damianFree DVDs but it's time to go... Yasmin
August 7th 2006 03:55
Got an interesting package in the mail a few days ago- my very own copy of the first episode of Criminal Minds, the latest blockbuster show out of America to show us how to be more intelligent criminals.
It came as a mass letterbox drop, sent out to every household in my little piece of suburban utopia and no doubt to most residents of Australia’s major capital cities. Lately Channel 7 have been going gangbusters in their attempts to wipe Channel 9 from the ratings map and I have to congratulate them on their creativity as receiving a DVD in the mail definitely got my attention. More than that though it’s drawn the focus to what broadcasters have to go through to sell a TV show these days. Enter a certain girl by the name of Yasmin.
After only one week on TV Channel 10 has decided to can its latest experiment in reality TV Yasmin’s Getting Married because of its poor ratings. After a significant advertising campaign (which appears to have got more air play then the show itself) and no doubt a decent whack of pre-production development time and money the show was given exactly one week to perform or else. Unhappily for Yasmin ‘or else’ happened and she’ll now be relegated back to the dating scene but you’ve got to be wondering how local television producers are feeling right now.
In todays cut-throat ratings wars television shows don’t just have to rate, they have to rate fast. It’s no longer good enough to leisurely build a fan base because by then you’ve already lost some ratings ground to the opposition so TV shows have to grab a huge audience from day one and keep it. Hence Channel 7 burning a few million copies of (what is apparently) a smash hit TV show from America and sending it to your house- they want eyeballs aimed at their new show from the get-go.
Unfortunately, historically speaking, this sort of activity doesn’t favour local production. If you look back at many of Australia’s most successful TV shows they’re rarely smash hits from their first episode, many of them taking a significant amount of time to build a following and settle on their final format. The saving grace of these shows has often been their ability to incubate on the ABC, especially in regards to comedy where shows like The Aunty Jack Show, Good News Week and Kath and Kim were all given enough of a run to develop their own cult followings that spilled over into the wider population but even the commercials have had to be patient as local content across a variety of genres got their act together and settled in. In a world where ratings are needed straight away and shows like Yasmin’s Getting Married are canned after one week for not performing local TV is going to struggle to develop those key, long running series that become the foundation pillars of the Australian industry and the cultural artefacts that help create the unique tapestry we call ‘Our Own Culture’.
Fortunately though we still have the ABC (just) and we’re now developing a pay TV system that can provide other spaces for local content to grow, even down to the internet which is becoming more important to the creation of all things visual. Hopefully over the next few years we can see some new stuff along the lines of Love My Way, as well as more experimental stuff that properly reflects our own unique world experience- the authentic Australian experience our culture industry should be producing.
Now if we can only convince Channel 7 to start burning us copies of Lost episodes...
It came as a mass letterbox drop, sent out to every household in my little piece of suburban utopia and no doubt to most residents of Australia’s major capital cities. Lately Channel 7 have been going gangbusters in their attempts to wipe Channel 9 from the ratings map and I have to congratulate them on their creativity as receiving a DVD in the mail definitely got my attention. More than that though it’s drawn the focus to what broadcasters have to go through to sell a TV show these days. Enter a certain girl by the name of Yasmin.
After only one week on TV Channel 10 has decided to can its latest experiment in reality TV Yasmin’s Getting Married because of its poor ratings. After a significant advertising campaign (which appears to have got more air play then the show itself) and no doubt a decent whack of pre-production development time and money the show was given exactly one week to perform or else. Unhappily for Yasmin ‘or else’ happened and she’ll now be relegated back to the dating scene but you’ve got to be wondering how local television producers are feeling right now.
In todays cut-throat ratings wars television shows don’t just have to rate, they have to rate fast. It’s no longer good enough to leisurely build a fan base because by then you’ve already lost some ratings ground to the opposition so TV shows have to grab a huge audience from day one and keep it. Hence Channel 7 burning a few million copies of (what is apparently) a smash hit TV show from America and sending it to your house- they want eyeballs aimed at their new show from the get-go.
New Weapon of Mass Advertising
Unfortunately, historically speaking, this sort of activity doesn’t favour local production. If you look back at many of Australia’s most successful TV shows they’re rarely smash hits from their first episode, many of them taking a significant amount of time to build a following and settle on their final format. The saving grace of these shows has often been their ability to incubate on the ABC, especially in regards to comedy where shows like The Aunty Jack Show, Good News Week and Kath and Kim were all given enough of a run to develop their own cult followings that spilled over into the wider population but even the commercials have had to be patient as local content across a variety of genres got their act together and settled in. In a world where ratings are needed straight away and shows like Yasmin’s Getting Married are canned after one week for not performing local TV is going to struggle to develop those key, long running series that become the foundation pillars of the Australian industry and the cultural artefacts that help create the unique tapestry we call ‘Our Own Culture’.
Fortunately though we still have the ABC (just) and we’re now developing a pay TV system that can provide other spaces for local content to grow, even down to the internet which is becoming more important to the creation of all things visual. Hopefully over the next few years we can see some new stuff along the lines of Love My Way, as well as more experimental stuff that properly reflects our own unique world experience- the authentic Australian experience our culture industry should be producing.
Now if we can only convince Channel 7 to start burning us copies of Lost episodes...
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