Friday, March 09, 2007
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
You’ll be smiling all day after reading this:
Ten Network’s programmers are baffled. With so much attention on climate change and consumer research indicating viewers were keenly interested in a 2 1⁄2 hour feast of practical advice on how they might save the planet, Ten’s ratings for the Cool Aid blockbuster on Sunday night were still a disaster.
Viewing numbers peaked at 618,000, compared with more than 1.6 million each for Grey’s Anatomy and CSI on Seven and Nine respectively, and averaged just 464,000 people across the country.
"Truthfully, we’re confused,” says Ten’s network head of programming, Beverley McGarvey. “They didn’t come. It’s not like they came to the show, sampled it and went away. They didn’t come.
"We had study guides in schools, we had the full support of the print media, both editorially and with advertising, and an extensive on-air campaign with a number of different creative treatments and different stances.
"We spent a fortune to get the audience there and it didn’t work. We’ve talked about it quite a lot internally. We’re disappointed."
Hint to Ten: possibly you’ll attract more viewers if you don’t run Tim Flannery’s alarmist nonsense:
It’s likely to be too late for the polar bear.
Doesn’t look like it, pal:
A survey of the animals’ numbers in Canada’s eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind’s interference in the environment.
In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today.
"There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears,” said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals.
His findings back the claims of Inuit hunters who have long claimed that they were seeing more bears.
As usual, motives are questioned:
While fellow scientists have accepted Mr Taylor’s findings, critics point out that his study was commissioned by the Inuit-dominated government of Nunavit.
I’ll take their word over Flannery’s. Meanwhile, check out this polar bear photo gallery and an accidentally-timely column.
(Via Chris W. and Gordon)
UPDATE. Via Adrian the cabbie, more polar bear action.