Ten chief sales officer Rod Prosser says his recently created sales team "deserves more" advertising dollars, as it prepares to aggressively increase its revenue share in 2020.
Nine months into the new internal sales structure, which came about following Ten's split from former sales house MCN, Prosser says the team has found its "operational rhythm" and is ready to take it to the competing networks.
Despite early transitional difficulties, Ten is readying for a strong run into the end of the year, which kicked off with the debut of its highly publicised reality singing show The Masked Singer, which drew 1.16m and 1.05m in its first two episodes.
"It's been a big job, one that's been harder than any of us anticipated but it's been equally as rewarding. Albeit, we had to get to this point for it to be rewarding and the market has certainly embraced the change that we have injected back into it," Prosser says.
"We've now got ourselves to the point where we truly our sales operations and even though we're riding out some old deals that were done at MCN, we've now got a fully-functioning sales team, we've got a great product and excellent ratings.
"We are going into this negotiation period which is upon us very soon to win back the share that was taken from us and I think that everything that we've set up will allow us to do that."
Prosser says there is no criticism of the previous MCN agreement but says a key trend he has noticed over the past nine months has been a strong interest in dealing with Ten directly.
He says while early issues led to some areas of the business "falling through the cracks", the team is now fully responsible for the outcomes of 2020, something the team is excited to be in control of.
Ten will also be looking to its national sales director Lisa Squillace, who joined the business earlier this year, to lead the charge and help develop a strong, integrated client offering.
Squillace says this is already underway, with market feedback indicating that Ten's most attractive point of difference is its ability to have brand and product integrations that continue to adapt, despite "rapid cultural shifts".
"The main difference is people want to hear from Ten and the market - it feels almost like the market was almost starved of it, to be honest. Again, it's not a criticism, it's just a by-product of being part of a company that is representing multiple brands," she says.
"The other thing the market feedback has highlighted is how our shows are more integratable and more culturally shifting. We know what we have and we know our strengths, so we will only look to develop that over the next 12 months."
Prosser says another major focus in the new year will be educating the market on Ten's value outside of total people audience share, as well as traditional overnight ratings.
Earlier this year, the network stated it would shift focus away from promoting overnight ratings, instead of taking a seven-day consolidated ratings approach, to highlight the strength of its programming over longer periods of time.
Prosser says a challenge remains around educating the market on Ten's standpoint as the network that trades on demos over anything else.
"No one buys off total people audience so we have to really educate and get closer to the agency then clients about the strength of our demos. I see that as an opportunity, not a challenge, and that's certainly our focus," he says.
"That's not to say we aren't making progress with that, and this year it certainly was a focus. It had to be. But next year we will be aggressively attacking for more revenue and now we've got the audience and programs so we should be able to translate that into revenue."
More to be said for sport
While the network has continued to emphasise the value of big event sport, a strategy being led in tandem by network executives Matt White and Nisar Malik, questions have been raised over the future of large sporting properties.
Rumours have circulated throughout the year over the future of codes such as Super Rugby, A-League football and, most recently, the NRL.
However, Prosser says no firm decisions have been made, not even to take on more rights deals around the sport of racing, despite having inked a deal for The Melbourne Cup earlier this year.
He says the focus will remain on ensuring the event, which begins in November, is promoted and viewed as more than just a single race but an entire week of racing.
"Racing has a lot of different governing bodies but from our perspective, our focus is 100% on this event," Prosser says.
"Now, will that broaden out next year and beyond? Possibly, but at this point, it's about Spring Carnival and 2019 and then we'll see as we move into next year what we do after that."
Ten is also taking the same approach with all other sporting rights deals.
Prosser says consideration will be given to everything that they see as valuable, however, the network will only look to pursue new codes should the entry price and monetisation strategies make sense, it won't be buying more sport for the sake of it.
"We haven't made any firm decisions on anything that is coming up because we're just in the throes, as we always do, of doing the due diligence on all of it," he says.
"100% we will look at everything. Strategically we have to. That said, it needs to make sense and as it stands we are still exploring what codes could fit without plan."
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