Seven’s Australia Versus drops a million viewers in an hour
Tim Ross achieved a rare feat in Australian television on Tuesday night.
The first episode of Seven’s Australia Versus shed more than a million viewers on the audience it inherited from Packed To The Rafters.
Last night’s episode of the clip show featured comedians debating who was best out of Australia and England across a variety of categories.
But despite inheriting the network’s biggest audience of the night, the show lost two thirds of them.
Packed To The Rafters, which ran from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, pulled in an average of just over 1.8m viewers, according to preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam. It was second for the night, just behind Ten’s Masterchef.
Australia Versus pulled in an average of 623,000 viewers, 23rd for the night, although it should be taken into account that audiences tend to start falling away at that part of the evening. However, it even came in behind The ABC’s QI (644,000) which was in the same time slot.
The show is the first major project for Tim Ross since he departed Nova’s Sydney-based Merrick & Rosso breakfast show at the end of last year.
The attraction for networks of creating successful clip show formats is that they can make for relatively low cost television that still qualifies as local content.
But winning audiences with that type of format is not as easy as it may appear.
The only clip show that has consistently performed in recent years is Nine’s 20 To 01 fronted by Bert Newton.
Ten’s attempt – The Spearman Experiment which starred comedian Magda Szubanski – quickly died last year after being derided as a 20 To 01 rip-off.
Despite the dismal performance of Australia Versus, Packed To The Rafters was enough to take Seven to a win for the night.
Tuesday’s top 15 shows:
- Masterchef Ten 1.852
- Packed to the Rafters Seven 1.802
- Modern Family Ten 1.532
- Today Tonight Seven 1.475
- Seven News Seven 1.453
- Nine News Nine 1.281
- A Current Affair Nine 1.171
- Minute to Win It Seven 1.110
- Two and a Half Men – 7:00pm Nine 1.088
- ABC News ABC 1.076
- NCIS: Los Angeles Ten 1.046
- Home and Away Seven 1.045
- NCIS Ten 1.008
- The 7PM Project Ten 0.957
- Greatest Cities of the World ABC 0.945
Tuesday’s station share:
- Seven: 26.2%
- Ten: 24.2%
- Nine: 22.8%
- ABC1: 14.5%
- SBS1: 5.4%
- GO!: 2.0%
- 7TWO 1.8%
- ABC2: 1.3%
- ABC3: 0.6%
- One: 0.6%
- SBS2: 0.5%
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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20 to 01
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I like the work of Tim Ross on radio and some of his TV work, but even watching the promo I felt it was even more of a turkey than Spearman.
Shame to waste a talent
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This was truly one of the worst programmes ever shown on Australian TV. It made 20 to 1 look like high art.
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Yep, not surprising. It is a dog of a show. I was quite stunned at how bad it was in fact. And not even vaguely amusing.
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This was bloody awful. Could only bare 90 seconds and even that was hard.
Felt so cheap and crap, everything from the editing, to the music.
Please axe it.
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I hope Tim Ross is being payed a veritable fuckload by CH 7 to host Australia Versus, cos he looks about as comfortable as a man being anally probed with a ball-point pen.
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I am so pleased to hear this rated poorly. I was embarrassed just watching the promos. Channel 7, I’d expect this kind of TV from Channel 9, very disappointing.
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Quite a wide-rimmed ball-pint pen, at that.
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Who would’ve thought, Channel 7 not coming up with something original or creative?
Besides, who knows what the original idea was that Ross had before it was watered down and Channel 7’nd.
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another 7 lame duck in a long list of lame ducks
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Tim will be hard pressed coming back from this flop on TV id think
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THIS WAS SOOOOO BAD THIS SHOW
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I feel sorry for Tim Ross. I’m sure this wasn’t what he signed on for. What a waste of his talent.
Exactly who did Seven think they were going to ‘entertain’ with this pulp? It’s bad enough that Nine thinks 20-1 is acceptable to broadcast, but for Seven to try and emulate the same format is a insult.
Wake up TV Networks.
And someone, give Tim Ross something more interesting to do.
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Tim Ross is such a sellout. He deserves it all. I couldn’t even wath the show as the shine from his teeth were too bright.
idiot
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Herald Sun Reader: the show wasn’t Ross’s idea, he just signed on to host it.
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@ BD
cheers.
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Tim Ross – talent – please, at least Sandilands delivers. Off to SBS Rosso
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Rabble rabble rabble rabble!
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