Media reports this weekend said TV audiences are well down from last year with Channel 9’s coverage suffering a drop of up to 25 per cent in audiences compared with the first Test between Australia and New Zealand last November.
“Thursday’s audience was down 9.7 per cent (to 427,000 viewers nationally), Friday’s audience dropped 17.1 per cent (to 434,000) and Saturday’s was down a whopping 25.4 per cent (to 658,000) compared with the same days last year,” the Herald Sun newspaper reported.
Media analyst Steve Allen told the Herald Sun that the figures for the first of the three-Test series between Australia and the West Indies represented “a terrible start to the Test cricket season.”
“This Test was well down on even our pessimistic predictions,” Allen said.
“(Channel) Nine needs the West Indians to get their act together but plenty of commentators believe this is not the best team the West Indies could field (and) the result seems to show it,” Allen added.
The Herald Sun said the previous Sunday’s Australia v All Stars Twenty20 match averaged a much healthier 1.135 million viewers but it was still around 15 per cent down on the ratings for the 2008 All Stars match.
The second Test match between West Indies and Australia starts in Adelaide on Friday (7:30 pm on Thursday – East Caribbean Time).
