Diary of a TV junkie: Movie magic fades out Felicity Shea
REMEMBER when Sunday night movies were a big deal? Anticipation would build throughout the week and on Sunday evenings the movie really did stave off that slight, ‘tomorrow’s Monday’ depression.
Sadly, the tradition of the Sunday night movie is dying. It’s not the media ‘event’ it used to be, and this is substantiated by the demise of the “roadblock”.
Watching a movie on television is a different experience today from say, five or 10 years ago. Viewers include a sophisticated, film-going public, but many movies are expected to rate well simply because they were box office hits.
This is an erroneous assumption for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, many of the box office hits that audiences loved seeing on the big screen now make up part of their home movie collection. People today have vast DVD/VHS collections.
By the time films screen on FTA (some 36 months later), people have seen them many times.
Secondly, many films that succeed at the box office do not lend themselves well to television. Take week one of the survey period. The three films on Sunday night were Looking for Alibrandi (Nine), The Beach (Seven) and Gladiator (Ten).
Contrary to industry expectations, Looking for Alibrandi won the night against two Hollywood blockbusters. Why?
Well, Gladiator is so epic that to squeeze it into the 8.30pm movie timeslot many scenes were chopped up, thinned out or completely removed. This reduces the film’s impact.
The Beach suffered a similar fate, in that it was edited for time reasons but also to comply with the censor’s guidelines.
Films that will do well on Sunday night are those that either people didn’t get around to seeing at the cinema but would quite like to see, or those that they don’t love enough to put into their permanent collection but still enjoy.
Zenith Media group director Henry Tajer suggests this has been the leading factor behind the demise of the Sunday roadblock.
Tajer believes media strategists are focusing on getting better reach rather than the ‘big hit’ that roadblocking offers.
As Tajer says, “There’s greater consistency in [buying time] in the 6.30pm to 8.30pm timeslot because with that programming it’s easier to target particular demographics”.
Is this where roadblocking will reappear? Will these timeslots become more valuable to advertisers?
Diary of a TV Junkie is one viewer’s account of what keeps her glued to the small screen. E: Felicity.Shea@Reedbusiness.com.au
