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Gallipoli tumbles to 580,000

Ratings: Nine's flagship drama loses around half its audience in only its second week as Seven wins Monday.

2014_05_19_Gallipoli_0297There will likely be long meetings in TV exec offices today after disappointing numbers on Monday night.

Nine’s flagship drama Gallipoli has sunk to 580,000 in only its second week -around half the numbers of its debut episode. It is a disappointing return for the prestigious show, three years in the making. But while it was well received by critics, audiences have been less enthusiastic about the production matching the hype. Nine may also have sent its most devoted viewers to Stan, where the entire season is currently available, but a 9pm start and the lead-in by The Block is also a factor.

The news for TEN is hardly ideal either. Its two top shows were also those that were simulcast on multichannels -still a long way behind timeslot winners.

But it was a brighter result for the Seven network which won the night with a 33.7% share then Nine 24.0%, ABC 21.3%, TEN 16.6% and SBS 4.3%.

My Kitchen Rules was the cause of everybody else’s grief, scoring 1.69m viewers. It was Seven’s only show over the magic million, but it led by a country mile. Next were Seven News (998,000 / 975,000), Home and Away (921,000), Movie: Identity Thief (571,000) and Million Dollar Minute (454,000).

Nine News (1.1m / 1.07m) was best for Nine then A Current Affair (954,000), The Block (755,000), Hot Seat (631,000) and Gallipoli (580,000). In Their Footsteps was (231,000).

An ABC News Update (1.18m) scored the biggest audience on ABC (hopefully not designed as a ratings tactic). Australian Story was 1.03m then 7:30 (838,000), ABC News (830,000), Q & A (769,000 / 124,000), Media Watch (725,000), Four Corners (762,000) and Antiques Roadshow (262,000).

TEN Eyewitness News was 550,000 for TEN then The Project (545,000 / 466,000 and SVU (420,000 / 260,000).

Worst Place to Be a Pilot (269,000) was best for SBS ONE followed by Which Universe Are We In? (198,000), SBS World News (143,000) and Uncle (72,000).

7TWO’s Judge John Deed (252,000) was best on multichannels.

Sunrise: 358,000
Today: 289,000
ABC News Breakfast: 87,000 / 51,000

OzTAM Overnights: Monday 16 February 2015

55 Responses

  1. I started to watch Gallipoli but only lasted about five minutes. I think its a case of overkill with the war series thing and movies. After seeing The Water Diviner, which I loved, I have seen enough of war.

  2. With Netflix on the way and more and more channels for the same amount of eyeballs, this will be happening on a much more regular occurance. Fragmentation will cause numbers to get lower and lower. Gallipoli is one of the first casualties.

  3. Never understood why Gallipolli wasn’t airing in the two weeks between the end of Easter non ratings and ANZAC day which is a Saturday this year as a mini series over several nights. More people will be interested then.

    1. Thats when i thought it should & would be on, especially as i remember them playing the first promos for it around Anzac day last year.

      I think part of the problem with the lower than expected viewer numbers is there is just too much on too early in the year, people don’t have enough time to watch that much tv. The networks are like a bull outta a gate as soon as it hits February putting too many of their best products on at once. Whereas if they leave it to a less ‘busy’ time more people might give it a go. Also as said, the later timeslot ultimately killed it for many, people are back at work & school now so going to bed earlier.

  4. Bad news for Gallipoli but it’s on too late and a lot of people just aren’t that interested in the war genre.
    I have perservered with Gallipoli but sadly it just isn’t holding my attention a lot of the time.
    I’m sure it has been meticulously researched and depicts the Gallipoli wartime experiences and life in the trenches very accurately but I have seen it all before.

  5. Maybe Nine should of got Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg. They seem to knew what they were doing with Band of Brothers and the Pacific which was filmed in Australia. The problem with these Australian made war dramas is that they just seem like plays you see in a theatre and lack the production of depicting real life warfare.

