Footy Show crashes to ratings low as rival thrives
THE Footy Show crashed to a new low in Melbourne last night, smashed by rival The Front Bar. The dismal ratings figure is worse than the numbers that saw former host Craig Hutchison axed. Can it ever win back viewers?
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THE Footy Show has crashed to a new low in Melbourne with a mere 116,000 viewers last night.
Nine’s football program was smashed by rival The Front Bar which averaged a whopping 261,000 viewers.
The dismal figure for The Footy Show is worse than Craig Hutchison scored before he was axed and replaced with original host Eddie McGuire in August last year.
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Last week the show aired at a special time of 9.10pm on Tuesday, while The Front Bar screened the next night. But the lack of direct opposition from another footy program failed to win viewers for Nine, with just 134,000 in Melbourne.
After an early ratings spike for McGuire’s return, The Footy Show has steadily shed its audience while The Front Bar prospered.
There has been a raft of changes to on-air personnel in recent years.
Rebecca Maddern, who joined the program as its first female panellist in 2016 and had her first baby this year, won’t be returning.
James Brayshaw was dumped and replaced by Hutchison, who in turn was axed after a ratings slide.
The Footy Show appears to be fractious behind the scenes as well.
The past week saw the breakout of a spat between Sam Newman and producer Harvey Silver over a car parking spot.
The week before reports emerged of a heated stoush between McGuire and reporter Damian Barrett.
It now seems inevitable that Nine will have to make major personnel changes to the show to give it any chance of continuing in 2019.
The Herald Sun revealed in August that the secret to The Front Bar’s success this year has been its female audience.
Female viewers made up an average of 45 per cent of the Seven program’s audience each week, with 46.2 per cent in Melbourne, 45 per cent in Adelaide and 48.8 per cent in Perth.
McGuire has staunchly defended the performance of the show, which first aired in 1994 and at one time dominated ratings across the footy-loving states.
He said the show would not be changing its name and declared he was looking forward to the challenge thrown down by a ‘good opposition’ in The Front Bar.
“The Footy Show has been the most successful show on Australian television for a quarter of a century,’’ McGuire said.
“This year an alternate show (The Front Bar), which is an excellent show, is up against us and has had victory against us in recent times.
“I believe in the last eight weeks The Footy Show has been really back in form, which takes a little while to do when you’ve got a new host and people stepping in and stepping out.
“Timeslot changes, night changes, a whole new production team has come into the show.
McGuire said the show would continue to evolve, as it had done for 25 years.
“As far as I’m concerned this is year one, not year 25 of The Footy Show,” he said.
“I’m confident that when we hit the finals and when we’re talking about actual games people will come back to The Footy Show and they will like what they see.”
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