0/5

Viewers fail to front for Neighbours party

Ratings: At just 429,000 simulcast across two channels, viewers decide not to RSVP Neighbours 30th.

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TEN is already feeling the absence of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! from its schedule with its network share tumbling last night to just 15.4%.

Its Neighbours 30th: The Stars Reunite special was lovingly produced, but failed to crack the Top 20 despite being simulcast on two channels. As a result, numbers for ELEVEN were dismal, just 1.8%, because it lacked alternative viewing choices. Despite the special trending on Twitter it also under-performed in the demos.

Seven network won the night with a share of 33.5% then Nine 26.1%, ABC 19.9%, TEN 15.4% and SBS 5.1%.

My Kitchen Rules eliminated South Australia’s Annie and Lloyd to the tune of 1.76m viewers -close to a season best and a staggering four times the audience of TEN. Seven News was 1.04m / 999,000 then Home and Away (960,000), Revenge (698,000) and Million Dollar Minute (522,000). Parenthood was 279,000 / 198,000.

Nine News (1.08m / 1.01m) was best for Nine then The Big Bang Theory (938,000 / 757,000 / 569,000), The Block (861,000), A Current Affair (859,000) and Hot Seat (556,000). Person of Interest was 219,000 / 142,000.

ABC News was strong at 911,000 followed by Australian Story (814,000), 7:30 (798,000), Four Corners (757,000), Media Watch (716,000), Q & A (691,000).

TEN Eyewitness News was 570,000 for TEN. The Project was 554,000 / 437,000, Law and Order: SVU was 404,000.

On SBS ONE it was Australia with Simon Reeve (261,000), Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature (211,000), SBS World News (130,000) and a Gourmet Farmer Afloat repeat (121,000).

Thankfully Neighbours at least topped the multichannels with 283,000.

Sunrise: 314,000
Today: 282,000
ABC News Breakfast: 89,000 / 38,000

OzTAM Overnights: Monday 16 March 2015

37 Responses

  1. I got goose bumps quite a few times watching the Neighbours special. Took me right back to the days of watching it religiously in the late 80’s. Back then I think it really reflected what it was like living in the suburbs as an average Aussie and that’s why it worked.
    Either we as a country are confused and don’t know who we are these days or the writers have stopped reflecting our middle class existence back at us but it seems the show has lost the “touch” it once had.
    I would love to see Aussie TV strike a chord with audiences again like Neighbours once did in the Kylie and Jason days 🙂

    1. The show is probably closer to the spirit of the 1980s right now than it has been for many years in my opinion. The difference is it is now on Channel Eleven and given absolutely no promotion, except this week for this documentary. There was discussion in my work place and the common response from people about the special was ‘I didn’t even know the actual show was still on’. Big shame but the terrible ratings are not a huge surprise.

  2. I’m not suprised the Neighbors special didnt rate. Given it’s a multichannel show with a smaller audience, I think it would have been better suited as an original feature for Eleven.

  3. I actually did agree with the top 5 moments. Could certainly think of a few more at least two of them were mentioned in the special anyway (Charlenes first appearance and Susan and Carls first beakup). It was probably right that they concentrated a lot on the 80s cast as that is when the show was the most popular. It was great seeing Annie Jones and Guy Pearce. Nice to see Lucinda Cowden, but no scenes of Melanie’s laugh? Also glad Natalie Bassingthwaite was involved as Izzy would be my all time favorite. I would have liked to have seen scenes with Clive Gibbons (80s), Cheryl Stark (90s) and Flic Scully (00s). A second part would have been good, but with those ratings maybe just as well there wasn’t.

  4. I enjoyed the Neighbours special last night and I always watch it on Eleven – I remember watching the first episode on the 7 Network I became an instant fan – The Show is great

  5. I’ve seen some episodes of Neighbours recently and they haven’t moved or evolved with audiences for the last 15 or so years. The show pretty much died at the turn of the century. The show just looks shallow and needs more interesting and geniune storylines that viewers are compelled to watch. The acting doesn’t seem convincing either.

  6. I’m surprised not more people watched,and the one’s who didn’t watch you missed out on a great show.Preferring cooking over this.It was only one night after all.Plenty of repeats as well you can catch up on during the week.Shame

  7. Hopefully that stops 10’s simulcasts for a little while!!

    Must say I really enjoyed Revenge last night best episode of this season by far totally didn’t want it to end

  8. They stopped producing Neighbours for the local audience a long time ago – it’s the UK audience that keeps it afloat. That’s why it’s on 11.

  9. I started watching the show via looking in from another room. There didn’t seem to be a traditional start. It just seemed to get underway immediately. It seemed a bit odd. And coming back from some ad breaks there seemed to be no linking to the next 10 minutes of program (“Welcome back…”). I went on Ten Play to see the start. To me it seemed the first few minutes of the show weren’t shown in regional Queensland, and after some or all of the ad breaks.

    I’m wondering if, in Qld was the video provided to the network was missing the start, and a few seconds of film after most ad breaks? I did enjoy seeing clips and actors I’d not seen for a number of years.

  10. I watched the first 30 min but like the show I haven’t watched it in years.

    One thing I did notice was the first ad break was so long, I recorded the special. It was 7 minutes long, seriously that’s got to be some kind of record?

    1. One ad break in MKR on thursday night was pretty close it went for just over 6 minutes thankgod for PVRs I could fast forward through the whole 6 minutes in anout 15 seconds

      1. Come on if you’re good you can skip through any ad break in like 4-5 seconds 🙂 one of the worlds greatest inventions that’s eliminated watching ads on tv.

