A major restructure is now on the table for the financially pressured broadcaster, which is in advanced talks to outsource both production of its nightly news bulletins and the sale of advertising inventory across its channels. The move targets the younger audience Ten has traditionally chased, a group that increasingly seeks news from digital and social platforms instead of free-to-air TV.
Internal discussions are framed around cutting costs and stabilising revenue while still keeping a national news presence under the Ten brand. Talks have advanced far enough to test how much of Ten's news operation could be handed to a rival.
Ratings data from OzTam underlines the urgency. Ten’s flagship 5pm national news bulletin has suffered a steep fall, with the average audience this month down almost 20% compared with a year earlier.
Seven and Nine’s competing 6pm bulletins have grown their overall viewership and routinely draw more than 1.3 million viewers each evening. Ten’s main news programme now attracts about 289,000 viewers a night in July, down from 351,000 at the same point last year.
The potential outsourcing of both news production and ad sales would mark a new phase of consolidation in Australian commercial television. Rival networks could gain extra scale and bargaining power by supplying news content and selling spots across another broadcaster’s schedule, even as total free-to-air audiences erode.
For Ten, a partnership structure offers a way to remain in the news game without carrying the full cost of newsrooms and sales teams nationwide. Executives are weighing how far such a deal could go before viewers stop seeing Ten as a genuine independent news voice.