  6. Watched the first episode/s of Gallipoli live but quite frankly bacame bored – too much fighting, not enough character development. Usually you learn about characters before they go to war so you develop some empathy. Yes, there were little windows of character but 90% of the show was fighting and superior pommy leaders laughing at Anzac cannon fodder. Will record the remaining shows for a future time but wouldn’t lose sleep if they got erased.

  7. I think Channel 9 backed the wrong timeslot. Monday night at 9pm was never going to work. It is too late. Australian audiences don’t stay up to watch TV.

    Being event TV it should have been Sunday night at 8.30pm. Stick with what you know Nine. IMO I think it is a great production but unfortunately Nine hasn’t given it the leg up it deserves.

    1. Sunday was where many of us had expected it to land. I suspect they felt Hancock would give it the promo opportunity, and there was probably an expectation that The Block would be stronger as a lead-in. Hindsight will probably mark a double ep premiere at 9pm as a fail.

      1. I didn’t bother with it because of the double ep to start – I put up with it for existing shows I watch but it isn’t going to get me watching a new show especially that late

  8. I thought IACGMOOH was really enjoyable last night. I have a fear of heights and that challenge scared the crap out of me. They should have devoted more time to it. It seemed they wanted to give Julia and Chris more time to try and be funny.

    As for the intruders – hilarious to see Merv suddenly wake up and be interested in someone else. And that Julie/Chrissie/Joel love triangle was hilarious. And seriously a picture of Harry Styles?

    Wish it was rating better but I will continue to watch it cos it will be the first and last series for sure.

    Ten – please please please edit the show to a nice tight 60 minutes and less Julia and Chris and more ‘celebs’.

    1. Challenge looked good on TV with its massive backdrop (funny how Chris was instructing them below the damn… they wouldn’t have heard a thing he said!). I lose interest as soon as we come back to camp seeing celebs sitting around. It’s lethargic and like a repeat for me from there.

      1. I thought that too – why were Chris and Julia talking to them, there was absolutely no way they would be hearing it!!

        Agree also with the camp scenes – I do find myself ‘second screening’ during that point – producers need to give them something else to do

  9. My problem with Gallipoli was that I watched the first episode and it was terrific but I didn’t know it was a double so I opted out of ep 2 and thought I might catch it later instead. I didn’t so last night there was no sense watching it. This double ep thing must work because they all do it but it really annoys me unless I’m bingeing on House of Cards.

    1. Agreed. These double episodes are systematic of lazy programming, and personally I usually can’t be bothered to sit through 2 hours (with ads) of a show in one sitting.
      Like you I tend to PVR them to watch later, but then I find myself playing catch-up. There are only so many free hours in the day to watch TV, and if something better comes along then the lesser show is likely to be deleted off the PVR.

  10. Stan has nothing to do with Gallipoli failing. The show was not well made and Nine are paying the price. Seven really shouldn’t have held back Revenge for this show. They should have started it 2 weeks ago. MKR continues to be a beast.

  11. Bad news for Gallipoli but it’s on too late and a lot of people just aren’t that interested in the war genre.
    I have perservered with Gallipoli but sadly it just isn’t holding my attention a lot of the time.
    I’m sure it has been meticulously researched and depicts the Gallipoli wartime experiences and life in the trenches very accurately but I have seen it all before.

  12. Gallipoli is just boring, people checked it out and didn’t like it. It lost 300k between the first and second eps last week. They assumed that because people pay lots of attention to ANZAC Day once a year they could serve up any old stuff for a couple of months.

    People aren’t going to pay $10/month plus for large capacity broadband for ordinary stuff that’s on FTA this month (they’ll just DVR it). And with 4 SVOD services all staking out exclusive rights to stuff a lot of people will wait and see before committing to one that has part of what they want to watch. It will be trench warfare.

