Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin might want to move up the timeline for his turnaround plan, called “Turner 2020.”
While new shows such as “The Last Ship” and “Major Crimes” have handed its biggest entertainment network, TNT, some early wins this summer, average year-to-date ratings are down sharply in its target demo.
TNT averaged 564,000 viewers ages 18 to 49 in primetime through the week ended July 20 — down 26 percent from 764,000 viewers a year ago.
Turner’s two major entertainment networks, TNT and TBS, are expected to bag $4.8 billion in revenue this year.
To be fair, ratings were down across ad-supported cable over the period, but boosting viewership is just one of a host of challenges facing Martin, who was the CFO of Time Warner before he took over Turner in January.
In June, Martin issued a memo to staff outlining his vision for the cable powerhouse that stressed investments in programming as well as layoffs to bolster the company by the time of its 50th anniversary in 2020.
“To commit to staying top of market, we need to prioritize programming, monetization and innovation investment while reducing spending in less-impactful areas,” he said. “This may mean staff changes. In fact, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t.”
Insiders, however, say they’re still waiting for the ax to fall. “People thought since he came from within the company, he’d make some rapid changes,” said one source.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has acknowledged the challenges at TNT and said fixing the programming problems will take time.
“Over the past few years, we didn’t take enough creative risk with its programming and TNT has lost ground with younger viewers,” Bewkes said on a call with analysts earlier this year.
Speculation is that Turner will hire former Fox programming boss Kevin Reilly to boost its lineup, but sources said talks between the two are dead.
Turner declined to comment.