Earlier this week, Seven’s Chief Content Officer Brook Hall joined TV Blackbox’s Rob McKnight on a special TVBB Podcast to unpack Seven Network’s 2025 Upfronts and discuss the evolving landscape of free-to-air television.
Brook reveals new information about unique themed episodes for The 1% Club Australia, including an exciting “State vs. State” showdown and a “Ladies Night” episode with host Jim Jefferies, which are set to debut in the new year.
Hall also reflects on rising viewership in recent years and gives a sneak peek into other fresh formats for 2025 like Stranded on Honeymoon Island.
The full transcript of their chat is below, or listen to the interview wherever you get your podcasts from.
Rob McKnight:
It’s been a big week here at Seven as the network holds its annual upfront event, a showcase of its 2025 programming lineup. This year it’s been rebranded as Seven Degrees. The Network has had a gangbuster year in terms of ratings, so a lot of what you’re going to see next year is pretty similar to this year with some notable exceptions.
Here are the main headlines, comedian Shaun Micallef is the first name announced for the new series of Dancing with The Stars.
Stranded on Honeymoon Island is an extreme dating show where couples are matched by experts following a speed dating event, but they don’t know which partner has been chosen for them until they see them. In the ultimate commitment ceremony, things then take an unexpected twist when they are dramatically abandoned on their own deserted tropical island for and I quote “The Adventure of a Lifetime”.
Jim Jefferies will head a new comedy show called Jim Jeffries and Friends. It’ll feature comedy legends, Dave Hughes, Jimeoin, Arj Barker, Tommy Little, Nikki Osborne, Mel Buttle, Felicity Ward and many more. The PR Guff says this strictly adults only affair will see Jim in rip snorting form as master of ceremonies.
The Morning Show is being extended by 30 minutes and will now run until midday with a new one hour news bulletin to follow.
Dr. Chris Brown will star in a new series called Once in a Lifetime. It’s a global wildlife journey where Chris is joined by celebrity veterinary assistants including Mick Molloy, Amanda Keller, Kate Ritchie, and Matt Preston. What could possibly go wrong?
A documentary called Working Class Man is based on Jimmy Barnes’s bestselling book. The Story of an Iconic Aussie band will feature in and I quote, “an hilarious and moving documentary” called Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story.
There are some really good ideas in there with Stranded on Honeymoon Island, obviously the standout, that’s the big new 7:30 reality show and I’m sure the Executives at Seven have high hopes for that one.
“Australian production is at the heart of everything we do. We spend more than $700 million across our three content pillars of news, sport and entertainment to deliver mass audience and reach every single day of the year”
says Seven Group Managing Director of Television, Angus Ross.
That is a lot of money. Returning shows include Farmer Wants a Wife, Australian Idol, My Kitchen Rules, The Voice, Dancing with The Stars, Home and Away and the most successful new entertainment show in recent years, The 1% Club.
Alright, to find out more about Seven’s 2025 lineup, I’m joined by Seven’s Chief Content Officer, Brook Hall. Brook, has 2024 been a good year for Seven?
Brook Hall:
I think it has Rob, and thanks for having me. Look, we’re very excited. One thing I’d say this year has probably been our most consistent in a while.
We’ve probably been in a rebuilding stage back from probably the time we lost the tennis and coincided with, at that time MKR sort of fell over a little bit, but since that period we’ve obviously done a lot of new launches and I say this has been our most stable, which kind of leads into 2025 where traditionally people looking for these upfronts, there’s lots of exciting brand new spanking announcements.
We certainly have a few of those, but a lot of it is returning formats, but that’s because they’re working and that’s a great thing from a programming point of view.
Rob McKnight:
Yeah, well I have to say it’s not a dazzling upfront from the point of view that as you say, there’s not a whole lot of new shows, but that probably speaks to how strong 2024 has been. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel
Brook Hall:
And look, one thing that I guess, and I think it’s TV in general need to do a better job of, there’s a narrative out there and it’s been going for a while. It’s not the local press, it’s the world press about the fatigue or decline of free to air television. And the one thing that’s an outlier here, and it’s not just Channel Seven, it’s Nine and Seven.
Now we’re going to have two years of audience growth and yes, both of our streaming and digital is growing across the world at a rapid rate and we’re no different here. Our streaming services for 7Plus is growing at 40%. The whole market is booming. That is a no brainer. The thing that gets lost is that both Seven Network and the Nine Network broadcast audience linear is having its second year of audience growth and of a total TV perspective.
That’s an amazing story. It’s kind of almost a world outlier and it’s not celebrated here. It’s constantly reported and assumed by the general public as a result that it’s in decline. So that’s one thing about why we’re returning some of the things and very encouraging for this market place to be seeing that.
