by SUSAN FOGARTY
Well if you haven’t heard about the Coronation Street “debacle” yet then you’ve been living under a stone; even the PM his waded into the debate, saying the Street should be left alone.
Okay, so I can’t imagine Obama commenting if Days of Our Lives was moved, but that’s what makes our little country so great, when people get upset about the national TV broadcaster moving a show we all love and the PM says what he thinks about it.
The question however is not what the PM thinks, but what TVNZ is thinking. Seriously, what do those people at the TVNZ head office think? Do they think? These and other questions play on my mind.
TVNZ seem to constantly misjudge who watches Coronation Street. Its legion of dedicated fans are like some kind of telly-loving sleeper cell. No one knows they exist, the ratings don’t show them, they never say a word — but move their beloved show, and out of the woodwork they come. Marching across radio talkback and signing petitions with gusto and determination.
TVNZ has tried to meddle with Coronation Street before, and came off second best. But this time things might be different, because, for some reason, they seem intent on simply ignoring what viewers want and changing the time slot, and fans can like it or lump it.
What really rankles is that despite Coro having 525,000 viewers over the age of five, and Masterchef, the show they plan on moving into Coro’s timeslot having only 249,000, it seems to be a deliberate move — but for what purpose? Why move a show everyone seems to love?
And it’s not just the older audience that like to watch it — kids do, too. I’ve witnessed kids in the playground talking about the previous evening’s episode. My own kids watch it. But it seems as if TVNZ just don’t like it.
Perhaps their intention is to move it to the less popular timeslot, then sigh predictably when the viewer numbers drop and they can say, “Oh, look, no one’s watching Coro. We’re going to dump it.”
A TVNZ spokeswoman may have said ratings are only a factor. “They’re not the key driver here.”
But I’ve worked in telly and, take it from me, they’re the only thing that matters. I’ve worked on shows where poor ratings saw them cancelled within weeks.
I’m not saying that doesn’t make sense. If no one’s watching a show, then it has to go.
In a similar way, you don’t expect a supermarket to keep stocking a product no one wants to buy. But, conversely, you don’t expect a supermarket to stop stocking a product everyone loves to buy and then try and tell them that they don’t really like that product — when clearly they do!
I’m not home at 5.30pm and, even if I was, I would have just got home and would need that time to take off my jacket, sort out my bag and move from work mode to home mode.
Plonking myself in front of telly when my kids want to talk about their school day isn’t an option.
It’s just a belligerent move by TVNZ, a disregard for the people who support them, and a move they’ve long wanted to make with Coronation Street.
The sense of inevitability is strong. After all, the move doesn’t reflect the ratings, public opinion or anything else.
So what can we do? Not much more than we have. But I, for one, will be making the switch to TV3 to make a stand that, I hope, will hit TVNZ in the advertising budget.