0/5

David Mott: “Content is still king.”

TEN Programming Chief David Mott says broadcast is driving online and not the other way around.

Who’d be a Programmer?

It’s a job we’d all secretly love to take a stab at. And one that everybody is convinced they could do better than the other bloke.

But the pressure is enormous: potentially starting every day with a black cloud, dealing with micro-managing CEOs, sales, production, publicity and shareholders. And somewhere finding time to be creative, and maybe, just maybe, actually being innovative.

WA Today has an interesting profile of TEN’s David Mott, including his years growing up in Perth (also Tim Worner’s home city).

Amongst some of his thoughts, Mott tells the newspaper that online still trails television.

”There’s no question that it all goes back to content. The old adage, ‘content is king’, is even more so,” he says. ”No matter what way you cut it, broadcast is driving online and not the other way around. I can’t see that changing for some time, as long as the content is compelling enough.”

But what does he think about the evil foe of programmers: torrents?

”There’s this expectation: ‘What do you mean I’ve got to wait?,’ ” he says. ”It’s an interesting philosophical debate that we’re having about where’s the content delivery going to be, and what’s the audience expectation going to be. They won’t be prepared to wait, for anything.”

Despite TEN’s current turmoil, he likes his job.

”Absolutely,” he says. ”There’s no question you go through a lot of hard yards and you make some tough calls in certain areas. But I think you’ve got to love it, because you’re living it.”

You can read more here.

9 Responses

  1. With the whole thing of people waiting for TV shows to come on and juggling all that…. I’ve been waiting to see the end of Burn Notice and I haven’t downloaded cause I’ve been waiting for TEN to play it and when they do they stop so how am I suppose to be good and not watch my favourite show online when TEN won’t play…. if they don’t like the way it rates on TEN then put it on Eleven or One find a spot with it and keep it their and allow its audience to grow

  2. TEN should be doing a lot lot better than they are. They have the American hits atm but they are not capitalising on them. They just don’t program right and that is the problem here. The other problem is your existing shows don’t run on time at all. Seven promoted the hell out of Downton Abbey and is a marvel of a show and ever since the latest DWTS, which is Live TV has ended is 8:36pm. The earliest was actually 8:29pm last week. If Seven can pull a Live show together to finish on time why the hell can’t MC and other shows on your network do the same.

    Mind you Seven is the same as is Nine but all it tells me is its lazyness for not finishing on time. Simple as that. Networks should be fined $1000 every minute they are over. That would pull them into line.

  3. @fratboy if you’re going to bitch about 10 and their starting times you nay as well be swiping nine and seven because they are both terribly guilty of it!!

  4. “Content is still king”

    – David Mott, if content is still king, then why do you air MasterChef something like 10 hours a week. You’re implementing another shameless reality TV show – The Renovators, and I honestly do not see a pause to the reality tsunami.

    Here’s the issue with that comment.
    Due to the fact that your endless reality shows seem unable to finish on time, your scripted shows never and I mean never start on time. The last time I remember a show starting on time, would have been around the time the Y2K idiots were being taken seriously.

    If content is to stay “king”, then here’s what needs to happen
    a) They need to start on time, an 8:30 timeslot doesn’t mean it should start at 8:45.
    b) If they are imported, it needs to air within two weeks of when it airs in the USA.

    Otherwise, you might as well be the TLC channel from USA

  5. “broadcast is driving online and not the other way around’.

    Hmm, FTA broadcasting has driven me online, and I’m not a young person!
    I am prepared to wait for programs, but for weeks or even months, not years.
    But if I can get a clean feed with no ads, to watch when I want, then there is no competition.

  6. Agree on iView comment…funny how the public broadcasters are way ahead of their commercial counterparts when it comes to web / online innovation – you would think it would be the other way round.Have been watching iView on my PS3 for ages with 7Plus being a recent addition.

  7. The wave of change has been slowly building for some time now. FTA has about 5 years to position themselves on the crest of that wave or be left in its wake.

    Content may be king but if they want today’s highschool kids to source that content from them, they will need to have a multi-platform on-demand distribution system in place before the 2016 Olympics or they will have missed their one chance.

    I said this on the Freeview article but if the commercial networks want to still be relevant in 5 years, they should swallow their pride and give all of their money for “this interweb thing” to the ABC, and let them build an iView for everybody.

  8. That’s why it’s reduced because it’s king and I would agree working with an interim CEO is a tough thing unless you had the balls to do your job and not take it in the butt and smile.

Leave a Reply