My kid’s only half a star
After rating 784,000 this week Nine will slice thirty minutes off My Kid’s a Star beginning April 30. Instead of airing at 7:30pm, it will move to 8:00pm after a new episode of Two and a Half Men.
It’s an odd packaging for the show. A Nine spokesperson was unable to clarify whether the series had been commissioned as 6 x 60 or 3 x 60 / 3 x 30 (or something else entirely).
If the decision is a response to poor ratings it is a curious one. Either the show has an audience or it doesn’t. It could have been thirty minutes to begin with or, as some might suggest, not been made at all.
Could Nine have boxed itself into a corner by agreeing to a reality show with children? When TEN had slumped ratings for Teen Fit Camp it moved the show from prime time to a Sunday midday slot. Networks have a duty of care with shows involving children, and not just during production.
How do you explain to a child “sorry honey, nobody wants to see you perform your big show stopper, you’ve been axed?” You can’t. Once a network bites the bullet they should fulfill an airing commitment, even if it means moving the show to another slot. So well done to Nine for not dumping it entirely.
However, given the figures, Nine should be playing this show out in full somewhere else in the schedule so the kids can have some degree of self esteem. As it stands, the show will air as 60 minutes next week before being trimmed the week after.
For a show that targets parents it is ironic that those very parents could now be protecting their kids network and media treatment.
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Nine have noticed the ratings increase in the second half hour as soon as RSPCA ends. Should boost that hour for Nine as T&AHM should get 1m and MKAS may get around the 900k mark.
i dont know if the increase is people putting this on after RSPCA or people tuning in early for Underbelly (except Melbourne ofcourse) Looks to me like they are just trying to avoid another embarassment by axing it..