0/5

“Survivors ready? GO!”

Ahead of the launch of GO! on Sunday night, TV Tonight spoke to Les Sampson, Nine's Director of Multichannels about the new channel.

survFrom today GO! begins its signal on digital televisions, ahead of its ‘soft-launch’ on Sunday night with an array of tasty titles.

TV Tonight spoke to Les Sampson, Nine’s Network Director of Multichannels about its programming.

GO! is structured similar to a subscription TV channel with ‘block’ programming from 3:30pm – 12am, which is repeated again the next day. The SD channel has been carefully programmed so as not to cannibalise Nine and to skew towards younger demographics.

“The model is designed so that we get maximum use of the available audience,” says Sampson.

“At the moment the schedule is ‘blocked’ but probably in the next two months we’ll expand those blocks out. It’s a work in progress.”

The channel launches at 6:30pm on Sunday with a new series of Wipeout. While Nine has 60 Minutes and Rescue, GO! begins with comedy titles such as The Big Bang Theory and Aliens in America.

Aliens in America is a fun little show,” he says. “A family decides they want to get an exchange student, so they advertise hoping for a tall blonde Norwegian or a hot sexy German. But they end up with a guy from Pakistan. He’s not what they’re expecting so he’s the ‘alien’ in the family. It’s funny with its interaction between the eastern and western mentality. It’s a fun little show that has a sense of what the channel is. It’s a little bit risqué, with some moments that are potentially politically incorrect.

“Mondays we’ve got Dog The Bounty Hunter, Neighbours at War, Bad Lad’s Army, so it’s a ‘go get ’em’ type theme, in a sort of blokey night. Obviously we have female-skewing shows on the premium channel with Farmer and Drop Dead Diva.”

Tuesday night offers reality with Survivor, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

“We’re playing (Survivor) Gabon and then we lead into the next series (Tocantins). They are all new Australian premiere episodes which you wouldn’t have seen on Foxtel,” says Sampson.

“Wednesday night we’ve got Sarah Connor Chronicles, Fringe, Eleventh Hour episodes. We’ve played a few episodes before but the majority will be new. Thursday’s Gossip Girl will be a repeat because it’s been on Foxtel, but most will be Free to Air premiere episodes. There’s Moonlight and then The Hills which will pick up from where we left off.”

Fridays and Saturdays offers repeats of CSIs plus the return of Dance Your Ass Off.

“And at 7:30 weeknights TMZ will be Australian premiere episodes which we pull off the satellite everyday. They fit the channel, they’re very young, very papparazzi driven.”

TMZ will pair with Entertainment Tonight which premieres on Nine at 3pm before playing again at 7pm on GO!

In designing the new channel, Sampson says classification issues have been the network’s biggest problem.

“Foxtel have the luxury of being able to play content wherever they want pretty much,” he said. “We still have to play ‘G’ programming early evening. We can’t play ‘M’ programming before 8:30. We can play it during the day between 12 and 3, but not during school holidays and it’s the same problem on weekends.”

GO! will also screen music clips overnight as part of The ARIA Music Show. Over summer while the premium channel has a focus on cricket GO! will offer complementary programming.

In October when GO! completes its launch, it will offer the Australian premiere of Kevin Williamson’s The Vampire Diaries, as well as breakaway commercial feeds in each market. Sampson sees the channel as a ‘work in progress’ and indicates the addition of channel exclusive interstitials.

“We’re looking at doing fashion updates, snow report updates, bar and restaurant interstitials. The channel is very new so it’s a matter of developing out. It will grow.”

While shows that are dropped off Nine are not necessarily guaranteed an immediate place on GO! the upside is the channel is looking to playout its series.

“We have to forward-plan 6 to 12 months in advance. So we won’t just drop one show for another. We want to try and play out each episode of each series.”

Sampson also flagged other titles to follow inclusing Weeds, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Hell’s Kitchen and Nip / Tuck.

