How X Factor sneaked 200,000 more viewers
There has always been a dark art to ensuring your programmes rate as well as they possibly can.
That’s why the viewer may think they are watching one show, but the ratings the next day reveal that they were actually watching two – for instance, a final show followed by a winner announcement show.
That way, the average audience for the exciting bit – which is inevitably higher – has a chance of making the top 40 shows of the year.
Ten does it, with shows such as Masterchef; Nine even did it last night with The Block.
But Seven is currently taking it to a whole new level.
Take the final of The X Factor. As Mumbrella reported on Tuesday, the final show got a preliminary OzTam rating of 1.363m, while the winner announcement scored a respectable 1.632m.
That, it would seem, was not enough for Seven though. The networks have the opportunity to amend their logs – generally because of news or other programming overruns. Now Seven has decided that the winner announcement “show” was just nine minutes. And the average audience during those nine minutes was 1.833m.
One of Seven’s rivals tells Dr Mumbo: “Confirmed program logs always change a bit for a whole host of reasons – but in this case it was done to try and bump the audience.”
Which is good for Seven’s ego, good for the story its sales team can tell advertisers, and good for maximising the number of programmes in the top 40 for the year.
As Mumbrella reported last week, that’s how Seven managed to get its five minute sneak peak of Winners & Losers to number one show. He understands that rumblings from rivals later led to a backdown on that occasion and that it did not appear in the subsequent top shows of the week list.
Don’t expect the same this time though.
The X Factor final rated 1.8m – and that’s official.
If they had it in the TV guide before it went to air and promoted it as such … sounds fair. If they waited until the overnight ratings were in and then ‘created’ this nine-minute programme then that is “cooking the books”.
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