Last week’s episode of Saturday Night Rove opened with an ominous statement.
“Australia, no-one’s more surprised than me that we made it to episode two,” the show’s announcer said, as host Rove McManus bounded onto the stage.
Perhaps he already knew something we didn’t: TV Tonight reports Channel 10 has canned the show, owing to low audience numbers across the nation.
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McManus said the numbers just weren’t strong enough to keep the thing going for another week, telling TV Tonight “the audience we hoped would find a free-wheeling live show on a Saturday night just weren’t there.
“We spoke with 10 today and we both called it.”
Saturday Night Rove, billed as a loose and breezy return for the former talkshow host, reportedly sunk to 138,000 viewers during its Saturday broadcast, down from 244,000 on its debut.
By way of comparison, ABC’s hit kids show Bluey and a 9GO! showing of The Emoji Movie bested Saturday Night Rove’s latest numbers, boasting 165,000 and 144,000 viewers, respectively.
It’s an unsanctimonious end for the show, which was originally commissioned for six episodes after its first showing at last year’s Channel 10 Pilot Week.
Although the show hosted a suite of Australian comics and even former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a Channel 10 rep told TV Tonight it “hasn’t resonated with viewers the way we had hoped.”
The cancellation comes after the show was singled out for selectively editing and broadcasting viewers’ tweets to make social media reactions appear more positive than they really were.
Brutal times for free-to-air TV, folks.
