Pricing yourself out of the market

In Mediaspy today there's an interesting report about the impending AFL rights negotiations with Citigroup warning that the asking price of 1 billion dollars is too high.

You can read that story here Citigroup issues AFL TV rights warning: $1bn is too high

Increasingly I think the commercial networks would be mugs to pay $1b for AFL rights. The ratings for AFL keep sliding down the slope each year and you have the added logistical headache of finding alternative programming for Sydney and Brisbane. Last Thursday’s match was beamed live into Sydney on channel One, only 9,000 people watched! How the AFL thinks they sustain 2 teams in that city let alone justify a billion dollar price tag for the rights is beyond me.

Ten will want to be involved again because they have the sports channel (I believe they’re also going after Rugby League which they had during the 80s), current Seven is suing Ten so I’m not sure that they’ll work together, but Seven needs a partner and I don’t think it will be Foxtel, unless Foxtel just partners up with Ten (I don’t think Nine will be a player in the negotiations)

You only have to look at the (non) performance of One HD which regularly nets only 1 or 2% of the Audience vs channels like 11 or GO! which get up to 5 or 6% to see that live sport is no longer king in this country.

Saturday 21 March 2008

Saturday’s Free to air Ratings Chart will be up this evening, again the night saw a win for Seven on the back of their early evening lineup with ABC doing well as always and Ten saving face with a rerun of Home Alone 2.

Nine flopped with two poorly chosen movies, although their localised schedule in Brisbane performed well in that city (though not well enough to justify phoning it in for the other markets)

In the meantime let's look at the top PAY TV series for last week by Audience Reach....

Week 2 - Pay TV

Thought I was done with last weeks ratings? Well there was one more lot to wheel out - the Pay TV ratings.

These charts show the top ten by genre in Audience Reach. Audience Reach shows the total number of viewers who catch a particular program during any of it's airings over the course of week - it's useful because most series and movies have multiple screenings over a week, some are rerun at late night or the next day, others are timeshifted on the two hour channel and others still played again days later.

This measure supposedly doesn't double up on viewers so if I watch Family Guy tonight, and again tomorrow, then apparently I'm only counted once, which is good because then we get a picture of total numbers who may watch the program.

One thing you can marvel at from this list is the sheer dominance of 3 channels - FOX8, UKTV and Fox Classics. It's also interesting to see that despite Arena's switch to reality TV, it's biggest rater is one of it's old comedies, Sex and the City whereas another of it's old sitcoms, Friends, is introducing viewers to the new 111 Hits!

Top Cable Series

Here's the list of top cable series in Australia for last week, this measure is the number of indivdual viewers watching any part of any episode of the program throughout the week - it's not an accurate measure as it can encompass different episodes but it gives a decent idea of what series on cable that most people can agree on.