AFL helps Ten win but still no live game for Sydney and Brisbane digital viewers
Ten’s new digital sports channel One may have launched last night, but Sydney and Melbourne viewers still didn’t get to see the AFL season opener live.
The network simulcast coverage of the Richmond vs Carlton game on Ten and new digital channel One. Viewers in Melbourne watched it live, those in Adelaide and Perth on a short delay and those in Sydney and Brisbane saw it after 11pm.
Those outside Melbourne who tuned into One thinking they’d see the game live, instead found themselves watching swimming. Because the sport is on the government’s anti-syphoning list, it couldn’t be shown on digital until it had been on Ten.
However, where the game was shown live, it easily won its timeslot for Ten.
According to the prelimary ratings from OzTam, the night marked Ten’s first victory of the offical ratings season: Ten 30.6% Seven 25%; Nine 23.6%; ABC 16.2%; SBS 4.6%.
The top ten:
- Seven News – Seven 1.4m
- Today Tonight – Seven 1.3m
- Ghost Whisperer – Seven 1.1m
- The Biggest Loser – Ten 1.1m
- ABC News – ABC 1.1m
- Two and a Half Men – Nine 1.1m
- Home and Away – Seven 1m
- Nine News – Nine 1m
- AFL: Richmond v Carlton – Ten 1m
- 20 to 1 – Nine 1m
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I don’t know a single person who would watch non-Olympic swimming even if they were paid to do so.
How Channel 10 can justify delaying the first game of the AFL season for some run of the mill swimming meet is totally beyond me.
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What I find most interesting is how the AFL can seriously think that a second side in Sydney will get up when the media partners they currently have won’t support the current structure?
Not running AFL – admittedly on a channel that has at best token penetration – in favour of swimming has shown how serious TEN are in their support of AFL football.
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It seemed a perfect opportunity missed by HD One. I live in Sydney and still watched it live on Foxtel Main event, but had expected it to be One.
So much for anti syphoning.
I agree with Phil how serious are TEN of there support of AFL nationally
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@ Dylan, Phil and Uhdy.
As an Adelaide-born Sydneysider, I couldn’t agree with you more.
They should have taken the opportunity of a rare Thursday night AFL game being played and broadcast it as their launch program around the whole country. The fact that the match was sold out is enough to demonstrate the interest in the particular game, especially being a week night.
When I found out the launch was for a Thursday evening which so happened to also be the first game of the new AFL season , I was extremely disappointed to find out last night that it was not to be broadcast live in Sydney and now they’re showing a replay of it tonight during primetime? You’ve got to be joking.
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What I found annoying was the Swans game on a delay on Channel 10 in Sydney, with the Swans tweeting away in realtime, http://twitter.com/sydneyswans on #swans.
No more multi-tasking -I will never use Twitter on my iphone ever again! It ruined the game by knowing the score!!
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