Rob McKnight:
It’s interesting because you can see a program get 2 million viewers and I don’t know any other medium that can get 2 million people together at the same time to watch the one thing and that’s what television does and we keep getting told it’s dead, but would you agree more needs to be done post 9 o’clock where in a situation at the moment where I feel like television tells me to go and watch Netflix or go to bed because there’s nothing new and exciting post 9?
Brook Hall:
Yeah, look, we look at times are different and I think that that’s a fair point at that 9 to 9:30 junction, the broadcast linear on certain nights can see an audience drop, but that’s the one thing now of trying to juggle it all and we’re caught in this world where everyone comes in and reports those broadcast linear figures, but as a total tv, that’s also the time.
You mentioned Netflix and Apple and things like that, those other streaming services, but we see the same thing with us, whereas our peak streaming on 7Plus is 9:30 PM as well, so it’s staying in the ecosystem of there. So yes, look, the big news bulletins at 6:00 PM obviously we have Home and Away at 7 o’clock and then a lot of the big entertainment and sports shows are at that 7:30 junction and when they finish whilst in the scheduled slots of free to wear television, whether it be live streaming or things, we still see a lot of migration at those times where we may see the linear audience might be a bit lower, but we see our streaming services also boom, so they’re still in the free to air TV ecosystem.
They’re just on a different platform but I take your point, I’d love if we could have even more to keep investing in those slots whereas at the moment we have more the dramas and things like that which kind of lend themselves that drama to streaming, but it is an area that free air TV in that later evening maybe could do a bit more.
Rob McKnight:
It’s an interesting thing, what you say about the streaming. It’s good to know that people are going to the free to air streaming services. How important is that digital audience now to TV networks and are you managing to monetize that audience because that’s the next big frontier, right?
Brook Hall:
Yeah, look, it’s obviously really important. I think that’s the good thing about our Seven structure here with all of our organisation is we’ve tried to put the digital content is looked at as holistically, so we don’t just put it in a digital bucket or a broadcast we’re a big fan of is if you make really good content, it will lift on all platforms because that’s the way I think a lot of people get carried away with these streamers.
Some of the biggest shows in the world like White Lotus or Succession, people think of them as streaming shows, but they air at 8:30 on HBO on broadcast linear tv and it also is on HBO Max and that’s the same with us. So we want the best shows to be given on all platforms and lift both tides. We are seeing a huge audience migration across to streaming, and I shouldn’t use that word migration, I mean it’s growing an incremental audience.
That’s what we’re seeing here both at Seven and Nine where our broadcast linear is holding or growth and streaming is just taking off. To your answer about whether we’re making enough revenue from it. Probably not yet, considering audiences are growing at near 50%, the revenue’s not growing that fast. It’s a really good question. I think part of that is an education piece for the industry, whereas a lot of buyers, it’s a great thing being a free to air brand. We have huge awareness, everyone knows about us, but I think that there is still a perception that the streaming services of, so 7Plus in our case are oh, that’s the Channel Seven shows on catch-up. Whereas we’re much more than that.
There is 70% of the inventory on 7Plus has never aired on broadcast. 50% of the consumption is non-broadcast content and I think the audience and viewers are finding that out and we need to make sure the buyers are also following across and going, well if you want to be in premium video, you don’t have to be on just Amazon. There’s a Service 7Plus which offers all of that content and all of our audience is used to seeing it with commercials in it and we need to make sure that that ad revenue moves across into that space too and now I think that’s an educational piece with the market.
Rob McKnight:
Yeah, it’s an interesting point because traditionally go back 10 years, 15 years, some sales people were scared about trying to sell digital because they thought it would cannibalise free to air, but it’s all the one big pot now.
Brook Hall:
Absolutely and we’re seeing that with audience. If the audience is incremental, then the revenue should be as well. And at the start, going back five or 10 years, I think some people were nervous was it just going to be a migration? And certainly some people moving across there, but we’re expanding our audience pool. It allows us, we’re not limited now to just scheduling 24 hours a day in specific slots.
Yes, people talk about streaming allows people to watch for anyone at their own time, but what it also allows us to do, it’s an infinity amount of programme when we can slot rather than 24 hour slots and the audience has responded, we’ve just got to make sure that the ad dollars follow at that too.
Rob McKnight:
Well also on the programming front, you used to be in charge of daytime tv, you’re now the Chief Content Officer, but there’s an interesting move moving The Morning Show, extending it by 30 minutes to finish at midday and then there’s a one hour news. Is that a revenue driver? Because you can get more advertorials away.
