James Warburton's initial impact on Ten's performance will be limited by the fact that its 2012 program schedule has already been locked in by his immediate predecessor. Photo: Simon Alekna
THE new chief executive of Ten Network, James Warburton, faces major challenges as he tries to restore confidence in the channel among investors and advertisers, according to one of the country's main media buying companies.
Mr Warburton officially started in the job yesterday after waiting nearly 10 months to take up the role since his initial appointment was announced in March.
His original starting date of July 14 was pushed back by a further six months when former employer, Channel Seven, took legal action to prevent his swift move to one of its two major rivals.
While the ex-chief sales and digital officer of Seven Media Group may have been frustrated by the delay, Mr Warburton would have ''watched a lot of television'' and would have a clear strategy where he would take Channel Ten, said Universal McCann's chief executive, Mat Baxter.
Mr Baxter laid out the key hurdles facing the new Ten chief: These include:
■Restoring confidence in the advertising and financial markets so the channel can compete with Seven and Nine.
■Ensuring the new cross-platform advertising selling team announced in October and covering the Ten, One, Eleven and online channels will work as proposed.
■Seeking to make the network a more consistent performer with its overall programming.
■Showing how Ten intends to make its new breakfast show work after dumping its move into news programming, including the slot occupied by George Negus.
''I think James will come in with a very clear view of what needs to be done and he will move very quickly,'' Mr Baxter said. '' James is very ambitious, he is pretty high energy and knows what he wants.''
Mr Warburton's initial impact on Ten's performance will be limited by the fact that its 2012 program schedule - which will drive ratings and advertising revenue - has already been locked in by his immediate predecessor as stand-in CEO, Lachlan Murdoch.
Investors will be looking for the new strategy unveiled by Mr Murdoch to start paying off in this financial year after its full-year net profits slumped 90 per cent to $14.2 million. That was after one-off charges of $85 million to cover cost-cutting and sports rights contracts write-downs. Pre-tax earnings from the main TV business dropped 20 per cent as costs rose. Ten's shares on the ASX fell 40 per cent last year from $1.42 to finish the year at 84¢.
''2012 has been brought and presented to the market so to that extent James is tied into that calendar,'' Mr Baxter said. ''There are limited opportunities before 2013 to make wholesale changes so it will only be fair to start judging him after this year.''
As to turning around Ten's ''volatile'' programming history with its ''very high peaks and very low troughs'', the market will have to wait and see, Mr Baxter said.
