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NBN / WIN get too precious over Come Fly with Me

A decision by WIN Television and NBN not to air Come Fly with Me is about as batty as they come.

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A decision by WIN Television and NBN (Newcastle) not to air Come Fly with Me on Monday night is about as batty as they come.

According to the Newcastle Herald, NBN head of programming and publicity Kellie Hampton said the station would wait to see how the show was received by viewers in metropolitan markets.

“The regional TV audience is different and although the show has been classified ‘PG’ we want to see the feedback and ratings first.”

NBN is worried the show may will offend regional viewers and will instead play The Big Bang Theory. Talk about precious, Precious.

Yet the channel is owned by Nine Entertainment Co., steered by David Gyngell.

The show starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams will be rated PG when it airs at 8pm on Monday night, and whilst there will be edits these are minor. In fact they are nominal. The first episode probably doesn’t need any at all, but the second will need the occasional snip. There is still plenty to laugh at.

But what does the move by NBN and WIN say about how they see their audience?

Are they not grown up enough to see a PG rated show at 8pm?

Whilst it’s true the situation would never have arisen if Nine had played out the series in an M-rated timeslot, do audiences really want networks deciding if they are mature enough to handle the content? If Nine is actually editing the series to fit a PG timeslot isn’t that enough for WIN and NBN?

Affliate network WIN is politically trickier given it is owned by Bruce Gordon. WIN had previously snubbed a Nine series, The Catch-Up, over its own chat show Susie back in 2007, as well as Mornings with Kerri-Anne, in a disagreement about advertorial revenue.

But Come Fly with Me will air in WIN-owned Nine stations in Adelaide and Perth.

GO! will also screen it unedited at 10pm on Monday where regional viewers who are grown-up enough can catch the show. Viewers will be lucky to detect any difference between the edited / un-edited version this week.

Unless the NBN move has the blessing of David Gyngell he should do a Kerry Packer and pick up the phone and pull them into line.

50 Responses

  1. This is weird. WIN will not run it on regional WIN but will run it on WIN-owned Nine stations in Adelaide and Perth. NBN, wholly-owned by Nine, won’t run it.
    Bruce Gordon also snubbed Nine by switching his SA regional stations to Seven affiliation. This could not have been a joint NBN/WIN decision.
    “NBN is worried the show may will offend regional viewers and will instead play The Big Bang Theory”.
    Could be more like “the station would wait to see how the show was received by viewers in metropolitan markets”, meaning “if anybody watches, then we will run it”.
    Did you see “Dante’s Cove” when you ran it Kellie?

  3. Well, let’s face it: the regional viewers who will be offended by it probably don’t even know that Go exists. They will be aged 60 and over, their dial will be rusted on to Nine and they will be the type of people who call talkback radio and complain about programs shown on the ABC that they’ve never even watched.

  4. It’s not even as politically incorrect as Angry Boys. And it’s not very funny either IMO.

    But it will force people to the internet yet again.

  5. NBN= no brains network i am not talking about the people who live in NBN broadcasting areas i am talking about the people who run the channel i cant think of anything to call WIN yet

  7. I live in Wollongong and think WIN sucks donkey’s you-know-whats. Theyre utterly pathetic. Prime have got it right, and always have. SC Ten too.

    Why WIN has to be different, show that hideous watermark and have pathetic programming skills is beyond me. Give me an untouched stream of Channel 9 any day.

  8. Didn’t realise living in regional Australia had turned me into such a delicate flower, thanks NBN for looking out for my interests. Remind me to have the smelling-salts handy next time I inadvertently watch ‘Two And A Half Men’ and someone says the word ‘nipple’.

  9. What a complete farce….. and if WIN has anything to do with it, it is even more of a joke! The state of free to air television in Australia is becoming a complete yawn-fest. Stupid programing decisions, lack of viewer loyalty (and I am talking about loyalty to the viewers by Networks), bitter in-fighting. Here’s an example for you – in Adelaide, Morning News watchers only see 1/2 of their news between 1100-1130! Yes, that’s right! At approximately 11.30am the host says, “after the break”, but in Adelaide we get ads, then from out of the blue, a lame cooking show starts! What program department would even consider that? It’s not just regional Australia, even capital city viewers get offended, not by the content, but by the lack of content! And you wonder why people download and turn to pay tv 🙁
    Having seen this latet offering from the Little Britain guys, excuse me, but I am asking what is there to be offended at? It is a hoot!

  10. How offensive to viewers in Newcastle, Wollongong and Canberra and the regional areas. Are these people not sophisticated as people in Sydney? This is 2011. An outrageous decision from the Nine affiliates.

  12. Absolutely ridiculous decision. Kellie Hampton has contradicted herself from one paragraph to the next…she wants to see how metropolitan audiences recieve the show, yet in the very next sentence, she is saying that the regional audience is different. So then, what the hell does the metropolitan audience and its ratings have to do with it if they are so ‘different’ to regionals???

  14. It kinda makes sense though. Showing the same show twice in primetime on the same night is a little silly. Those that want to watch it can see it on Go.

    Also remember that most regionals don’t get TBBT at 7pm with ACA screening in that slot.

  15. David, you might want to correct your first paragraph, where you’ve cited ‘Come Dine with Me’ instead of ‘Come Fly with Me’.

    I’ve seen ‘Come Fly WIth Me’ advertised for viewing on WIN in Tassie – does that mean *gasp* we’re not considered regional for once???? 🙂

  19. Also in more interested to see how the regionals will tackle the block strip at 7pm? Surely it has more promise than what temptation did and given the low rating Nine programming I would start prehaps doing a reshuffle of the schedule

  20. Guess I’ll be watching on GO which suits better anyway. Oh wait… Damn conflits double of offspring and 90 minute race which
    Will no doubt overrun…

  23. “A decision by WIN Television and NBN (Newcastle) not to air Come Dine with Me on Monday night is about as batty as they come.”

    Dine or fly?

  24. Very weird!

    But considering NBN is owned by Nine Entertainment Co, the same as TCN QTQ and GTV (as you point out David) surely Nine can require NBN to air the series?

    NBN says ““The regional TV audience is different and although the show has been classified ‘PG’ we want to see the feedback and ratings first.”

    What a rash generalisation. I would argue that large parts of NBN’s audience (Northern NSW, coastal cities like Byron Bay etc) are actually more liberal and open minded / relaxed that huge chunks of TCN’s audeince such as the Western Suburbs of Sydney.

  25. Living in Canberra, WIN country, I think this is pathetic. Seriously, I can decide what I’m going to watch. The idiots would probably find people not in the big 5 would enjoy this just as much, if not more. They make it sound like “country people” don’t have a sense of homour.

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