If Karl Stefanovic had hoped his big TV comeback, This Time Next Year, was going to resurrect his TV A-lister status in the wake of his dumping from TODAY, he must be feeling disappointed today.
WATCH: Karl Stefanovic brags about his career fortunes on TODAY
The return of the highly-publicised show has drawn approximately half the audience it did when the program debuted in 2017, drawing raised eyebrows in TV industry circles.
Monday night’s return pulled in 686,000 metropolitan viewers – a drop of 1.28 million from the program’s prior debut.
Regional viewers were similarly scarcer, with a total audience of 951,000 compared to 1.87 million for the last season debut.
Despite strong support from lead-in show The Block, Karl’s show was still beaten by Network 10’s low budget favourite Have You Been Paying Attention?
While industry insiders are blaming the rise of streaming TV for ratings declines across the board, Ten’s quirky panel show has been on the up – it drew half as many viewers as This Time Next Year two years ago.
Nine program director Hamish Turner told the company’s newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, that he was pleased with his show’s ratings outcome.
‘Nationally it achieved almost one million viewers, retained much of the audience from The Block and had great viewer sentiment,’ he said.
But Nunne Media analyst Chris Walton said that while Nine would have expected a drop off after last season, they would not have been anticipating this level of decline.
‘In the current climate few programs get over 1 million metro viewers in one night,’ he told the paper.
‘I’m sure they would have gone into this series with that context in mind. A drop would have been forecast, for sure, but a drop [in metro viewers] by half … I imagine they’ll be disappointed with that.’
TV industry insiders are now watching closely to see how the second episode does – with a further sharp decline spelling disaster for both the show and Karl.
