Television

Geographic TV Wars - Sydney Vs Melbourne   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Sep 14, 2007, 20:59

The old Sydney-Melbourne rivalry won't go away.

It's on football, politics, cricket, coffee, food, you name it and in TV viewing.

And it was very noticeable this week.

Take Kath & Kim on the Seven Network on Sundays at 7.30 pm: it averaged 2.045 million nationally, but 726,000 of these were in Melbourne and just 493,000 in Sydney. Brisbane's audience of 362,000 was proportionately bigger than Sydney's.

Kath and Kim is produced in Melbourne and set in the 'mythical Melbourne suburb of Fountaingate'.

The other big hit this week was The Chaser on the ABC on Wednesday night with its APEC edition. It averaged 2.245 million viewers nationally.

It's produced in Sydney, the Chaserettes are all Sydney Grammar and Sydney Uni lads, so its natural they averaged 726,000 in Sydney. But 699,000 people tuned in down south and a very solid 341,000 in Brisbane.

Unlike Kath and Kim which was second in the regional areas, The Chaser topped the viewers’ list in the bush Wednesday.

Seeing bush viewers are more conservative than us city slickers, it was message to all those conservative commentators that being irreverent and anarchistic had wide appeal. (After all of you can survive the bush's recipe of life in fires, floods and especially drought, the jibes of The Chaser wouldn't offend too many people).

Both programs had an audience in regional areas around 736,000 people, give or take a thousand or so: that's roughly the size of their audiences in Sydney and Melbourne respectively, which shows the relative size of the bush to the city in terms of TV viewing.

The divide was also there for the Melbourne- produced Chris Lilley mock-u-mentary Summer Heights High. It averaged a new high of 1.394 million, with 503,000 in Melbourne (where it finished fourth on the night) and 429,000 in Sydney.

Spicks and Specks, another Melbourne-produced program had an all time high of 1.653 nationally, with 563,000 in Melbourne and 472,000 in Sydney.

And the Ten Network's hit, Thank God You're Here is produced in Melbourne: it averaged 1.785 million people nationally but 618,000 watched in Melbourne and just 484,000 in Sydney.

But then you get to a Sydney produced program like Seven's Home and Away (Summer Bay is so Sydney northern beaches).

But more people watch in Melbourne some nights (was it cold that night down south), and other nights more people in Sydney watch. Home and Away has been going for so long now that its origins have faded and it is a true nationally appealing program.

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