There’s that old adage that you’ve gotta spend money to make money, but it only really works if you’re not spending the money on a bag of damp spuds. Such is the reality of Channel Seven‘s extremely expensive Barnaby Joyce interview; a reality that’s dawning on the network this morning.
The interview which aired on Sunday Night garnered a lot of brow-wrinkling publicity and set the network back a hefty $150,000 for the “exclusive” with Joyce and the woman who let him put his willy in her, Vikki Campion, causing consternation among media pundits and raising several very legitimate questions about political ethics and professionalism.
But all that has not translated into the ratings boon that Seven might’ve hoped for.
Sunday Night, despite a health boost from the previous week, still got its ass handed to it in the ratings, coming in as only the 9th most-watched program of the evening.
A mere 631,000 metropolitan viewers tuned in to see the splainin’ that Barnaby had to do. Sydney was the most passingly-interested of all the metro cities, with a viewership of just 180,000 recorded.
Meanwhile in Melbourne, a whopping 93,000 more people tuned into the ABC News than the number that watched Sunday Night, which is a staggering discrepancy.
So at 631,000 metro viewers #barnababy wasn’t the ratings blockbuster for #SN7 pic.twitter.com/rN1D7aS3JU
— Matt Wordsworth (@MattWordsworth) June 3, 2018
In fact, Sunday Night was summarily flattened in the head-to-head battle by David Attenborough’s Tasmania, which aired in competition with Barnaby on the ABC. That wonderful program about God’s Own Country drew in a hefty 750,000 overall viewers.
Channel Ten also managed to bash Sunday Night senseless in the same timeslot, with 781,000 metro viewers glued to the set to see MasterChef Australia.
Not even the strong lead-in of House Rules was enough to give Sunday Night a boost. Seven’s reno show scored a solid ratings win with 882,000 metro viewers, but washed off over 250,000 when Barnaby took to the screens. Sunday Night‘s ratings are preliminary for the moment, including some carry-over from House Rules‘ overrun, which means the figure of 631,000 should actually wind up being much, much lower once adjusted ratings figures are taken into account and released.
The lesson here? Never bet against Tasmania, mates. Not now, not ever.