Brook Hall:
The first thing about is about an audience where we’re seeing, and it’s no secret in the world about you want to be holding up your audience on both broadcast and streaming and news, local news is one thing that I think gets forgotten about is highly consumed. It’s not in audience decline, it’s in audience growth. And there’s only two real players in this marketplace, and I put the global players inside that these trillion dollar companies, but the Seven and Nine Networks, they only invest in the three key things of local entertainment, local premium sport and local news.
And so really that talk there, it’s not about more advertorials, we start at 5:00 AM with live news around the country and currently it ends at midday because the morning show ends at 1130 and then the morning news ends, then the morning news ends at the midday slot.
We’re just ending that live news every single day from 5:00 AM to now 1:00 PM, I know we pick it back up later. So it’s just about getting more news because live news we’re kind of responding to the audience. That’s the thing that still people are watching through the day. Of course revenue is going to be a part of that, but it’s first of all, we always aim as in the content side of the business, it’s get more viewers and then the revenue follows that. So that’s all we’re looking about.
We’ve got a strong news brand, morning TV has been on fire, we’re just extending that now to 1:00pm.
Rob McKnight:
Well you’ve got a Gold Logie winner doing your morning show, so it makes sense. It’s interesting, your commentary has been about Seven and Nine, is 10 out of the picture because it does seem like Seven and Nine are the big investors, especially when it comes to Australian content?
Brook Hall:
Yeah, look, well we look at it how I’d like to look at it from a market point of view. There’s more entertainment and competition in this marketplace than ever before and we know that a big part of that is these big global giants that are coming into the marketplace and providing people enormous amount of choice.
But if you look under the hood a bit more at that, the things that we do better than anyone else, and I mean those players, there’s three key pillars. There’s entertainment, there’s news and there’s sport. And I’m talking on the local of those three. And I think that Seven and Nine are probably the only ones including compared to Netflix or Disney plus that truly invest, we both nearly invest a billion dollars in those three local pillars.
And I think that sets us apart from any media organisation that includes public broadcasters, that includes the international streamers, but I think Seven and Nine sit in a unique place where the only ones who really tackle those three of those three pillars in a really meaningful way.
Rob McKnight:
Okay, some quick rapid fire questions before I let you go, Brook. 2025, Shaun Micallef on Dancing with the Stars, that seems like a pretty good get to me.
Brook Hall:
Certainly is. And the thing about this upfronts is we had to save some of the announcements. I would say that’s a terrific lead and I think we’ve gone with a couple more. I would to be say that there’s a couple even headline acts that we haven’t released right now and you can thank the publicity team that they wanted to save some to splash out to get some headlines so we couldn’t go with them all here.
So I think I said in a conversation last year that our cast I thought for 2024 was quite exceptional. And the great thing about that it’s been rolling momentum because I think kind of feeds into that. People say it’s look at what’s been on that I want to go there. So there’s more exciting announcements to come on that we’ve signed up a couple other big ones and they’ll be dropped over the coming months or I’m sure someone will pap them going in for dance rehearsals and it’ll leak.
But very excited for 2025 Dancing coming back and we’re seeing a resurgence actually all over the world, in America it’s having its best rating in years returning to broadcast television and Strictly Come Dancing in the UK is still the top show after 20 years. It’s quite remarkable how that format has survived.
Rob McKnight:
Yeah. Stranded on Honeymoon Island, that seems like the big tent pole pitch for next year?
Brook Hall:
Yeah, look, Endemol Shine made that for us. They’ve done an amazing job. I’ve watched the whole series. I think it’s really well made obviously from the creators of MAFS, but we won’t be quite in that tone. It’s kind of the producer described that as the next evolution of the dating world has changed again and a lot in the last 10 years, particularly with dating apps and distractions of phones and this instant gratification world that we live in and well how would be a way to date if nothing else has kind of helped?
And it’s about removing distractions in the modern world. So you’re not talking to your friends, you don’t have a mobile phone to be instantly distracted things. You can’t make a call on someone on a superficial look in 10 minutes because stuck with them for weeks and just them and it’s like can you get part that past that superficial layer and finding something more meaningful. So that’s the key of it.
Look, if I’m being completely honest, the trickiest thing with this show I think will be how to promote it. We don’t want it to look like something else, but how do we get through that? There’s a real core heart to this show, but excited for that. It was filmed a little while ago and that’ll roll out in the middle of next year.
Rob McKnight:
The Voice is not being announced yet, who the new cast is or the new judges. When will that happen?
