book campaigns. The reliable shows are on the slate - The Block, Married At First Sight, Lego Masters et al. And sport - NRL, tennis and now the English Premier League - were prominent. Plus the winter Olympics.
But with the exception of Shark!, featuring Nine-aligned celebs like The Block’s Scot Cam meeting a shark. There was not a single big drama commission from Nine. That was a first, I think.
There were some interesting choices around the preso, which was all business. There was no on-air talent on stage. And no lighter moments - imagine a whole Nine Upfronts without Today presenter Karl Stefanovic poking fun at himself. In what must have been a deliberate tone, there wasn’t a single joke in the script. All the men wore suits (of course); all the women wore pantsuits.
In our conversation, Matt James reveals that Nine’s management have been working on their purpose for the business - and it’s as a content company: “Fundamentally we are still a premium content long-form business.” But not, it would seem, one that plans to take big risks with that content. Not in this market, anyway.
Most of the announcements were iterative - an upgraded self service Nine Ad Managers platform; lots of data and tech partnerships. (What would an Upfront be without a data partnership?)
Instead this was an interim Upfront before Nine’s future direction is settled. How to invest the money from the sale of Domain remains an open question. So too is the business-defining decision of what Nine does in the next NRL rights negotiation.
Stanton gave a couple of interviews this week to coincide with the Upfronts. He said remarkably little. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it could be that revealing the plan would drive up the price of whatever asset(s) Nine wants to purchase. But it leaves a gap where the vision belongs. After these Upfronts, I’m none the wiser on the vision.
The conversation with James does offer a couple of glimpses. As you’ll hear, he is fond of business jargon, but there was a little more than that.
Tellingly, was the fact that James was bullish on his ability to monetise NRL across free to air and streaming if Nine chases all rights in the next deal. “To have that control and flow of audience between your BVOD subscribers and your SVOD consumers… would be a phenomenal opportunity. So we already have an incredibly powerful and growing asset base, both in the BVOD and SVOD environment. I think we’d be very successful at it and would absolutely back myself 110%. If not, I’m shortly out of a job in six months.”
In other words, as well as free to air, Nine may chase the pay rights currently held by Foxtel.
Speaking of Foxtel, James also sent the strongest signal yet that Nine is going to become part of the Video Futures Collective. The VFC was created by Foxtel Media when Foxtel resigned from industry marketing body Think TV and later OzTAM.
Despite the fact that Nine unveiled new research designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of television - the sort of thing that might previously have been industry funded via the moribund Think TV - James says that there will be collaboration with competitors.
For more than a year, there have been ongoing promises from the TV players to imminently come back together to market their medium. Yet they never quite seem to happen. In our interview, James puts a timeline on it “I would like to think that certainly within the next two months, we can at least start to give clarity on how we would like to move forward as an industry. You know, it’s critical.”
More than once, James talked about the virtues of a private exchange. It sounds like the concept - effectively one place where premium video ads can be traded - is a few steps further than just being a concept.
In the conversation, we also explore the virtues of Nine buying an outdoor company. And then there’s the question of radio. With Nine Radio’s talk network on the block, it must have been a dilemma on how to present it.
The signal on the night was not entirely subtle - while publishing and TV presented side by side, Nine radio’s commercial boss Brian Gallagher did his bit solo. It was a pretty good shop window, and he made Nine Radio seem like an asset worth buying.
In our interview James accepted the premise that Nine might be better off owning an FM radio network that does better in the 25-54 demographic. “Obviously, in the FM environment, it does obviously attract to younger audiences. And there are actually strategically some interesting dynamics there that can work when you think about the sort of drive time integration and what those younger audiences represent.”
By the time the next Nine Upfronts come around, things should be much clearer. The next NRL deal should be done. If Nine is going to buy into FM radio or outdoor, it will have happened. We’ll see.
Vinyl’s AI bet gets early vote
The investment market appeared to like yesterday’s announcement from Vinyl Group that it intends to use AI to create ten times the amount of content it currently produces, while reducing staff costs. Vinyl shares rose by 4.6%.
Meanwhile, of the bigger stocks, Seven West Media had the best day, improving by 2.2% while its merger partner Southern Cross Austereo lost 0.6%
The Unmade Index closed almost flat for the day, on 472.1 points.
More from Mumbrella
Vinyl sticks to break-even deadline, aims to use AI to increase content 10x
ABC admission reignites decades-old ABC paedophile interview furore
Opinion: Instagram’s new PG-13 content rules will hit adults harder than kids
Opinion: Why smart marketers should keep measurement simple
Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio.
Time to leave you to your day. We’ll be back with more soon.
If you happen to be at SXSW Sydney this afternoon, the Mumbrellacast is a late addition to the podcast stage. Our guest will be agency bad boy turned big brand builder Mat Baxter. Hopefully we’ll see you there.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
