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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

  1. While watching the show, I felt as if it was at least ten years past its used by date. Australia is no longer the bogan backwater it used to be. Get with the times Nine.

  3. Nooooooooooooooo. This was turning out quite well 🙁 [And, before anyone says, I am from Perth (not Melbourne) and not related to Eddie in any way or a Collingwood fan]
    I hope ABC picks this up and makes some minor changes:
    30 minute show-26 eps a year
    Host: Liz Ellis Captains: Tom Gleeson and Dave Thornton
    Keep up with the casual fun and allow a little more banter and I think you have a show that could average pretty good figures on 8.30 Wed to replace S&Specks

  4. never watched it. but when you put a 2 unfunny idiots on the show in fitzy, how he ever got a gig tv after big brother is beyond me and mick molloy will never work. 10 use to have a sports quiz show on every friday night about 17 years ago

  5. This is what happens when you pay your “talent” mega bucks and have no money left over for programme development. BTL had cheap written all over it from the moment it was conceived. Take a lesson from Seven. The millions spent producing The Amazing Race is clearly evident in the quality final product.

  7. i knew this would be cancelled when i saw the first commercial, if every day viewers can tell that a show isn’t going to be successfully why can’t the programmers who are paid to know these things!

  10. To show how clueless 9 are last night they had Kevin Sheedy on to appease Sydney viewers.

    9 needs an Admin cleanout starting from the very top. I think Gyngell might have made a big mistake in a few of his new appointments the way things are going.

  11. @col, totally agree with you, Mick Molloy is not funny at all. Remember that atrocious show “The Nation” that he had on Nine a few years ago? You’d think Nine would have learnt not to re-employ him after that debacle, but some networks just don’t get it – he is ratings poison. I honestly don’t understand how he even has a media career, as he is only marginally more acceptable than Ryan Fitzgerald, who is utterly appalling and should be banned from our TV screens forthwith.

  12. LOL! I was ‘forced’ to watch this last night. It wasn’t half bad actually. Although i know nothing of sport it was still entertaining

  13. “But in this highly fragmented multi-channel environment, the show just didn’t capture sufficient audience numbers”.
    Nine BS spin. What “multi-channel” “fragmented” the audience?
    Fact is over 1m were watching Oprah! on TEN and 50 percent more were watching Seven than were watching Eddie and his bogans.

  14. What a Nine show flops again?? And Eddie MCGuire show tanks big time and gets axed?? How unusual. I’ll be interested to see what show Nine hand Eddie next. They really are fools at Nine. Keep giving him shows and they keep tanking. Don’t they get it?

  15. I have to admin I loled when I read the headline in my twitter feed. Warnie, live from planet earth, million dollar drop and now this show have all been massive failures for nine this year.

  17. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. What!? I would say Ch.9 would have gained a lot more credibility by not proceeding with this venture, gained a lot more viewers by putting on a different show and gained a few more zeros to their bottom line if they took heed of everyone’s advice and axed Eddie Maguire at the same time. He is a human fail.

  18. Eddie – maybe its time to give up the big bucks and go back to channel ten Melbourne news desk and read the sport.

    youtube.com/watch?v=tazH4ognHpI

  19. 9 has read between the lines! Better now than is 6 weeks. Not as embarrassing as running the Matty Johns show for a whole year then never hearing of it again. Especially given 7 is interested n the NRL.

  23. @Allie , your dead on the money champ , that clown isnt funny and unsure why hes on TV anyway , i bet they drag him up for the Olympic Games , erk , ill be watching Foxtel when there on.

  25. The Mick Molloy curse strikes again. Everything he has touched on TV in the last decade has turned to dust. Nine is certainly having a horror year this year, truly the stuff of TV executive nightmares.

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