“Unfortunately we can’t have everything on the schedule at once!”

GO! Channel 99
WIN / NBN Channel 88 (East Coast)
GO! Digital TV help line on 1300 152 231

68 Responses

  1. “Foxtel have the luxury of being able to play content wherever they want pretty much,” he said. “We still have to play ‘G’ programming early evening. We can’t play ‘M’ programming before 8:30. We can play it during the day between 12 and 3, but not during school holidays and it’s the same problem on weekends.”

    So why did I see Teachers on ABC2 last night at 6.30pm. This show was rated M.

  2. Finally something instead of sport sport sport of more sport. I will watching GO now instead of seven and the list of shows to be aired will be awesome. Especially Vampire Diaries. You Rock, GO!!

  3. jed- survivor gets repeated on wednesday at noon.
    the repeating is probably the most handy thing about this channel i think i’ll be using it quite a bit.

    i think after i rescan i will put this channel first in my favourites list because it is the kind of channel that if you are flicking around you will actually stay on it, much better than that religious stuff or infomercials that are all i can find when flicking around in the early morning.

  4. “We’re playing (Survivor) Gabon and then we lead into the next series (Tocantins). They are all new Australian premiere episodes which you wouldn’t have seen on Foxtel,” says Sampson

    Re the above paragraph: Does anybody actually know where on Foxtel we can watch Survivor? Arena has Amazing Race and those Bachelor shows – but I’ve never seen Survivor in any cable schedule ever.

    Pity too – if someone were to rerun that excellent first season – I’d watch it!

  5. regan – soft launch means they are launching the channel but not with the full range of programming just yet.

    Jed – reading the article it states prime time gets repeated the next day if classification allows it – so survivor should be repeated Wednesday daytime – check the advance guides

    bazza – yes, just means 88 will appear in the regions once we do a rescan

  6. Being on a digital only channel I sure bloody hope they don’t start dropping programs like flies like on their old channel. I actually want to make it past Season 3 of weeds – even though I’ve seen them all, same goes for Curb etc.

    I also like that those shows nine gets in their output deals that you just know aren’t going to get aired will finally be able to have a home!

    Plus wouldn’t mind seeing a few rpts of Nine’s late night programming from the main channel in an earlier slot on Go like Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Hells Kitchen etc, etc. Maybe they can even move CSI:NY new episodes to this channel considering it barely gets 600k on the main one.

  7. Genuinely looking forward to GO! I’ve been enjoying ONE and ABC2 because of what they offer, but I reckon this may even get more of a look in at our household than other established channels.

  8. a 9 representative has put a post up over on dtvforum in the extra channels section, a very wise move in my opinion, the SBS one was very handy in january, it is a good place to get information out as a lot of people on there are very technical.

    and setting up a help line is an excellent idea, 10HD and ONE really could have done with that, although most of the questions would have been about regional people being mislead. but still to this day people are reporting losses of 10’s signal so something fishy is going on, this way if 9 has similar issues they can become aware of it much more quickly and people know a way to communicate their problems where the information will get to the right people.

  9. Yeah it looks ok but not relevant to all Australians but I forget, if you don’t live on the East coast or in a major capital then your not included as part of Australia.

  10. “Unfortunately we can’t have everything on the schedule at once!”
    But this still means people will be waiting for shows that should have aired months or years ago, but no they would rather put on old shows shows to fill some spots!

  11. What Les didn’t say above was the fact that Nine are also talking to producers in Australia about getting some local content up on the channel. And that would be welcome IMO.

  12. Oh, and what I’m sure Les meant was “Unfortunately we can’t have everything that we’ve pulled off air after one or two episodes and left in limbo for years on the schedule at once!” 😉

  13. At least the block programming will mean IceTV users will get a usable guide inside a week.

    What a shame, by the way, that the first two seasons of Survivor to be shot in HD will not be seen in HD in Australia.

Leave a Reply