The Australian summer of international cricket ended with victory to the home side but a loss for Channel Nine as viewers struggled to find relevance in the dead rubber.
With the best Australian players in India, it was always going to be a tough sell to get viewers to tune in for the three-match Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka.
An average of 591,000 viewers watched Australia defeat Sri Lanka by 41-runs.
It was only good enough to be the 13th best show of the night behind ABC programs Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery (603,000) and 7:30 (612,000). It was also beaten by Home and Away (754,000) and I’m a celebrity get me out of here! (904,000).
It was less than half the audience which tuned in to watch the third ODI between Australia and Pakistan last month and well down on the average Big Bash audience of more than 700,000.
Test cricket ratings topped the charts for the summer with the day/night Test against South Africa attracting a peak audience of 2.150 million viewers back in November.
Cricket Australia had been criticised for the way the summer was scheduled with constant shifts between formats and the short tour to New Zealand for an ODI series.
The inclusion of the Sri Lankan Twenty20s particularly riled fans.
You can hardly blame people for preferring to watch reality television, news and soap operas last night.
Even the best PR spin merchants would struggle to come up with reasons why you should be just as excited for the Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka as the Indian Test series starting the very next day.
I’m actually surprised the ratings were as high as they were. Also, Cricket Australia was lucky that the Sri Lankan supporters were so passionate at the three games otherwise the atmosphere would have been non-existent, especially at the MCG.
I wrote last year that the scheduling this summer wasn’t as out of whack as it had been in the past. It was great to see some new players get the chance to represent Australia but unfortunately, it was overshadowed by the focus on the main players in India.
These ratings are a wake-up call to the powers that be that scheduling is extremely important.
I doubt the same mistake will be made again. For one, commercial networks like Channel Nine won’t stand for it.
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