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Axed: Thursday F.C.

The axe falls on SBS' live A-League show due to low ratings.

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tfcSBS has axed its live Thursday night A-League football show Thursday F.C., effective immediately, due to low ratings.

The show premiered last October with presenters Matt Okine, Lucy Zelic and David Zdrilic.

Last week on SBS 2 it pulled just 4,000 viewers with 9,000 for an SBS ONE repeat.

In a statement an SBS spokesperson said, “Thursday FC as a general entertainment football show was a new and innovative offering for Australian audiences and we are incredibly proud of what its hosts and production team have achieved.

“Unfortunately it didn’t attract a strong enough audience to sustain its continuation at this time, and the difficult decision has been made to cancel the program. Bringing the Friday night Hyundai A-League matches to Australians free-to-air has always been the primary goal for SBS, and we look forward to continuing to build the game’s profile in the coming years.”

Tonight SBS 2 replaces it with South Park repeats.

15 Responses

  1. What a shame. It was a bit hit or miss, but I really looked forward to it. It did raise some good soccer issues that do not get discussed elsewhere.

    Bring back a new and improved Thursday FC!

  2. @rk eriksen – I’m with you on that. I’m beginning to suspect that TV audience figures are seriously skewed.
    They’ll always be a rough estimate but figures of 4,000 for Thursday FC reflect that only 4 viewers out of a pitifully low 3,500 registered households tuned in (as is my understanding).

    I would suspect that if one were to take a poll at any of this weekend’s A-League matches you’d find a significantly higher amount of Thursday FC viewers than these figures suggest.

    Ratings will never be precise under the current system, & with digital TV there should surely be a more efficient & accurate way of doing this, but it’s a shame that our networks have to react to figures from such a flawed system.

    I also suspect that with the LNP’s announcement of an efficiency study into both ABC & SBS any show that doesn’t rate sufficiently is likely to get canned rather quickly from…

  5. How do tv networks know how many viewers they have? Those figures sound plain wrong. Considering the explosion of western Sydney and the size of their fan base, along with the healthy support of teams in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, along with the other centres, let alone anybody in rural areas who might be taking interest in the a league, those stats would be far too low to be correct surely. Even so, it needed to be given more of a chance.

  7. I think this axing is rather short-sighted. Yeah it was a little amateurish with zdrilla in his first gig as head presenter, but he did fine, Lucy was great, maybe bro Ned would’ve made it more fun than the other clown. But considering the build up to the world cup with the Socceroos I think it could have stayed on until then. There will be plenty to talk about regarding football in this country, and surely the show could have expanded, gained some more segments, invited past Socceroos in etc, could’ve been informative and fun. Keep zdrilla in another gig and don’t lose Lucy! Such warmth & personality, love her!!!

  10. I went along to the studio audience a few times – it was not a great show, but it was a bit of fun to go along to. Can’t say I ever watched it on TV though.

    What I didn’t like is that they diluted The World Game into a shorter 30 minute show, presumably to save costs and make this. Hopefully for next season they restore The World Game to its original state.

  12. Really, what were they thinking?
    A show about soccer hosted by 3 unknowns was doomed to fail from day one. The only people who watched it would have been Les Murray and Craig Foster.
    I won’t say I told you so.

  13. I like watching football but couldn’t tolerate this show for more than the first 10 minutes of an early episode. It was like watching a student production.

  15. Bummer. I am one of the very few who watched the show. I quite enjoyed it.

    Kudos to sbs for having this show on their digital channel (sb2), but sadly, seems like no one knew it was there, and has given the axe Kudos also to this site for posting guest-lists for this show numerous times.

    I know that having new Australian content on sbs2 (like Thursday fc and the A-League) is a good thing, but it would have been nice if it was on their primary channel for more exposure. Last weeks numbers for the show (posted in the article above) is sadly, quite terrible

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