    Watching Turnbull trying to stake a claim for the Centre of Australian politics while supporting Abbott was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time — they completely lost the Centre in under 5 months. Of course Rudd was a master at winning the Centre of Australian politics…

    1. I think the point being made was one could binge all of Gallipoli using Stan’s free first month trial. That said, I doubt it explains the drop in numbers. Ep 1 also lifted by 238,000 in Timeshifted numbers. Later this week I will file on our Drama Timeshifted numbers in another story.

  13. Surely nine should consider taking the Block back to a 60 minute episode and starting Gallipoli at 8:30. Heck I wish all the reality shows would only go for 60 minutes instead of these incredibly boring, stretched out 90 min+ episodes that are on every single night.

  14. Is Gallipoli the biggest flop ever declared as ‘event television’? Those are Channel Ten type numbers there. Surely Nine would be disappointed as they’ve flogged the advertising to death the past few months

    I watched Q and A last night, good episode. Never seen Australian Story but that seems to be a popular program

  15. The producers of Gallipoli should’ve introduced some sort of cooking element into the show. It could’ve been called My Gallipoli Kitchen Rules or some-such.

    Just imagine the promo: “This week on MGKR the troops have to whip up a feast for the top brass, using only bully beef and Anzac biscuits. The only problem is that they have to do it on the beach while under Turkish shell-fire. Who will be eliminated?” All the bogans who watch commercial TV would love that.

  16. Always thought Gallipoli would not do very well, there was a similar type of show a few years ago, cant think what it was called but remember it was directed by Tom Hanks, and that cost Mega Bucks to make but that did not fare very well from memory when it came on the TV and with so many other Gallipoli type programmes to come from other channels this year think it might have been too much to expect this to be a runaway viewing show. Think 9 will have to re-think the show if it doesn’t improve in the ratings soon.

    1. @ MM, the show you’re referring to is “Band of Brothers”, directed by Tom Hanks and was backed by Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks.

      I feel that storylines involving war themes or political intrigue is a tough genus.

      1. Maybe you’re thinking of The Pacific, which was partly shot in Australia and was less successful than Band of Brothers (which was excellent).

        Not watching Gallipoli as it feels like it’s been done before. There needs to be a fresh angle for me to be interested. I don’t have Foxtel but the correspondent point of view makes Deadline Gallipoli sound more interesting.

  17. Clearly no one learnt from ABC’s mistake of putting Jonah From Tonga on iView? It tanked!

    People these days will go to great lengths to watch new ep’s.

    I understand Stan is only new and may not have many subscribers at this stage, but surely that doesn’t stop the subscriber from showing multiple people whom may very well have a ratings box?

    Dave, does this theory have potential to be correct?

  18. I’m a celeb was good last night. I thought the intruders were good additions especially Freddie who was good value.

    Malcolm Turnbull appeared to be auditioning for pm last night on q&a.

  19. When is nine going to realise that the Block plays too long. It should be made shorter so that Gallipoli can start earlier, just like they do with the American programs on the other nights.

    Also what has happened to C31 programs after sunday, there are no advertised programs listed.

  20. MKR proves 1M+ audiences exist, but only if you give viewers something engaging to watch. This is the first season of The Block I have given up on, its drawn out far far too much and Im done now.

    Malcolm Turnbull can certainly draw an ABC crowd can’t he!

  21. Australian Story was a very good, well told and well executed piece of tv. It’s refreshing to see quality storytelling rewarded with solid numbers.

      1. Hear’say… good source though. Do you think it’s more?… or less? Wonder how many will stick around to pay the $10 a month… obviously all 5,000 in month one when they forget to cancel.. You should encourage 9 to report numbers for Gallipoli on Stan David. iView do..?

      1. I don;t think Stan will have made a scrap of difference. Just think Gallipoli may be ‘been there/ done that’ TV – on those numbers I would leave it in the Monday slot as it only has 5 eps to go. Perhaps showing it closer to Anzac Day might have also been a better option.

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