I saw it used to get a lot of social media engagement whenever SBS showed it, I don’t think its appeal was only limited to people of Chinese heritage. I wouldn’t say it was mainstream but it certainly seemed to have a decent following.
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Oh, it was certainly “cult” viewing in a way, just as certain things on SBS become (and yeah, even if it was mostly among the Chinese diaspora, that would not be an insignificant number). But it probably just as meant as much as a dig at Taken Out - If You Are The One_ felt like it got talked about more than I remember the former did!
(and then the TV company in Nanjing fiddled, or were told to fiddle, with the format and no-one here seemed to care anymore. Que sera, etc. 
)
The latter version on Ten did use the name that had become the de-facto international name for the format, not that it helped much.
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I agree that cult shows can generate chat and buzz. But in actual ratings, Take Me Out started with 604,000 viewers (5 metro cities) on Seven and even though it lost a lot of them along the way, would have had significantly more viewers than anything on SBS.
If You Are The One was actually shown on SBS2 /SBS Viceland which has even lower ratings than SBS.
The original Taken Out was shown on Channel V and on Ten at 7pm after Neighbours but was failing to keep its audience. It premiered with 851,000 viewers but dropped to 581,000 in that slot. It was moved to 6pm but then axed when its ratings in the final week fell to between 610,000 on Monday and 533,000 on Friday.
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5 September 1959: Adelaide’s first TV station, NWS9, is officially opened.
5 September 1975: Number 96‘s infamous ‘bomb-blast’ episode which saw four characters written out of the series – the list of those characters who died were not known until the following Monday’s episode.
YouTube: SilentNumber96
5 September 1994: Three Men And A Baby Grand, a 10-part comedy series starring Jonathan Biggins, Phillip Scott, Drew Forsythe and Genevieve Lemon, debuts on ABC.
5 September 2004: David Wenham, Mick Molloy, Leah Vandenberg, Deborah Kennedy, Justine Clarke, John Clarke, Heather Mitchell and Bruce Spence star in the telemovie The Brush-Off, screening on Seven.
5 September 2007: Summer Heights High, the mockumentary sitcom from comedian Chris Lilley, who performed the three lead roles — Ja’mie King, Jonah Takalua and drama teacher Mr G — debuts on ABC.
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I didn’t even realise Seven commissioned such a telemovie. It was a great cast though.
Found a bit of information about The Brush-Off on Wikipedia.
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i’d have to see if i can hunt this down. this is my favourite of the Murray Wheelan books
6 September 1976: ATV0’s evening variety show Ernie, hosted by Ernie Sigley, begins a week of shows presented live from Hong Kong.
6 September 1997: ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten networks override scheduled prime time programming to broadcast the funeral of Diana Princess Of Wales, live from London.
6 September 2008: Adam Hills, Louise Sauvage and Karen Tighe host ABC1‘s coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Paralympic Games from Beijing. Daily coverage of the Paralympics continues on both ABC1 and ABC2 channels.
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It’s crazy to think how popular this was at the time. I was in High School back then and every Thursday morning when you would get to school everyone would be running off the fresh batch of quotes from the previous nights episodes (plus talking about whatever The Chaser had done)
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back in my day, we used to do the same on Friday mornings after Fast Forward was on 
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Summer Heights High
The Chaser’s War on Everything (2007 only)
Ronnie Johns
These are the only 3 shows I can remember people being in school the following day and talking about. I think I was one of the only people who watched The Chaser’s War on Everything in 2006 when it was on random timeslots on Friday nights but that blew up big time in 2007 when it got a proper prime-time slot.
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The Goodies, The Comedy Company and The Paul Hogan Show were other ones we used to talk about at school the next morning. I was too young for Number 96 but apparently it was also the top conversation topic among schoolkids every morning, especially for sharing any juicy bits to the kids not allowed to watch it.
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I don’t remember kids talking about H&A or Neighbours when I was in school though Neighbours was hitting the skids at the time ratings-wise and I never watched H&A.
I remember kids at both primary and later high school talking about Full Frontal.
7 September 1963: RTQ7, Rockhampton, is officially opened.
7 September 1964: AMV4, Albury, is officially opened
7 September 1975: ABC debuts the historical drama Ben Hall, a joint production between ABC, BBC and 20th Century Fox. The 13-part series was estimated to cost $2 million and starred British actors Jon Finch and Evin Crowley with Vincent Ball, Brian Blain, Ruth Cracknell, Elizabeth Alexander, John Orcsik, Alister Smart and Diana McLean.
7 September 1977: Jimmy Hannan hosts Quest Of Quests, from the National Gallery in Melbourne and telecast on the Nine Network, to select Australia’s representatives into the Miss World, Miss Young International, Miss International and Miss Asia pageants. Western Australian Jaye Hopewell, 20, was selected as Miss World Australia.
7 September 1981: The Price Is Right is revived after almost a decade off-air — this time re-named The New Price Is Right and hosted by Ian Turpie.
7 September 1992: ABC begins its coverage of the Paralympic Games from Spain, with a nightly half-hour package of highlights at 6.00pm.
7 September 1994: Brandon Burke and Dina Panozzo star in the debut of sitcom Wedlocked (Seven).
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Number 96 was not shown on TV in FNQ in the 70s ,there were only 2 channels back then in regional QLD,The ABC and FNQ 10 (Cairns) or TNQ 7 (Townsville) and the ABC
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8 September 1990: Ten wipes out its usual overnight schedule of B-grade re-runs and movies and from tonight replaces that with Ten Newswatch, a direct telecast of news coverage from US network CNN with emphasis on the escalating situation in the Middle East.
8 September 1992: Nine debuts sitcom My Two Wives, starring Peter Fisher, Linda Newton, Morna Seres, Kym Valentine and Brett Blewett.
8 September 1993: Nine screens the pilot to the 1950s drama Snowy, depicting the post-war period and events around the Snowy Mountain hydro power project. The regular series commenced weekly screening from the following night.
8 September 2009: Comedian and actor Magda Szubanski hosts the debut of Ten‘s new series The Spearman Experiment, presenting a countdown and analysis of various moments and events around pop culture.
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It makes CNN a household name here in Australia, especially with its coverage of the first Gulf War.
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9 September 1975: Former This Day Tonight host Bill Peach launches his ABC travel series, Peach’s Australia.
9 September 1988: TVQ0’s last day of transmission before conversion to TVQ10. The switch from Channel 0 to 10 happened just after midnight, while its sister station, Vision TV in the neighbouring Darling Downs region, made a reciprocal switch from Channel 10 to 0 at the same time.
9 September 1992: Noni Hazlehurst, John Hargreaves, Deborra-Lee Furness and Ray Barrett star in the ABC telemovie Waiting, based around a surrogate mother-to-be and the gathering of friends in the lead up to the birth of the baby.
9 September 1993: Bruce McAvaney hosts Seven‘s new sports-magazine program Seasons.
9 September 2001: John Howard, Anne Tenney, Caitlin McDougall, Abe Forsythe, Michala Banas, Bree Walters, Clayton Watson and Scott Major star in Seven’s new drama series Always Greener.
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