32 thoughts on “Bread And Circuses

  1. Eoin

    These are the maximum audiences for a programme, right? So, 1,550,400 might have tuned into the Toy Show at 9.30pm, but after five minutes, the audience dropped by half a million because they couldn’t take it any more.

    Wasn’t the average audience (which is what advertisers are looking at) for the Toy Show around 950k, and wasn’t that the lowest ever?

    Striking Out at #28 was the laugh-free Amy Huberman thing (did they drop the last episodes because they were so bad or the ratings had fallen off a cliff?). It started out with an average viewership of 360k, fell to around 240k the second week and then fell below 200k and off the charts thereafter and could have ended up <100k for all we know.

    These maximum audiences just make TV executives, especially at loss-making RTE, feel better.

      1. Eoin

        I would have said TV Reach or TVR being a % of the target advertising market is the better metric for advertisers.

        For example, the Toy Show with the (max?) audience of 1.55m and share of (domestic, terrestrial?) viewing of 72% had a TVR of just 24%. But, you know, 72% is waaay better than 24%.

        BTW, I’m mistaken about #28 Striking Out and confused it with the AH “comedy” Finding Joy which started out with a great first episode but descended to total poo-e (as reflected in the audience numbers) from then on.

          1. Eoin

            Sorry Clampers, I can’t be definitive about the max audience claim, that’s why I’ve put “?” above. I see average audience figures each week and TVRs, not sure where they’re publicly available without subscription though; the averages I see are way below the figures above which leads me to believe the figs above are maxes, might be wrong though.

            Perhaps someone can ask Jon Williams what these figures are exactly.

          2. Bernie

            Not sure, might be wrong, perhaps someone can ask – jays for a fella with so many opinions you don’t know much, do you Eoin?

          3. Cú Chulainn

            His points are well informed and very accurate. The brass, for the obvious reasons set out, don’t like the hard info in the public domain.

  2. TheQ47

    The 50 most-watched programmes on RTÉ last year Except for the 11 or so which are on Virgin Media One

  3. The Old Boy

    Interesting that the small ball seems more popular than the big, especially when Dublin were in the football final. Also interesting that Croatia v England was more popular than the World Cup final. It also seems that England was Irish viewers’ “favourite” team in the World Cup.

    I do wonder about those audience shares though. A good number of people I spoke to about the Six Nations said the TV3 coverage was execrable and claimed to have watched the BBC and ITV coverage instead. Those claimed percentages seem very optimistic when most people now live in multi-channel land.

    1. scottser

      croatia were my ‘underdog’ favourites of the world cup and probably many others too. i do like to watch england get beat tho, like any normal, healthy irish person.

      dublin’s fourth title was really routine but when we’re in the final for the fifth you’ll see a much bigger interest.

      1. The Old Boy

        I put “favourite” in quotation marks for a reason!

        Fair point about the football and hurling – there was one “routine” final and one exceptional one.

    1. George

      It’s a tv program. Its job is not to change the world it is too get people to watch ads which it seems to be doing quite well.

    1. George

      Well, there is only one soccer match ahead of the two GAA matches. Those GAA matches are annual events while the world cup only comes around every 4 years and England only do well in it once a century.

    1. The Old Boy

      I get the impression that RTÉ know they can’t seriously compete when it comes to making original drama, comedy etc, but they know they can drum up an audience by making this sort of programme of broad appeal to a fairly uncritical middle-Ireland viewership with a taste for the parochial and a tendency to select Telefís Éireann as a default position.

      1. Pat

        Put a cork in it you old josser! Room to Improve is class.

        No offence. I believe the elderly have much to teach us

      2. rotide

        Do you ever actually watch Television Old Boy?

        Room to Improve is part of a genre that is ubiquitous on all television station in the western world. BBC don’t run The Night Manager at 8pm on a tuesday night you know.

        1. The Old Boy

          The point being that those sorts of programmes don’t tend to top the ratings elsewhere, whereas RTÉ treat it as flagship programming.

          I’m not being particularly critical; it’s far better that RTÉ produces the stuff that it can do well given its budget and scale than things that it has a poor track record in like comedy and drama.

          1. rotide

            Don’t tend to top the ratings?

            Changing Rooms was a phenomenal success and started the ball rolling for these sort of things. Grand Designs is also a consistent ratings grabber.

            As to RTE having a poor track record in Drama and Comedy, this is entirely down to exposure to television from markets with far far superior budgets.

          2. Cú Chulainn

            And the fact that RTÉ only work with the talentless, because they are talentless. Lots of super drama made for buttons elsewhere in the world.

    2. Eoin

      I’d bet that was the one episode with Daniel and Majella which was a bonanza for attracting both the window-twitcher and country-ish music cohorts, and that was the max for that episode. I think the average audience for Room to Improve would be around 350k.

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