Brook Hall:
Probably early next year, to be completely honest. We haven’t signed all four. There will be quite a big change in the panel, but the show has done that several times. Look, I think we have great judging panel that we have on most years of the show, but one thing about that show, it relies so much probably, it and (Australian) Idol are very different where The Voice relies a lot of content comes from those four judges.
They’re driven by them obviously the blind auditions and seeing them spin around in the chair, the focus is a lot in those early episodes on their commentary and to do that. So changing them, look, I thought we had a great panel, but it can be a blessing as well because you come and see a whole new launch of fresh faces. That would be the one thing I’d say I think you’re going to see a lot of new judges arrive in 2025.
Rob McKnight:
Well there’s a lot in this press release. It’s been a big event. What’s your other highlight for 2025? If I said you can only pick one, Brook, what is it?
Brook Hall:
Look, the 1% Club Australia. I think that that was a lost thing. Everyone talks about new shows, why don’t you do enough of them? Yes, that’s a relative new show and it was a show that kind of quietly snuck up on people and I don’t think people realise how big a rater is, but it outright most of those huge shiny floor shows. It’s done really well for us.
Rob McKnight:
You’ve a spinoff now with Jim Jefferies.
Brook Hall:
Absolutely. And look, the one thing I would say about the other series we’ve got with him is it’s closer to the Netflix tone of you’ll see of Jim Jeffries. So a bit ruder, a bit naughtier than he is in The 1% Club Australia. But again, that’s just providing something different and outside of our natural lane on Seven.
But having that return the Australian series next year, I’m really excited about, the Australian version hasn’t been on for 12 months now and so it coming back and we’ve also, just to give it a bit of difference, they’ve actually recorded a few specials like just theme specials.
It’s still the core of the show doesn’t change, we’re not trying to gimmick it up, but it’s just providing a comedic talent like Jim Jefferies, you give him a theme and he just takes it to another level. So next year we have kind of a state versus state one, which is, it might just sound like something there, but just it allows him to go in humorous ways, different ways.
There’s also a Ladies Night, we’re all contestants and that is probably the favourite that I’ve seen. It is just a ball of laughs. I know it is all the time, but it’s very good and we’ll probably return with that one to start with. So it’s been a huge success for us, but a few just little extras in some of the eps for next year and I’m excited it hasn’t been on for 12 months and it’s one of our biggest shows.
Rob McKnight:
Well it sounds good, and as we started at the beginning of this conversation, it’s not going to be a huge different look to Seven next year and that’s because you’ve had a really solid 2024 and that’s actually a good thing.
Brook Hall:
Absolutely. And the one thing we keep hearing from people is about in this fragmented world you mentioned at the start, that we’re still a medium that can draw millions of people at the same moment in time watching your piece of content. And when you’ve got that they want consistency. So people, we kind of get asked both, give us something shiny and new, but we want to know exactly what the audience is going to be and it’s going to be consistent. So we’re trying to do that whether some of our existing formats, but people will know, audience and advertiser will know what they’re getting up to. We know what the range they’re in. We think it’s a lower risk schedule.
The one thing I’d say about exciting and new, it’s gets lost now and you kind of mentioned about the 9 o’clock because the local investment isn’t there all the time now it’s for US drama, but I do think the slate coming out of the US after they’ve had writer strikes and Covid years, all of these restrictions which maybe limited all the new creative stuff coming through.
We think it’s the best year in a long time and a couple of really exciting shows that might pop. There really hasn’t been one that, Mr. Bates and the Post Office had kind of a four week special last year, but since the Good Doctor burst onto the scenes, was it doing big broadcast audiences.
I think we’ve got a chance with a few next year with Doc coming from Sony and other medical drama, Suits:LA which that will be for 7Plus and Seven. Doing that, I think there’ll be huge international interest and people wouldn’t naturally think that that’s coming to us. It’s the most streamed drama in the world at the moment. And then there’s kind of a sneaky one Grosse Pointe Garden Society, it sounds weird on the format, there you go, what’s this about a garden club? how exciting of drama that can be. But it’s a bit of a Desperate Housewives feel. When we first talked about that show and it was four suburban housewives in their daily life, people kind of yawned and when they saw the promos and it was just something a bit different. I think you’re going to get this with this show.
So we’re going to be rolling all of those out in key 8:30 slots and giving them a real whirl and of course they’ll be stacked on 7plus. So I’m quietly optimistic that we might get a little bit of a bump there that we haven’t seen for a few years from some of our key 8:30 programs too.
Rob McKnight:
Very interesting. Well, Brook Hall, it’ll be an interesting 2025. Thanks for joining us.
Brook Hall:
No worries, thanks Rob.
ENDS.
To read more about what is coming to Seven in 2025, read our preview of the networks upfronts HERE.
