Australia's Channel 7 to air 'The Muppets' December 29th

JimAndFrank

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Sad news for Aussie fans. Due to complaints and poor ratings Channel 7 have cancelled the airing of the new Muppets Show.
I am SO ANNOYED right now!

Where was the advertising? NOWHERE!! Not a single advert until during Sunrise that very morning. What a load of crap! What was there to complain about anyway!I don't get it. I really don't.

Really disappointed with Channel 7 with the way they handled the situation. I swear that they wanted it to fail, so they deliberately didn't advertise. They didn't want any precious timeslots taken away from their stupid trashy reality shows.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and punch a wall.
 

Iscah

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To be fair, the first few episodes are the ones people are most likely to complain about, especially if minimal advertising means they haven't realised the actual tone of the show, assume Muppets are for kids, and/or expected The Muppet Show.

Still very disappointing that they've cancelled it so quickly. The first two episodes are still up on their website, so maybe they're waiting to judge on how many additional hits they get from that...
 
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muppetperson

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The show didn't rate well. It will be back later, but on one of Seven's digital channels, either Seven 2 or Mate.
 

JimAndFrank

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Looking back on the past month, I honestly don't know what I was expecting.

It SUCKS to be a Muppet fan in Australia. I know there are other fans in other countries with the same problems, but I'm just talking from my own experience. Aside from Kermit coming to promote TM2011 in Sydney, there has been absolutely no major Muppet appearances or events. Even Jim Henson only visited us once and that was for an extremely short Dark Crystal promo tour.Sesame has been fantastic with bringing characters over, so what is stopping Disney from following suit? Distance? Expense?

The Muppets have such a huge fan base over here, and it baffles me that Disney has never taken advantage of that. Australia doesn't have much access to decent Muppet merchandise unless we want to pay ridiculously high postage rates that end up being more expensive than the actual Kermit coffee mug. The only Muppet t-shirt I have brought from a local store was a crappy $5 singlet from K-mart. Every Muppet-related book or item of clothing I possess was imported from the US.

And then here we go with this whole TV show debacle. I was SO excited when the show premiered on Channel 7. I actually believed that the double-episode was the networks way of saying, "Check it out! This new show is so exciting, we wanted to show you heaps of it!!!"

But no. Channel 7 didn't advertise it until that very morning. Nobody knew it even existed, so the ratings were extremely poor and they had an excuse to axe it from their Summer schedule. This is what has caused me to go on my rant. They didn't give it a chance and I firmly believe that they wanted it to fail.

Henson forbid that The Muppets get in the way of Channel 7's precious 'My Kitchen Rules' or it's reruns of 'The Big Bang Theory'. If the show was going to get in the way of the Summer of Tennis series, why bother debuting The Muppets in late December at all? Why not wait until late February if scheduling was going to be such a huge drama?

I still have a little bit of hope that the show will find a decent time slot on one of the sister channels, but maybe once again I am just wasting my breath.

Sorry about the rant, but I really needed to get it off my chest.

 

Narf

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Hi JimAndFrank - I've signed up to this forum just so I could say, "right there with you."

The lack of advertising by Channel 7 was appalling and very disappointing. I almost missed the airing and couldn't believe the lack of promo for such a loved institution while shows of a lot lesser quality seem to be relentlessly beaten into us!
The only promo I heard was what filtered through on news and radio when the show's details were initially announced in the States. Sometimes I feel like Australia is a forgotten part of the world.

I'm sure there were many other fans who were keen to watch, and like me are left wondering what happened and hoping someone will come to their senses. I for one will be hanging out to see it whenever or wherever it airs and will enjoy every minute when it does, I'm sure.
 

JimAndFrank

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Hi JimAndFrank - I've signed up to this forum just so I could say, "right there with you."

The lack of advertising by Channel 7 was appalling and very disappointing. I almost missed the airing and couldn't believe the lack of promo for such a loved institution while shows of a lot lesser quality seem to be relentlessly beaten into us!
The only promo I heard was what filtered through on news and radio when the show's details were initially announced in the States. Sometimes I feel like Australia is a forgotten part of the world.

I'm sure there were many other fans who were keen to watch, and like me are left wondering what happened and hoping someone will come to their senses. I for one will be hanging out to see it whenever or wherever it airs and will enjoy every minute when it does, I'm sure.
*sigh* Sadly there is not much we can do about the situation.

I have actually watched the entire season so far (by rather naughty means) so I can keep up with the rest of the fandom.

The show started off a bit weak, but it really has gotten to be a wonderfully Muppety experience. This is what erks me about this whole situation- Channel 7 didn't even give it a chance.

Best case scenario is that they palm off the airing rights to another network. I really wanted the show to be picked up by Channel 9 because I trust thier judgement on quality TV.
 
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