Great news for the future of diverse Australian TV productions today, with news that debut of Benjamin Law‘s autobiographical SBS series The Family Law drew in ratings that were more than satisfactory.
The show took an unusual step to generate buzz for itself, by premiering the pilot episode on Facebook last weekend – making it available for everyone to stream, in full, via the SBS Facebook page.
Though it’s unclear whether the experiment helped or hindered the first-run TV broadcast of the episode, at this stage it seems unlikely to matter, with the show managing to pull in 366,000 Metro viewers – a more than adequate number for an SBS series.
Facing stiff competition in the form of summer juggernaut the Big Bash League on Channel Ten, The Family Law‘s performance drew a giddily excited response from Law himself this morning.
Epic thanks for tuning into #TheFamilyLawSBS. RATINGS JUST CAME IN. And everyone at @SBS and @MatchboxPics are like: pic.twitter.com/joItUa3OkB
— Benjamin Law (@mrbenjaminlaw) January 14, 2016
The Facebook stream drew in solid numbers as well, with 140,000 people watching for at least 30 seconds, and 22,000 people sticking around for the entire episode.
The results for the show mean that SBS will continue to explore using Facebook and other platforms to unveil new shows as a means of generating buzz and building audiences.
The Family Law can now be seen Thursdays at 8:30pm on SBS. Get around it!
Source: mUmBRELLA.
