HDTV Ratings: February 22
February 23, 2012 
3 Comments
TV3’s HD premiere of the outstanding documentary, When a City Falls, had no chance against that other “big one”: TV2’s comedy block juggernaut.
The two-hour special averaged 8.7% of TV3’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds, compared to Two and a Half Men’s 14.4%, 2 Broke Girls’ 13.8%, The Big Bang Theory’s 14.9% and Happy Endings’ 8.8%.
The numbers were mirrored in other demographics, except for TV2’s 18-39 viewership, of which only 6.2% tuned in.
While Gerard Smyth’s doco deserved to rate higher, it was up a couple of points on the previous week’s X-Factor Australia.
And if you did miss it, the DVD’s out today with the extra footage that was in the 106-minute theatrical release.
While When a City Falls barely dented TV2’s line-up, it did take its toll on TV One’s, with below-average 25-54 ratings of 5% for Fair Go, 4.5% for SPCA Rescue and 4.8% for Winners & Losers.
This slump culminated in a much lower rating of only 3.0% for for Harry’s Law.
TV3’s Sons of Anarchy also out-rated TV2’s The Walking Dead: 6.6% of 25-54s versus 5.2%, 8.2% of 18-49s vs 6.0%, 7.0% of 18-39s vs 6.6% and 9.5% of HHS vs 4.0%.
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February 23, 2012 at 11:27 am
It was a good doco, worth another look, minus the annoying ads. It was shot in HD with 5.1 sound, so why no Blu-ray release?
Presumably because of high Blu-ray authoring costs. NZ’s too small a market for most distributors to justify the extra expense of distributing movies on both Blu-ray and DVD, especially if it’s a low-budget production. Boy’s the biggest grossing NZ movie in history, and remains a top-selling DVD, but although Universal Pictures NZ had plans to release the special edition on Blu-ray, it never proceeded, possibly because Boy never enjoyed international success.
I and a lot of people I know were all Christchurched-out by that time of the evening, so I recorded Big Bang and that was it.