  11. I wanted the Neighbours special to do well in the ratings. But a lot of people have moved on and didn’t know the show is still airing. Ten ignored Neighbours when it moved to 11 and they’ve made their viewers forget about it by not promoting it on the main channel. Now Neighbours is turning 30 and suddenly they care again. The special would’ve been better off on 11 alone.

  12. I forget about neighbours now that its on eleven whereas when it was on ten I used to occasionally watch an episode. I liked the neighbours special but I thought there was a lot missing. I think if there wasn’t so much repetition within the special there would’ve been room to talk about other characters that weren’t mentioned.

  13. Surprised the Neighbours special didn’t do slightly better numbers than that. I watched some of it, even though I haven’t watched the show itself for about 15 years. They were right to play on the nostalgia.

    One thing I really can’t understand is how Ten are treating that franchise. It certainly lost some of its lustre when it moved to a digital channel, but more than that, last night, the 30th anniversary special was always going to rate higher than the episodes currently running. Was there any cross-promotion? If I was at Ten, I’d be loading Neighbours itself up this week with loads of nostalgia and I would have promoted it heavily in the special, trying to entice lapsed viewers back in to take a look. If they really cared, they would do a 30th anniversary week of episodes and broadcast it on the main channel.

    1. The thing is, they don’t really care. Promoting Neighbours would suck viewers away from The Project/Ten’s main channel.

      It was also Ten’s management who sabotaged Neighbours intentionally while it was on their main channel (circa 2009/10), so they could negotiate a cheaper licencing agreement to purchase the show from FremantleMedia.

  14. I still don’t know why TEN didn’t run I’m A Celebrity for longer when they realised it was doubling their TBL audience. Now they are going to lose the little momentum they had right before the launch of Masterchef. I thought the viewers might just go back to other reality shows but that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

    1. I believe they had a deadline to get out of the park in South Africa. I too hoped it would have gone the next two weeks to finalise before Easter non ratings as it was ridiculous having all these eliminations in the last week.

      Would you believe the first two seasons of MKR actually finished before Easter! Now it goes way after.

  15. I watched it (but like many others don’t count as I don’t have a ratings box) but was surprised they left out quite a bit. Nothing really shown on those like Billy Kennedy (jesse spencer), lance, Elle Robinson (Pippa black), Drew and Libby, Sam Kratz…. List goes on. Also even though they spoke to Daniel macpherson, I don’t think they even showed footage of his character Joel on it.

    Think it needed to have multiple parts to cover such an extent.

    1. I thought that was strange that they didn’t show footage of Joel considering he was a guest speaker. They spent a lot of time talking to the actors that play Karl and Susan but didn’t really show their children. I think rather than repeating the same scenes over they had time to show other highlights.

  16. I watched the Neighbours special on timeslip, but I found it disappointing. The hosting by Stefan and Tim was so scripted and came across that way. I think Jackie and Alan would have been better suited to host it. They continued to replay the same clips over and over, and it’s like they were not allowed to show too much of their own footage, with very edited clips, often in 4:3 ratio for scenes filmed in 16:9 after their 2001 switch over. The top 5 was very much a “really?, you thought that was the best?”. What about Susan’s awesome scene telling Karl she hates him? There was way to much focus on the 80’s youth characters, and basically none on the big 90’s characters. I also thought it lacked previous cast interviews, like they only had one day to film them and that was it. The 20th anniversary episode had more guest cast in the documentary Annalise Hartmann made. 2/5 stars.

  17. Now that the Neighbours special has crashed, I think it’s time that the Australian media ends its obsession with the show. Australia has moved on. Time for the media to do likewise.

  18. I watched neighbours special but it really wasn’t worth it. I’ve seen the same interviews and clips many times before . It was interesting to see Paul Keene but he didn’t have a lot to say. What’s the secret to neighbours success ? UK funding!

    1. It was interesting to see Paul Keane (Des) again. Quite a few rumours had been circulating on him, and I found a story about what he’d gone through on the herald sun a few days back. If you search his name on Google it should pop up.

      Anyway, he brought his character back to neighbours on Tuesday nights show, so will be interesting to see if he is in it for much more.

  19. I really enjoyed the Neighbours special last night & a lot of my friends were also watching it.
    Such a shame that people chose reality over good old Aussie drama.
    I really think Neighbours needs to move back to Ten, they are killing a Aussie institution by shoving it on 11.
    The figures aren’t great – thank heavens for the overseas fans!

  20. Wow. What a shame for Neighbours. I don’t watch MKR and gave up on The Block this year (and I forget ABC and SBS exist sometimes) so I really enjoyed the Neighbours special. I don’t think TEN would be surprised by the figures, it’s a very niche program. I hope this does give them faith in the product of I’m A Celeb, it was doing well considering and giving The Block a run for it’s money.
    Perhaps if theres a 2nd season of Celeb, maybe look at relocating to a Thai/ Vietnam jungle where it may be cheaper to produce (QLD too?)
    The MKR bubble will burst eventually.

  21. OK they want content on 11, but to me it is a very dumb decision to run Neighbours on 11 rather than 10. A TV institution only attracting 238K, unbelievable ! Put it back on 10 after Family Feud and the Project on 11 and see what happens.

  22. I enjoyed the Neighbours special, I always thought it would not rate that well, as I think people forget that there are other channels, apart from the main channels. If Neighbours was still on Ten, yes but why not just show the special which was well done on Eleven, after all that is the new home for the show.
    As an aside I think with your poll on the favourite character it could have been good to ask if they ever watch the show. I found that when I first commenced watching it, the show was harder to get into then Home & Away, mainly because of the several plots going on at the same time, which I like the show.

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