0/5

Oops. Misleading promo for Madam Secretary.

TEN makes brash claims in a Madam Secretary promo. And then ends up apologising for it.

#1dramaWhen you are making claims about how well your shows have performed it helps if you’re not spinning anything other than factually correct information.

Last week TEN ran a promo for new US drama Madam Secretary which claimed the show was the “The No. 1 US Drama launch in 3 years -Hollywood Reporter.”

While the show did premiere big to an impressive 14.8m viewers, it was still quite a bold claim.

After being unable to locate said quote in the online edition of the Hollywood Reporter, TV Tonight asked TEN to kindly indicate the direct source.

Instead a TEN spokesperson said, “A Madam Secretary promo which aired during The Bachelor Australia finale contained a quote that was incorrectly attributed to the Hollywood Reporter. This promo was removed from air as soon as the mistake was noticed.”

In some circles that could be tantamount to false advertising.

13 Responses

  1. Unfortunately, these “mistakes” happen way too often in this country. And will keep happening until this kind of false advertising is addressed properly. This is not only inview of the Australian TV industry but Australian industry as a whole.

  2. The ‘no. 1 drama’ seems to be spruiked around quite a lot with networks promoting their shows particularly on 9 and 10. You’ve got remember when they make those statements, they make them just after the show’s premiered but after about six weeks a lot of these so called ‘no.1 drama’ shows are are around no.10 and don’t look like renewed for a 2nd season. Nine made the same claim about Hostages and look where that show ended up.

  3. They probably just cut and paste it from a blog somewhere and made up the citation.

    It is very close to true though, 14.8m is pretty good these days. The Blacklist premiere only got 12.5m (it held most of them and averages 10m about the same as the Good Wife).

    Vegas got 14.85m, though they were nearly all over 60, and it sunk as low as 4.32m before it was axed.

    The degree of hype is portional to the networks fears. BBC Firsts content suddenly became must see, once few people were watching it.

  4. I don’t know if this is any more misleading than all of the other promos for shows, just more obvious because it prominently features a statement that isn’t true attributed to an incorrect source. At least it didn’t contain any spelling mistakes altho’ there should be a ‘.’ after the ‘S’ in “U.S”.

    What would be surprising would be to see (or hear about) a promo which didn’t over-hype the product, didn’t contain excessive hyperbole or use too may superlatives, didn’t claim that all Australia was talking about it or that it was taking the world by storm, and didn’t cut unrelated scenes together to create a false impression or use something from episode 10 and imply that it was happening in ep 2. Now that would be news. I won’t hold my breath,

  5. That’s a big woops! Glad it was an honest mistake, otherwise the network should be hit heavily with fines and a closer look at the whole organisations.

  6. I can kind of understand why Ten put this claim to air but other networks are accountable for the matching spin.

    Seven has been promoting the new season of “Resurrection” with the claim that’s it’s the new number 1 US show. I’m not sure if they’re referring to the 2013-2014 US Television season but in any event, the number 1 US show is “The Blacklist”.

  7. ” This promo was removed from air as soon as the mistake was noticed.” TEN-speak for “as soon as we were caught out”.
    @Matthew See – “To be honest…” is supposed to extend to commercials for programs (I hesitate to call them ‘promos’ anymore even though I used to make some of them back in time). Called ‘truth in advertising’.

  8. “This promo was removed from air as soon as the mistake was noticed.” The cynic in me thinks this was no mistake at all. Perhaps it should’ve said ‘Ten Promo Department’ not ‘Hollywood Reporter’ under the quote.

Leave a Reply