0/5

Winners, Losers and the numbers in between

Seven drama execs rightfully have their eye on the numbers for episode two of Winners & Losers, not episode one.

In an interview with The Australian, Seven drama execs John Holmes (pictured with cast) and Bevan Lee discuss Winners and Losers which premieres tomorrow night.

Both have a wealth of experience having created and overseen most of Seven’s drama output for more than a decade.

Tomorrow night they will be tested once more, but the odds are in their favour. The show is surely a long way from one of their short-lived dramas, HeadLand. But can it live up to the numbers of Packed to the Rafters, the show that it has piggybacked onto in network promos?

“In the old days you were given a chance, basically a year to get a show right,” Holmes says. “Nowadays? Totally different. You basically know the first night and more especially you know the second episode (when you see) how many people come back.

“It’s the drop-off you look at. If you go from two million (viewers) to 1.7 you’re OK.

“If you go from two million to 1.2 you’re in trouble. If it was two million to 700,000 you’d be gone. You’d probably last one more week to see if it was an anomaly.”

Of course in the current multichannel climate, two million is ambitious in itself.

But Holmes is dead right to be focussed on the drop-off in week two. Seven has slated a double episode for next week. It isn’t clear if it will code them separately with OzTAM.

Bevan Lee describes the show as being, like Rafters, a “charmedy”: part drama, part comedy but, above all, charming.

“It’s honest to what I know is going on in the lives of women in their late 20s.”

Source: The Australian

7 Responses

  1. “Charmedy” Is hilarious. Also noted that these two were credited with creating “All Saints” and “City Homicide” as well, which may come as a surprise to the writers who actually created them.

  2. Given how badly 9.30pm shows are rating this year I would not be showing a double ep next week. The drop off for ep 2 could really hurt the show the following week.

  3. I agree, I can understand a feature length pilot as long as it’s not just two ep shoved together but to have the pilot them 2 eps the following week. I just hope Seven is reading the fans responses on forums like this and change their plans for next week.

    On top of hurting the over all ratings for the new show it won’t do Parenthood any favors by taking it off for the week. And that’s not taking into account the 1000s of Rafters fans not knowing what is happening with their show. Many of whom may not have forgiven them for how they cancelled Always Greener years before after giving it the green light for another season.

    I just hope the PTB know what they are doing!

  4. It has so much potential but the double ep will kill it and in a few months we will look back on what could have been. Underbelly and offspring both had doubles early on which resulted in huge drop offs. Doubles are for finales or for established shows that people wait for all week and can’t get enough of. Not for shows still finding their feet.

Leave a Reply