★★★★★ 0/5

Networks hold firm on Commonwealth Games start

Producers of the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony are angry over plans to change the start time at the insistence of TEN and Foxtel.

12
Leave a comment

Producers of the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony are angry over plans to change the start time from 7:00pm Delhi time to 5:30pm at the insistence of Network TEN and Foxtel.

They claim it will impact on plans to stage the ceremony with a laser show under dark, but Australian broadcasters want a start-time that most benefits prime-time.

Delhi is 5.5 hrs behind AEDT. A 5:30 start time will see a 11pm start to viewers on the East Coast on October 3rd, the first day of Daylight Saving.

Organisers say the programming preferences of Australian networks could discourage more than 600 million Indian viewers from watching.

TEN’s executive producer of the Games coverage, David Barham, said: ”The ceremony had been scheduled for 5pm for the last 2½ years for the broadcasters.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

12 Responses

  1. the world cup rates a lot better in australia than i think some people are remembering. some games even if they are at 2am will probably rate better than the average night of comm. games. even when the comm. games were in Australia it didn’t rate that well ouside of victoria if people think it will be any kind of big rater for ten you should probably turn down your hopes.

  2. Earthquake.. I was more giving a stab at Ten’s sensationalist promo. Also, I think SBS would give a run for Tens money in regards to hours of coverage. World Cup lasts a month, and has a lot of analysis shows on too on SBS One and Two.

    I’d like to see ratings of the two events compaired as most of the stuff will be during the night. In regards to World ratings… 1 Billion soccer viewers can’t be wrong.

  3. @Richard W: The FIFA/ Soccor World Cup might be the biggest event on tv from a worldwide perspective, but in country that prefers it’s footy & cricket over soccor, the soccor world cup isn’t going to rate as high as an event that encompases a greater number of sports and a greater number of Aussie competitors.

    I can’t wait until next year for union world cup- let’s hope australia performs better than they did in 07!

  4. Richard W, as far as the amount of actual sporting matches/events (and hours of coverage) being broadcast – the Commonwealth Games would be a bigger event than the Soccer World Cup. I’m pretty sure there are more countries participating in the Commonwealth Games also.

  5. Haha Channel Ten are a joke. Has anyone else noticed their latest promo for these Games? “The Biggest Sporting Event in 2010 on Australian TV”… ummm hello… how about the FIFA World Cup???

  7. all that just to start at 11:00? most people are going to watch the rerun even if it did.
    why do Aus networks think the 1mil viewers it might get here phase the decision of the indians that will get hundreds of millions of viewers.

  9. It does seem like Ten and Foxtel are doing an NBC here… On the other hand, if the 5pm start was agreed to more than 2 years ago, as Ten contends, then it is a bit late for organisers to change it.

  12. Is this 2008 Beijing Olympic Games all over again (when the NBC successfully demanded the swimming finals to be held at lunchtime so it could be shown live in the US in primetime)? Has Ten consulted other broadcasters?

Leave a Reply