Nine fails to read between the lines

Eddie McGuire. It seems you can’t go three weeks in this place without another Eddie McGuire quiz show being foisted on the weary public.

Honestly it’s like they’re being mass-produced.

5 nights a week you can watch Eddie host a heavily modified version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ leading into the news, a few weeks back the book was unceremoniously closed on his new quiz show ‘Million Dollar Drop’ (an interesting idea hampered by being strung out over the course of a full hour)

Now Eddie’s back on screens without a moment to lose quizzing celebrities about sporting trivia with ‘Between the Lines’

Structurally at least, the show should be doing well, the celebs involved are generally watchable, the format itself seems tight, its light entertainment on a night stuffed with dramas and it leads directly into The Footy Show.

So why is it tanking?

I’m not sure why exactly – but I think the fundamentals of the show are good, but the viewer sees an advertisement, hears two words and just mentally tunes out.

Eddie Everywhere, the man, the legend.

Eddie McGuire is in many ways, in this day and age a unique creation, a throwback to the olden days of television when it was more regionalised.

You see television never took networking all that seriously until maybe the late 1970s. Until that time there were wild variations in schedules from city to city as the individual stations had a lot more control over program content.

That era saw the likes of Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton become household names despite the fact that their show (In Melbourne Tonight) was only seen live (if at all) in the Melbourne market!

Eddie is a similar beast, he rose to prominence as a sports reporter for Channel Ten Melbourne, but it was helming The Footy Show on channel nine which made him a star.

The Footy Show, lest we forget, was not like other shows, it was guerrilla television, starting in an era where Footy only ever aired on Seven, Nine put together a show about the sport with NO FOOTAGE, relying on the personalities of its presenters to bring in the viewers and people lapped it up.

An NRL based show was quickly created (Nine did –and still does- have the NRL rights) and Nine had Thursday nights sewn up.

Pretty soon McGuire was a household name in Melbourne, but north of the Murray he was a complete unknown. Luckily Nine has plenty of ‘event’ programming in need of an MC and in a role that used to be filled by journalist and daytime host Ray Martin, Eddie started popping up everywhere.

It started with Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 1999 – a big deal quiz show format which reportedly had everyone pulling a salary from channel nine trying out for the hosts role. McGuire got the gig and with it (and the show’s long run) viewers got another chance to see the man every week.

In case you don’t watch quiz shows or follow the AFL though, you could still see Eddie on such occasions as the Logie Awards, the National IQ test, The Tsunami Telethon (which itself is a crowning achievement in Aus TV IMO – off topic), A Current Affair just to name a few.

In fact channel Nine’s schedule was so full of Eddie at one point that they made the only logical move they could and appointed him CEO of the network!

Now there are two types of people working in front of the camera for TV networks, freelancers and stars.

Regular freelancers are hired on a show by show basis, by a specific program, these are normally actors or maybe presenters on a show made by an outside production company.

The network stars on the other hand, they’re employed by the network, and their job description can vary wildly depending on what the network wants them to do, one week they might be fronting a news program, the next they might be filming Christmas promos, the week after they could do a spot on a travel show.

All the while, their pay doesn’t change, they draw a salary and it doesn’t fluctuate depending on the task at hand (where as it would for freelancers).

At any rate, by the time he was CEO, Eddie’s salary had swelled to somewhere around $3-4 million!

A big chunk of that was no doubt negotiated when he was promoted to CEO, by reports (and we can take them with a grain of salt I guess) he’s still worth that even though he’s just back to being a TV presenter and for some time the network seemed to struggle with finding him something to do.

They plugged that gap with Millionaire Hot Seat, a good lead in to Nine’s News and a high output gig that IMO certainly justifies a big salary by the network.

But Nine keep trying to find MOAR projects for Eddie to front.

This year we’ve seen two so far, Million Dollar Drop and now Between the Lines (which was mooted all the way back in 2009!)

Million Dollar Drop bombed in a big way and it looks like Between the Lines is headed for a similar fate, but why?

A big part of the reason is McGuire himself and yet its not his fault. He presents the shows perfectly well, he’s a competent host, quick on his feet and charming to boot, but he’s also been oversaturated, remember he’s “Eddie Everywhere” every time his name is mentioned a subset of viewers just rolls their eyes and tunes out.

You’ll never win these people back (at least not straight away) no matter how hard you try, its not you (Eddie) its them. As unfair as it is, familiarity breeds contempt, it’s a cliché because its true!

Nine’s programmers look at these formats and think – ‘who do we have already on the payroll who can pull this off?’ and naturally Eddie is given the call, but what if they didn’t have the cost pressures of star salaries, where they could get a freelancer in to do the job, someone different that might bring in that casual aud, and let Eddie lay low for a while, doing his 5.30 thing, giving people the chance to miss him a little before putting him on the next big thing.

Just a thought…

Thursday, 19 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

NETWORK SKED


DIGITAL SKED.

Thursday, 12 May 2011

Ok so its not all bad for Masterchef.  Seems like with AGT out of the way for a night the aud for Masterchef lifts.

Earlier in the week it was looking as if the Talent show and Dancing with the Stars were going to erode the ratings of ten's juggernaut. 

Certainly ten's previous reality hits gave suffered from audience drop-off in the third year but a figure of 1.5million viewers in a Thursday shows there's not too much for ten to worry about yet, its just that Seven's reality skeins are having an unusually good year.

The Good Wife and SVU had their best weeks of the season so far but even then they dropped almost half of the Masterchef aud.

Worse though was channel Nine which can't catch a break!  New show (buggered if I know what genre - Eddie McGuire vehicle that's a genre at this point right?) Between the Lines is his second major flop in as many months.

More on this after I take a look at his show for myself next week.

