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Axed: Between the Lines

New Nine sports quiz show Between the Lines has been boned by Channel Nine, with a final episode to air next week.

New Nine sports quiz show Between the Lines has been boned by Channel Nine.

A final episode for the show will air next Thursday night.

Last night the show hosted by Eddie McGuire pulled 518,000 viewers with its biggest audience in Melbourne at 181,000 and 152,000. It premiered three weeks ago with 696,000.

A Nine spokesperson told TV Tonight, “The idea was to have a bit of fun – which we did. But in this highly fragmented multi-channel environment, the show just didn’t capture sufficient audience numbers to justify continuing production. As always, nothing ventured, nothing gained, pleased we gave it a go.”

The sport-themed show was dominated by AFL commentators, including Before the Game’s Mick Molloy and Ryan Fitzgerald. But it always going to struggle without a permanent NRL member on the panel especially in Sydney and Brisbane.

Panel shows are notoriously hard to get right at the first outset. Adam Hills recently told TV Tonight, the ABC built Spicks and Specks from nothing: “600,000 viewers in the first week, which hilariously is good numbers these days,” he said.

518,000, it seems, is not -in commercial television anyway.

For host Eddie McGuire the news is not good, given Million Dollar Drop has also disappeared from screens after a few episodes. This is Your Life, which is filmed as Specials this year, is expected to return later in the year.

86 Responses

  1. Eddie should have given up a long time ago.I remember years ago going back to long before Paradise Beach and the Price is Right amongst other things the 5:30pm Time Slot on Nine was Cartoons They should ditch Hot Seat and go back to that proven formula as a lead in to the News or an 80’s/90’s Sitcom like what they bad in Kerry Packers day.He must be wondering from the grave how Nine turned crap.

  2. @jmgirl Drama isn’t doing that well either. Remember the current team were instructed to make Underbelly when Eddie Maguire was the CEO. The current recurring drama slate consists of ensemble casts working in procedural or institutional environments (Rescue/Navy/Cops whatever). It’s boring and samey and doesn’t work in the younger demos.

  3. @ducko – I beg to differ. If you look at the ratings for the first three weeks you’ll see that it’s premiere was huge in Melbourne and then rapidly dropped, whereas the decline was less pronounced in the other capitals;
    eg Mel: 310k, 259k, 181k Syd: 171k, 138k, 152k .

    I think that people assumed that it was going to be mostly about AFL because all three of the hosts are well-renowned AFL supporters, and many of the early guests were associated with AFL (were there any NRL guests at all?). Of those guests who weren’t strongly associated with AFL, the majority were still from Melbourne so it was very much a Melbourne-centric program.

    Nothing especially bad about that (unless you live in Sydney!) but combined with the perceived AFL focus, this was never going to fly outside of Melbourne, and I and many others said so before it started, despite not having crystal balls (well I don’t) anyway.

    I am available if Nine is looking for a new programmer.

  4. This show gets 3 weeks, Sydney footy show gets lower figures and gets over 15 years. Sydneysiders can thank AfL footy show for making national figures look ok.
    This show had legs and it should of been given a chance. Go to 7 Eddie where they have AFL and i am sure your talents will be respected. Nine is no longer the station you use to love.

  5. I am amused that it seems this thread is full of people who have mercilessly bagged the show, the host and the guests and yet didn’t watch it!!! And those who had watched it (like me) actually enjoyed it (like me) and found that;
    1) Eddie wasn’t that bad,
    2) It wasn’t even close to being AFL skewed,
    3) It was quite entertaining and at times very funny.
    What a stupid world it would be if people stubbornly refused to watch anything that wasn’t produced in their home state. To all those haters and critics, I challenge you to watch the final episode with an open mind, you might find you like it but if nothing else, you will at least be qualified to comment on it.

  6. It wasnt bad at all. If they gave it time it would have created an audience, but thats what nine do, they dont stick by anything and give it a chance. You have to be bold and stick by something.

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