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Digital channels flex their muscle

Both GO!, ABC News 24 and even ABC3 draw good news from Wednesday's ratings.

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On the day that the Seven Network announces the re-branding of 7HD to 7mate, multichannels were flexxing their muscles in last nights ratings.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand pulled an average of 223,000 viewers last night across its 2 hr premiere. It peaked at 341,000 and was the top show in digital channels. The premiere of Human Target averaged 154,000.

ABC News 24 also cracked the Top 100 shows for the night broadcasting The People’s Forum from Brisbane. There were 128,000 viewers (preliminary figures) watching at 8pm when PM Julia Gillard was speaking.

For the second night in a row, a show on ABC3 beat the best that ABC2 could manage. Total Drama World Tour was 153,000 ahead of Penelope on 129,000. The best for 7TWO was W.A.U.: China Revealed on 127,000.

On primary channels there were big audiences for Gruen Nation, World’s Strictest Parents and Spicks and Specks. Meanwhile Sunrise also topped the 400,000 mark, with Today 102,000 behind it.

Without much traction from its digital channel, TEN was left to take fourth place.

Week 34

20 Responses

  1. just a heads up folks, alot of the battle scenes with gore in the australian release have been severely edited, as well as no full nudity. they even dub over the swear words ffs

  2. Ok David, GO didn’t do the cutting, but what’s left is pathetic!

    Pity that small minded idiots like Senator Fielding and his ilk in the community have so much clout… 🙁

    1. I posted this another thread, but I guess I will run it again….

      ACMA does not allow R rated content. It currently allows MAV content that it says is in keeping with community standards. We are the community. We have an election tomorrow. That’s the system we live in.

      I have spoken to Nine re Spartacus edits. They are playing what was delivered to them by Starz -the international edition, just as it airs in NZ. Nine / GO! has made no cuts.

      If you think GO! doesn’t want to play the whole ball and dice I have some swamp land I have been trying to sell…

  4. ABC 24 is doing a great job and lets hope they can keep the momentum up post Elections. At 6.00pm The Drum is a good alternative to the tabloid fodder on the commercial News services. The presenters are all credible and very good and are becoming comfortable with the continuous TV grind. Good work ABC!

  5. Addendum… Also, GO! has screened some very strong content over the past months, including the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, several other horror and action movies, and most recently, 300 — which wasn’t too far off Spartacus.

  6. Well if the rest of the season is to be shown like the first two, it would be a complete waste of time watching Spartacus on GO! — and makes promos are lies. The violence and sex are as much a part of the show as the characters and story.

    Best advice: wait for the DVD/Blu-ray.

  8. I knew it was edited after watching the pilot form the US side by side with GO! but wasn’t sure who did the editing, I’ll stick to the original thank you, the main reason for watching a show like this is those slow-mow special effects and other bits, no matter how graphic they are.

    I’d hate to see what FTA would do to True Blood! or for that matter the next season of Hung, one ep a lady walks around for a good minute with her robe open and well lets just say she’s a real red head 😀

  10. I can assure you, the uncut version is rated R and therefore cannot be shown on Australian television. Channels such as Showcase also have to edit programs like True Blood because of their R rating. Want change? lobby your regulatory body. Spartacus is the ‘International version’, edited I believe so it could be shown on NZ FTA because of the obvious connection. The choice was one or neither.

  11. There’s a censored version of Spartacus going around the networks — NZ television has this version too. Unless GO!’s encore screening shows the uncut version, watch those ratings plummet in coming weeks (and torrents soar).

  12. Re: Spartacus: Blood and Sand

    Starz apparently put together an “international version” of Spartacus: Blood and Sand which would have attracted a lower rating, but I’m not sure whether the version that screened on Go! was the Starz “international version” (which according to comments from Lucy Lawless was going to replace the more “graphic” elements with close-ups of the actors’ faces, etc) or whether it was simply the original version with some heavy editing by Starz’s censors.

    No doubt some hard-core reviewer of both shows will soon confirm one way or another (if they haven’t done so already).

  13. @Craig – I noticed. I thought it was a little tame given its rating. There was quite a bit of violence if you include the training scenes but little gore, with slo’mo’ mouth splatter being about it, and even that was stylised like a Frank Miller graphic novel. And I’ve seen hotter sex scenes on Buffy.

  15. Seriously with 7Mate TEN really needs to lift it’s game and get their 3rd channel launched before the new year. But this will probably mean the ONE digital (simulcast of ONE HD) will vanish so it might be time to update my SD PVR.

    FYI for those interested GO! did some heavy edits of Spartacus (Or does Starz have an edited version of the show?) with most of the sex toned down and far less blood splatter, but I wonder if anyone noticed?

  18. If this is the 7HD channel which Foxtel doesnt carry – does it mean it would be available via IQ2 or will it? Maybe irritant that I cant get the HD FTA channels using IQ and therefore record in HD. David, do you know?

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