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Networks still up to clever coding for finales

Keeping segments to a 15 minute minimum is not working very well amongst networks.

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Networks are still unable to agree on coding times for their “Winner Announced” style segments of Reality TV and Sport.

OzTAM has previously stipulated a 15 minute minimum for split-coded segments but TV Tonight can reveal TEN and Seven have coded briefer segments this year:

My Kitchen Rules, Seven – 9 minutes
The Bachelor, TEN – 10 minutes
Masterchef, TEN – 10 minutes
House Rules, Seven – 10 minutes
Aus F1 GP ‘Podium,’ TEN – 13 minutes
Gold Coast 600 ‘Podium,’ TEN – 13 minutes
AFL Grand Final ‘On the Ground’, Seven – 14 minutes

I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, TEN – 15 minutes
The Voice, Nine – 16 minutes
Aus MotoGP ‘Post-Race,’ TEN – 16 minutes
The Bachelorette, TEN 16 minutes
Australia’s Got Talent, Nine– 18 minutes
AFL Grand Final ‘Presentations,’ Seven – 19 minutes
Aus F1 GP ‘Post Race,’ TEN – 20 minutes
NRL Grand Final ‘Presentation,’ Nine – 60 minutes
Reno Rumble, Nine – (No split) 89 minutes.

The advantage of a short segment is it can act like a ‘peak’ and finish higher in rankings.

Two years ago TEN was the only network sticking to the 15 minute minimum. This year it’s Nine.

In 2014 OzTAM CEO Doug Peiffer told TV Tonight, “Hopefully we have agreement this year that they will continue to hold to fifteen minute averages across those programmes.

“In principle everyone said they would adhere to it, but as you know at OzTAM we take the logs from the networks and that’s what we run the service off. So hopefully everyone will follow suit.”

However, the 15 minute minimum was not a “rule” and timing was up to individual networks.

Victor Corones from MagnaGlobal has previously told TV Tonight, “OzTAM is beholden to their stakeholders but it would be nice if they could forge ahead and say ‘Right, these are the rules.’

“It’s self-regulation. It doesn’t stop them from releasing a programme format that’s 5 minutes.”

9 Responses

  1. You could also update this article on Wednesday, once tomorrow’s ratings come out.

    The Melbourne Cup’s ratings for the race will rate extremely well, for a race that will last only a couple of minutes long. I’m not sure how long the “presentations” or the “pre-race” segments will last though!

  2. Bit off topic but I have noticed there have been rather big discrepancies in the overnight and actual numbers for some of Nine’s shows. Last week Doctor Doctor’s actual figure was 84,000 lower than its overnight figure which makes me think Nine are deliberately not updating their EPG too actual starting times to fudge the overnight numbers.

  3. Shame it doesn’t work similar to YouTube, where it is about audience retention. Who cares if at peak there were 1million eyeballs watching a show for 5 minutes….If I was an advertiser, I’d care if those million eyeballs were watching the whole show the whole time.

  4. The whole ratings system is a game of trickery and deceit now. In any other industry these sorts of acts would be criminal.

    If only we had regulations as they do in other countries where TV channels couldn’t fudge the ratings reporting and were fined for running over the advertised running times.

    1. Curious – what countries have such regulations? I can’t think of a single one that does. Sure, the tech specs & local regs all say “should”, but that doesn’t mean that’s enforced.

      In truth it seems to be cultural. The BBC still tries to comply with specs, so as it’s the major b’caster there the others follow. In the US the FCC says it will “monitor these issues”, but networks seem to bow to ratings & stick to schedule out of fear that if they didn’t viewers might change channels.

      But in Aus the attitude half-seems to be that viewers watch networks rather than shows, will put up with anything to watch a chosen show on ‘their’ network, & the only reason you’d switch is to join the ‘winning’ network. It doesn’t make sense – the fact they _all_ fudgewiggle ratings & times _also_ shows they fear someone might get the jump on them if they don’t play the game – but there…

      1. The UK and Ireland. The UK has only a couple of minutes leeway in starting programmes on time when scheduled. They also have strict advertising rules for minutes, hence why they run longer tv promos and have end credits for all their shows.

        1. Can’t say either way about Ireland, but AFAIK neither are actually regulated in the UK (e.g. by the Broadcasting Act, Broadcasting Code, commercial licence conditions, etc.). They may be covered by broadcaster’s agreements with BARB (ratings) or Freeview (EPG) – but they’d be commercial agreements with potential commercial penalties, not regulations with actual fines for non-compliance.

          AFAIK, OFCOM’s attitude – at least about EPG accuracy – is similar to ACMA’s i.e. “if enough people complain, and you don’t have a decent excuse, we may look at considering regulating it”. But OFCOM has more teeth than ACMA, so it’s never really gotten even that far…

          The UK though does have generally tighter limits on advertising (e.g. 2 x 3:50 breaks in a 1/2hr programme, 1 per 30 mins in films, “natural breaks”, etc) than Australia does.

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