old news is good news for Seven, bad news for Nine
from AntBlog701

old news is good news for Seven, bad news for Nine

If you've been watching Australia TV and keeping an eye on the TV rating. You will know Channel Nine's bosses are not happy. Australia TV has just turned 50, the first television station was Channel Nine. However, Channel Seven celebrated the 50 years of television in Australia last Sunday with TV Turns 50 - the events that stopped a Nation.

TV Turns 50 was hosted by Sunrise's Mel and Kochie, and scored top rating for the night. Channel Nine on Monday showed another special, 50 Years of Television News with Brian Henderson. Brian Henderson is one of the most respectful news reader in Australia, but the rating was poor.

Mel and Kochie must be Channel Seven's favourite hosts.
The Steve Irwin: A Tribute hosted by Mel and Kochie on Tuesday 5th Sept 2006 had 2,11m viewers, winning the time slot.
Sunday night's TV Turns 50 - the events that stopped a Nation, by Mel and Kochie again, although not reach 2m, but still won the time slot.
Just for the comparison, the day after Seven's Steve Irwin special, Channel Nine had an 1 hour long special for Steve Irwin, but did not win the time slot.

TV Turns 50 with Mel and Kochie

The Sydney Morning Herald Blog's Tribal Mind summed it up nicely,

It must be driving Channel Nine's programmers nuts. "How come nostalgia works for Seven," they'll be asking today, "when it doesn't work for us -- and it's OUR bloody birthday." Nine could only draw a million viewers in the mainland capitals to its '50 Years of News' show on Monday night. Perhaps Nine should have hired Jamie Oliver as host instead of Brian Henderson, because Jamie boosted Andrew Denton's audience to 1.1 million and gave the ABC a rare 16.3 per cent of the prime time audience.

Thanks to my Elgato EyeTV, I recorded the show. The 3 1/2 hours show becomes 2:36 show after removing commercials, but it's still 12.4GB raw data. I of course converted it to H.264 for archiving purpose, but file size in H.264 is 1.2GB only.