SBS’ latest foray into ‘slow TV’ averages 294,333 metro viewers
SBS’ latest ‘slow television’ program, The Indian Pacific, averaged just less than 300,000 viewers across the three sessions.
The program, which comes a year after SBS aired The Ghan, pulled its largest audience on the first leg – 332,000 metro viewers. The second leg and third leg averaged metro audiences of 283,000 and 268,000, bringing the metro average to 294,333. Last year, The Ghan managed an average of 400,000.
The Indian Pacific ran on SBS from 7:30pm
Nationally the train trip, which runs between Sydney and Perth, had audiences of 386,000, 427,000 and 420,000. The show ran from 7:30pm – 10:40pm and is the first of four new ‘slow’ programs announced by SBS in November.
However, news and cricket were more popular on Sunday night. The most-watched program of the evening was Seven’s 6pm bulletin, which pulled a metro audience of 910,000, while Nine News Sunday managed 785,000 metro viewers.
The Big Bash League, which commenced at 7pm and saw the Sydney Sixers and Adelaide Strikers battle it out, was the most-watched non-news program of the night, with 585,000 metro viewers tuning in to session one, and 552,000 watching session two. The innings break managed 536,000 across the five metro cities.
Earlier on in the day, session two day four of the fourth Test between Australia and India captured a metro audience of 488,000, according to OzTAM’s preliminary figures. The rain delays averaged 504,000 and 313,000 respectively.
On Nine, in the same time slot as the Big Bash and The Indian Pacific was 60 Minutes, which achieved 560,000 metro viewers.
However thanks to the cricket and news, Seven comfortably won Sunday night with a 21% share of audience, ahead of Nine’s 15.5% and Ten’s 10.9%. National broadcasters ABC and SBS had shares of 11.1% and 8.2%.
Total network share also went to Seven – rising to 31% when including the four multi-channels, 7Two, 7mate, 7flix and 7Food. Nine Network’s share was 26.3%, Network Ten had a 15.7% share of audience just ahead of ABC’s 15.6% and SBS Network’s share was 11.5%.
I watched the Indian Pacific train trip on Sunday night. A running commentary would have improved the show
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This was, without doubt, the worst documentary I have seen in years. Even a voice over would not have saved it. If the definition of “slow TV” is endless repetitive sequences of railway lines without explanation (except the occasional super that was often too fast, ironically, to read) then slow TV is not going to arrive.
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