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Nine bumps Excess Baggage to GO!

Nine blinks on celebrity weight loss show, sending it to GO! and replacing it with The Big Bang Theory.

Nine has pulled celebrity weight-loss show Excess Baggage from its primetime schedule, after disappointing ratings.

The show has been in a battle with TEN’s weight-loss show The Biggest Loser in the same timeslot, last night attracting just 610,000 viewers. TEN’s long-running show had 811,000 viewers.

The show will move to GO! from Monday, while The Big Bang Theory will air in its place.

“We have decided to move Excess Baggage to GO! at 6.30pm from Monday. Unfortunately the show has performed below expectations, so it is a move we believe will provide the best possible audience for the show,” says Andrew Backwell, Director of Nine Programming and Production.

Speculation the show would be pulled gathered over the weekend after the show sank to 555,000 viewers on Thursday.

In an interview with Nine’s Director of Television conducted early last week, Michael Healy said, “I think we’ve got a really strong cast both with the celebrities and the everyday-Australians, and I think it will resonate with the audience. It has great locations and the presenters with Kate and Christian are really strong. It’s a different take on weight loss, but we’re really proud of it and Fremantle has done a great job with the production.”

But Nine’s plans to draw viewers at 7pm were thwarted when TEN surprised the market by moving The Project to 6pm and The Biggest Loser to its former timeslot.

Retreating on one of its six big brand shows at 7pm before the start of ratings is a huge loss for Nine. Even Live from Planet Earth got to air in the ratings season.

But amid crippling debt by its parent company, Nine Entertainment Co., it is protecting the all-important survey numbers which begin on Sunday.

This post updates.

35 Responses

  1. I find it interesting that in the past 12-18 months, the shows with the biggest advertising blitz have been the ones to fall over after a few weeks:
    Ben Elton Live
    Excess Baggage
    The Reovators
    That Jamie Dury show
    They all had weeks and weeks of advertising – is it that the networks knew that they were crap, but had poured a fair bit of cash into them that they figured they needed to advertise them to death to get any viewers and hope that they stick around?
    If this is an indicator, then Revenge has been advertised to death for a month, so I’m nervous about that one, and so is that new Channel 9 Rafters clone.

  2. Why anyone watches the Big Bang Theory escapes me, but I guess people like the canned laughter. Weight loss programs are not to my liking and I like ABC News anyway.

    But in saying that why do they think the The Big Bang Theory is the answer to everything, Instead of the Nine Network call it the BBT network.

    Instead of thse shows why not bring back some old episodes of Bandstand and strip that five nights a week with good OLD australian music.

  3. @Maev….Sydney

    Thats fair enough. I meant it as a generalisation. I don’t watch weight loss shows full stop. I only checked it out because Nine were hyping it and flicked it off after 1 episode. I hated The Renovators and don’t see anything in The Block. I just made a general comment as to what is popular. I guess i should have said talent shows too.

    To your other comment about repeats i too find it amazing how many times a show is repeated these days. In years gone by shows rarely got encores. Now it happens all the time. This i believe is another reason for the decline in TV Ratings. If they stopped the encores then people would make a date to sit down and watch instead of going “Oh i’ll just watch it then instead”

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