Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth Axed

It was fun while it lasted.

Well, no it wasn't.

And Australia has spoken; Live From Planet Earth was crap. TV Tonight has reported this afternoon that LFPE has been axed after 3 episodes.

It lasted longer that Let Loose Live, at least.

Channel Nine really had no choice, too. It had become a laughing stock, with it garnering almost universally negative comments on Twitter: hardly a good look for the new "Home of Comedy". Also, its latest rating of 189,000 didn't help all that much either.

Unfortunately for Elton, it pretty much shuts the door on any future opportunities with the Nine network.

With the ratings slump for Hey Hey it's Saturday in 2010, and now the terrible reviews for LFPE, one would almost say these types of comedy variety shows with dated humour will not be attempted readily.

 

 

 

Ben Elton Week 2: This is it

It's D-Day for Ben Elton. Well, technically tomorrow is: the day when the ratings come out.

But it's undoubted that tonight is Elton's final chance to prove himself, mostly to viewers at home, and to a lesser extent, Nine execs, who will be looking for any promising signs.

And God knows, there certainly weren't many in Week 1.

Basically, if Elton wants a third week, at the very least, there will have to be a ratings increase of at least 100k. Its ratings were 455,000 in its first week so to equal that would be almost remarkable.

So, let's be realistic here and analyse this question; does Elton even have a snowflake's chance of pulling that off?

We all know that the show was pretty bad in its first week, and the media certainly knew that too. The press and reaction was almost universally negative.

So, keeping that in mind, we can look at these factors in terms of its possible week 2 ratings.

Retention rate: People on twitter also panned it, so you'd have to imagine very little would tune in week 2.
However...

Those who peruse the news sites would have seen Elton state he got the mix wrong and there was too much smut. Of course he wasn't completely repentant, but this would have won him at least a touch of respect and brings at least some intrigue as to how the show has changed.

Of course, this will only bring in a small percentage of those who watched last week, let's say less than 50%.

Word of mouth: This will be almost all bad, so I wouldn't expect too many new sets of eyes. However, it does play into the car-crash factor, as in so bad that you have to watch. Don't expect this to be a huge element though.

So, you'd have to say that Elton's only hope is that people will be forgiving enough to give him another shot.

My post last week, "Bye Ben", wrote his show off after ratings last week. So Elton was smart in pleading his case to TV Tonight and Jon Faine in the week- but really, it was his only hope.

But still, it will be interesting to watch tonight. For mine, it would need to be about three times as funny (if it can be measured) to keep this viewer watching next week (assuming..., etc.).

I don't think it has the potential to be, based on last week's show, but I hope I am pleasantly surprised.

But let's face it, even turns out to be brilliant (look at Micallef Tonight), in the cold light of day, no show can be saved from the swinging axe known as the ratings.