The numbers are also preliminary. The numbers we see are for the 7.30-10.30pm slot, isn’t it?
When consolidated numbers are in, will be interesting to see if it will be coded as one (7.30pm-12.30am), or it will come with two numbers - the ones we see above, and one for “late”?
The stars of Australian TV these days don’t have the people power they once did. Television habits have changed.
Long weekend across a lot of Australia and after being locked up for a large portion of the last 2 years people are not going to stay home to watch this (or anything for that matter) on a Saturday night. Should have been next Sunday night…or a week night maybe this week.
I didn’t say it will be the last time forever. I didn’t say the networks did it for profits. I said last time in a while. We don’t know when a big natural disaster will happen. It could be a while the networks join forces again, as the last time was 10 years ago (from memory?)
Yes, the night was to raise money and awareness, which they did a great job of. Raising over $25 million is awesome. But also, at the same time like what every other person said in here - that the ratings were on the low side.
Some people have no idea what this is about? I aint one of them. Nice dig though.
Agree - reckon there’s going to be a fair bit of soul searching and retrospecting being done not just at commercial networks but across the wider Australian TV industry about the state of it.
For a variety of reasons (some self-inflicted, some not), networks are now viewed by many viewers as vessels for content in that they’ll watch a given network for a particular show/s they like or because they have the rights to a particular sport/competition rather than out of a sense of loyalty to said network. Since viewers don’t have an attachment to network personalities like they used to, them being the drawcard of a telethon (as they were promoted for Australia Unites) isn’t the drawcard they used to be.
While big corporate donations are obviously important for any fundraising initiative, last night’s telethon focused too heavily on promoting those donations.
Perhaps the telethon would have benefited from the networks having more time to organise and promote it. However, I doubt after seeing the number it pulled that it would have done much better if it aired on another day.
It would be interesting to see if the results in the regionals (hardest hit like Lismore) did proportionally/ comparatively better and if the national rankings were still the same? @TV.Cynic
Maybe there needs to be a rethink of how Telethons are done. I understand the need to get the information out there to encourage people to donate but the crosses to the call centres and the interviews were quite boring. Maybe it should be done as a concert like we see for New Years Eve and Australia Day. The chats could be short and sweet, in between the performances.
It certainly shows that the format is basically dead for one-offs (the Perth and Good Friday telethons seem to perform better, but I suspect that history plays a big part) it also brings into question the real value of roadblocking. Perhaps sharing the coverage round on an hourly or two-hourly basis may have been better
A decent-sized donation from the corporate sector (and government) is going to hide what will be a fairly lacklustre fundraising effort.
You can get an idea of the regional numbers from the total viewing number in the media release. Seems to be about on par with the proportion of viewing that regional viewing normally contributes.
A lot of negative sentiment towards the Red Cross after the bushfires fiasco with getting money to affected people could’ve affected viewing last night too, an overwhelming majority of comments online on any post relating to the Telethon that I saw was not positive at all.
Telethons have a certain halo effect but they are not necessarily big raters and when it’s spread over three networks in varying timezones it’s going to look fairly bleak in ratings terms. Very few would have stuck around for the whole thing and may have just tuned in and out intermittently, which would have brought averages down. The more important number, though, is the amount raised: $25 million.
Exactly this. Very few people will sit through hours of a telethon on a Saturday night. It needs to be a big event with drawcards like that Fire Fight back in early 2020. That was an event that had people glued to their screens. This audience was just diluted across 3 networks. 600k or so on one network would’ve looked more of a success. It’s probably also likely that this telethon rated better in regional than metro.
Comic Relief was just on Friday night on BBC, an example of how to do a great telethon. Admittingly very different circumstances where they have a year to prepare, rather than day/weeks but it was a 3 hr interesting way to raise £42