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Axed: Between the Lines

New Nine sports quiz show Between the Lines has been boned by Channel Nine, with a final episode to air next week.

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New Nine sports quiz show Between the Lines has been boned by Channel Nine.

A final episode for the show will air next Thursday night.

Last night the show hosted by Eddie McGuire pulled 518,000 viewers with its biggest audience in Melbourne at 181,000 and 152,000. It premiered three weeks ago with 696,000.

A Nine spokesperson told TV Tonight, “The idea was to have a bit of fun – which we did. But in this highly fragmented multi-channel environment, the show just didn’t capture sufficient audience numbers to justify continuing production. As always, nothing ventured, nothing gained, pleased we gave it a go.”

The sport-themed show was dominated by AFL commentators, including Before the Game’s Mick Molloy and Ryan Fitzgerald. But it always going to struggle without a permanent NRL member on the panel especially in Sydney and Brisbane.

Panel shows are notoriously hard to get right at the first outset. Adam Hills recently told TV Tonight, the ABC built Spicks and Specks from nothing: “600,000 viewers in the first week, which hilariously is good numbers these days,” he said.

518,000, it seems, is not -in commercial television anyway.

For host Eddie McGuire the news is not good, given Million Dollar Drop has also disappeared from screens after a few episodes. This is Your Life, which is filmed as Specials this year, is expected to return later in the year.

86 Responses

  2. 9 needs to take a step back before they launch a show and ask; is there any chance this will work, and when the answer is no, stop making it.

    AFP, Madagascar, Big: Extreme Makeover, Live from Planet Earth, ACA Sunday, Million Dollar Drop, $#*! My Dad Says, Mike&Molly, Harrys Law, This is Your Life, Send In the Dogs Australia and now Between the Lines have all been flops and its only May. are they going for some kind of record?

  4. Even putting on an adults only 2.5 men or 20 to 1 would have been a huge improvement on this.How would he have lasted up against the second to last of the Oprah Show specials last night explains the figures coupled with the fact in most cities you have late night shopping meaning most of your audience would not have made it back home in time anyway.

    Nine already does a couple of great talk shows even though they are lunch hour ones from America so why do they even need another one.Time for them to go back to the drawing board and give us something fresh and new.

  7. Honestly, what nit-wit is running Nine programming?
    TV Tonight readers flagged this garbage as fail fodder weeks before it even went to air! My pet goldfish could do a better job running Nine.

    @Leave Eddie Alone
    I admire your loyalty, but face facts, ratings talk -people outside Melbourne don’t like your idol, end of story. Calling us morons won’t change history.
    And there’s no such thing as the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome”. That’s a concept invented by spin doctors to camouflage a client’s failed talent.

  10. Hadn’t realised this had started yet. And now it’s gone? Oh well…
    My ignorance can be explained by the fact I avoid Ch.9 like the plague now.

  11. Its funny how we all take pot shots at Eddie. Tall Poppy Syndrome alive and well. You talk about how Million Dollar Drop was dropped but you fail to mention how he is spanking Deal or No Deal in the ratings.
    When was the last time any of you tools hosted a TV show. step up to the plate morons.

  12. I’m from Melbourne. Love my sport. But sick to death of not only Eddie but the whole 9 network. Reek of desperation. Also that junk waste of airtime otherwise known as a current affair is not promoting it’s a Melbourne show with Melbourne reporters and asks in the pro how cam other current affairs show that come out of Sydney understand Melbourne . So does this mean a current affair Melbourne edition doesn’t understand the other citied in which it airs?

  14. Eddie deserves respect for a lot of things he has done and achieved but the public have moved on and so should he. Be a great AFL club president but that’s it.

  15. I disagree that it was better than Trophy Room. ‘Between The Lines’ had the exact same flavour of all the footy shows – very male, it felt like an AFL skewed show rather than an all round sports show, not enough women on it, plenty of innuendo-laden jokes that may have been mildly amusing in the 80s, and Eddie sucks at comedy so to have him as host… They should have made Mick or Ryan the host at least.

  16. I just don’t understand when 9 is going to gie up on Eddie FFS every show he has bombs surely that must tell 9 execs something!!?? We want someone else

  17. thankyou lord at first i thought it was an AFL show and i hate AFL with a passion when i found out here that it was not an AFL show i would have given it a go if eddie had not have been hosting it i cant stand eddie so that is why i didnt watch it i ike fitzy though he is a likeable bogan

  19. Well that was quick, even for Channel 9 standards. How very unsurprising! No-one outside of Melbourne thinks Eddie McGuire is a talent, surely this is obvious to all now??

  20. i liked it and iam and NRL person…having said that…i think it would have worked better as a sports chat show as the questions or “games” got in the way of good banter for me…

  22. I love my sport and watch most panel shows like Live and Sweaty from years ago but never bothered to watch Between The Lines. The snippets they used in promos were not funny at all and it had the smell of death from the start. Oh, and when will the masters at Nine realise that a good host is usually very funny…and Eddie may be good at a lot of things but he’s just not funny.

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