Gruen scores 1.1m – Twittersphere says yes

Tim Burrowes

March 19, 2009 9:15

The new series of The Gruen Transfer debuted last night with a solid 1.1m audience.

Although that compared to a season opening last year of just under 1.3m, the ratings is a good one for the ABC. The national broadcaster would always claim that ratings are unimportant, but any show over 1m viewers is a triumph for ABC1.

Last night’s show saw an in-depth debate over the marketing of Australian Tourism , before McCann Melbourne took on Marketforce Perth in the unsellable pitch – a nuclear reactor on your doorstep. Marketforce rompted to a relatively easy victory with the idea of tying Australia’s love of giant objects to reactor buildings.

The full ratings from last night will follow in an hour or two.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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3 COMMENTS

Neerav 19 Mar 09

I was in the studio audience last night for the taping of episode #4 and Wil Anderson was much more relaxed and comfortable in his role as host, didn’t even need do do any pickups at the end

Last year I was in the studio audience on the same night that the Gruen Transfer debuted and Wil was extremely nervous, made lots of mistakes and swore continuously – perhaps thats the “tell” which shows how nervous he is

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Kris Olin 19 Mar 09

Not a bad season opening! Thanks Wil. And there was even a great message to the marketing people working at Australian Tourism: Get an overseas advertising agency to produce your campaigns. Wasn’t that Baz Luhrmann’s Australia film based TV ad just plain awful? Where’s the next Paul Hogan?

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