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Gruen’s big debut

Those ads with fake beer and banks sure did the trick. The Gruen Transfer had an impressive debut with 1.287 million people nationally last night. It won its timeslot, beating new episodes of House, Cold Case and Criminal Minds.

It was the highest-rating launch for an entertainment program on ABC1 since 1991, when people meter data was introduced, out-rating Kath & Kim’s (1.146) debut in 2002.

Wil Anderson said today, “I’m just glad people watched the ads and didn’t use them as an opportunity to go to the toilet or get a biscuit”.

The show attracted 421,000 in Sydney, 402,000 in Melbourne, 205,000 in Brisbane, 95,000 in Adelaide and 164,000 in Perth.

Week 22

9 Responses

  1. One thing that undoubtedly helped this show a lot last night was that the ABC didn’t do their now-usual five minutes of promos before the show, as they do every week with Spicks And Specks. Coming out of that show they pretty much went straight into The Gruen Transfer, probably snagging a good deal of the S&S audience in the process.

    How many viewers the show REALLY got might be more of a mystery, as I seriously doubt the flawed ratings system is capable of accurately reporting the size of the ABC’s true audience. If this percentage of carefully-filtered mainstream viewers watched last night, then it’s safe to say the true figure was likely a lot higher.

    And the show itself? I liked it a lot, and could easily forgive it its opening-night nerves. It should settle down to be a must-see. And the fake-ad assignment turned out a couple of gems 🙂

  2. Didn’t watch it on telly but downloaded and watched it just before and I think it is a very clever show. I can see teachers across Australia showing this show to students in Media Studies and Visual Communication and Design classes.

    Some of the humour was abit off or forced, as said above, but the interaction with the audience with the brilliant website they have set up will keep people engaged with the show. I particularly liked the segment where they take something unappealing and make it sought-after (I won’t spoil it here).

    And ABC was .1% away from 20% market share last night. The ABC is doing surprisingly well this year. Is it something in the water or has it always done this well. I believe they usually hover around 15-16%.

  3. I was in the studio audience for last nights taping of episode 5 and Wil was really nervous and twitchy, perhaps because the 1st episode was going to air on TV just after the 5th episode was recorded

    he also really beat himself up saying swearing many times when he made mistakes

  4. It will be very interesting to see how many turn up to watch it next week.Because their was nothing decent to watch at that hour it did well.I found it boring and I work in ad land

  5. It was a promising start and will only improve once the format settles down. Some of the attempts at humour, coming from people who aren’t comedians, was a little forced. Overall, though, I enjoyed it.

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