Nine’s much-maligned Olympics coverage actually performed much better than expected, according to media analyst Steve Allen.
Despite competition from Foxtel’s eight channels and other digital sources the peak audiences tracked just 2.19% behind the Athens 2004 games, in a later time zone.
Allen’s agency Fusion Strategy, said the overall numbers were more than 10% up on their predictions for the station before the Games began.
He told B&T: “For them in peak night to beat our forecast by 10% and be within a few percent of Athens, given it was in a better time zone and we didn’t have the digital landscape in 2004, is a phenomenal result.
“Even forgetting time differences it would be fair to take 20% off what happened in 2004. The night time and breakfast figures were particularly good.”
Allen said the big story from the Games was the fact audiences continued to tune in to the second week when numbers traditionally soften, despite a poor showing in sports like swimming.
“The second week is always a considerably lower ratings week. Swimming’s in the first week, we’ve always done well, so always watched that,” he added.
“This games our real medal hopes went into the second week, so the drop off wasn’t 15% which is characteristic, we didn’t get anything like the drop off other Olympics have had as we were picking up gold medals.
“It reconfirms the mantra Aussies need to believe we’re going to win, it can be a close battle, it can’t be a walkover, and then we’ll view.”
He admitted negative social media coverage, with Nine slated for its coverage, “must have had some effect” to the overall numbers.
But, he added the weight of social media commentary is “almost overwhelmingly negative”, with people who are content not joining in.
Despite competition from Foxtel’s eight channels and other digital sources the peak audiences tracked just 2.19% behind the Athens 2004 games, in a later time zone.
Allen’s agency Fusion Strategy, said the overall numbers were more than 10% up on their predictions for the station before the Games began.
He told B&T: “For them in peak night to beat our forecast by 10% and be within a few percent of Athens, given it was in a better time zone and we didn’t have the digital landscape in 2004, is a phenomenal result.
“Even forgetting time differences it would be fair to take 20% off what happened in 2004. The night time and breakfast figures were particularly good.”
Allen said the big story from the Games was the fact audiences continued to tune in to the second week when numbers traditionally soften, despite a poor showing in sports like swimming.
“The second week is always a considerably lower ratings week. Swimming’s in the first week, we’ve always done well, so always watched that,” he added.
“This games our real medal hopes went into the second week, so the drop off wasn’t 15% which is characteristic, we didn’t get anything like the drop off other Olympics have had as we were picking up gold medals.
“It reconfirms the mantra Aussies need to believe we’re going to win, it can be a close battle, it can’t be a walkover, and then we’ll view.”
He admitted negative social media coverage, with Nine slated for its coverage, “must have had some effect” to the overall numbers.
But, he added the weight of social media commentary is “almost overwhelmingly negative”, with people who are content not joining in.
No comments:
Post a Comment