Sons of Liberty

Well the first big thing you'll notice is the switcheroo with George Negus moving to 6.30 to take on the big Current Affairs duopoly. I have high hopes for it so I'll reserve any comment until its had a bit of time to bed in.

Leaving that to one side there's plenty of things to be annoyed with here. A month ago Brothers and Sisters was netting 1 million viewers, now half an hour later and behind a middling show its doing half that number.

Ten have gone back to the Undercover Boss for the time being and the result is - pathetic, its funny actually - both 7pm Project and the Stand up comedy special net 750K yet 200,000 people decide to take the hour inbetween them off.

In spite of a MASSIVE amount of promotion, Two and a Half Men only netted 1 million viewers, its easy to see why - that show is now pedestrian compared to things like this...



But more of a worry for Nine is the Million Dollar Drop, 4th in it's slot and less viewers than the 5.30pm games shows, its a bonafide flop. Part of the problem IMO is that the show is nothing more than a vehicle for Eddie McGuire to sit there and chat to people (at copious length) while the rest of us wait for some sort of game show. Watching Eddie McGuire hosting a game show is like sitting through those Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden asks every question 3 times and then bickers with his girlfriend Rose. It's frustrating and it should be ended.

On digital check out the amazing performances by 7TWO and Eleven with Neighbours, Supernatural and Raymond all netting their biggest numbers yet.

No way to Garner viewers

Saturdays, err, I mean Wednesdays are turning into a 3 horse race with Ten's Masterchef and Seven's The Pacific both flanking Nine's Hey Hey revival - although Hey Hey is softer now that viewers know they can always catch it next week, at least Nine has gotten out 2 hours over 1 million viewers, the rest of the night on seven was decidedly ordinary with the reality skeins at 7.30 being locked out by Masterchef and Criminal Minds being beaten by Nine's US version of another SBS hit - Who do you think you are.

Ten deserves a rap over the knuckles for wasting a decent lead in on a pathetic movie - I've never heard of PS I Love You but from my channel surfing the other night I determined that it involved Jennifer Garner which is your first indication of FAIL.

You might be looking at the chart and wondering why I have a picture of Eddie McGuire next to the EPIC FAIL for Deal or no Deal - well Andrew O'Keefe is currently having is arse handed to him by Eddie's Hot Seat and if this keeps up for the rest of the season we could see Seven packing up the suitcases.

Star system holding television back

As has been widely reported this week alleged funnyman Trevor Marmalade was dropped from Nine's footy show.

This morning on 3AW Peter Ford reported that the reason for the departure was over Salary. According to Ford, Nine had told Marmalade that they would only have him back if he took a pay cut down from 300K to 150K, it was a take it or leave it deal and Marmalade apparently left it.

Now I'm no financial whiz, but if they were paying him $300,000pa to tell 3 jokes a week on a show that only plays on one of Nine's O&Os (and 4 affiliates) representing less than half of the total Australian aud, they're weren't exactly getting their money's worth were they?

I’d want some more bang for my buck – truth be told. One of the things that seems to be broken with the TV business model is the idea of star salaries. This is where people are kept on the company payroll and yet there’s no role for them.

It’s very reminiscent of the whole Hollywood Star System where studios would employ actors on a full time basis and assign them to their movies as they see fit.

Old time movie buffs will wax nostalgic about this closed shop but really in terms of finding the best people for your movie it was holding the whole system back. You only have to compare the vanilla films of the studio era to the more memorable films of the 60’s, 70’s and beyond and you’ll see that while it may maintain a competitive advantage for the biggest player, it often locks out good new talent and keeps talented people away from the movies that would suit them.

So it is with television.

The most glaring example of this is Eddie McGuire, what has he actually done this year? Has been on TV? I think he hosted ACA at one point. Could anybody have imagined years ago that McGuire could host ACA? I couldn’t, it seems bizarre but there he was for a week earlier this year.

How come, well because he’s getting paid anyway, so they may as well have him do something. This is just weird, surely you wouldn’t run a business like this.

McGuire’s stock in trade is AFL and Game Shows, Game Shows are all but extinct after a surge in the early part of this decade and Nine not only doesn’t have the rights to AFL but it’s Melbourne Footy Show has had an all new team in place for two years since McGuire made the improbable leap to ring-in CEO.

While Nine’s problems with having so many faded stars on the payroll have been biting them over the past two years, Seven has been amassing a huge employee base of it’s own, poaching people left right and centre from the other networks.

They’ve been doing it since 2004 when they lured Ian Ross (Rosco) from Seven and Ian Dickson (Dicko) from Ten, and ever since then have been coaxing folks from the other three nets with alarming regularity.

Having all these people on the payroll is great when you’re riding high, suddenly your network becomes a destination for viewers to see their favourite stars or newsreaders, Nine used to be like this – in the 90’s but slowly bit by bit the wheels come off the star factory and you’re stuck with highly paid people being warehoused, or twiddling their thumbs after their shows have been cancelled.

We then get the embarrassing situation where the network starts trying to come up with ‘star vehicles’, Seven has already experienced this with Dicko lurching the poor man (well not that poor really) from flop to flop in a vain attempt to fit a round peg into a square hole. Nine did it with Bert Newton, kicking Bud Tingwell off 20 to 01 and giving it over to Bert. All this year they’ve scratching around for something for Eddie to do, too afraid to cut him loose and yet the vehicle is just not there.

Eventually this will happen to Seven when their current crop ages or viewers move on and they’ll find themselves in much the same strife that Nine is in now, it’s in their DNA – you see in the past 5 years Seven has become Nine.

What does this have to do with Marmalade, well its just a small example of some of the misplaced capital invested at Nine over the years and I’m hopeful for their sake that they take a long hard look at their star system.

Making entertaining shows for viewers should be the priority, not making shows solely to occupy their talent.