Hello Everyone. So the last episode of A Place to Call Home has aired, and we need to work out what we do next. Theres a couple of things that are well known. Firstly APTCH was a very expensive series to make, so it relied heavily on advertisers. When season 1 aired the show went gangbusters! Australia loved it and it rated through the roof. It was acclaimed, and rightly so, as a world class drama with a solid cast of some of Australias finest actors. People around the country raved about it and we all felt like we knew the characters. Season 2 was commissioned and filming began. People waited with baited breath for the new season to air. The thing was we didnt hear a lot about it. Seven didnt publicise the show much for season 2. Season 1 had teasers and introductions to characters and was publicised heavily, but season 2 appeared on our screens without much fanfare. The show started to air and we all realised why we loved it so much. Then the ratings came in and they were still very solid, hovering around the 1 million mark, not as strong as season 1 but still respectable and on par with dramas airing in the same timeslot - such as House Husbands. I dont think this was Sevens plan though. As I mentioned earlier shows rely heavily on advertisers. APTCH was no different. Advertisers like a certain demographic, namely 24 - 45 year olds. The ratings were good for APTCH, around the magic number that shows need these days to stay on air, but according to surveys around 60% of the audience for APTCH was in the 45 to 75 range. Not the ideal target demographic of the advertisers that Seven wanted to attract. Thats the real reason that Seven is cancelling the show. We their viewing audience are not the ideal audience for them to make enough money or attract the lucrative advertisers. Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings, Masters and the like do not see the APTCH audience as the right audience that they want to advertise to. Picture the days of Today Tonight and the stories they used to run on agism, when bosses fired someone because they were too old, or refused to hire them. They were openly against agism, yet Seven is displaying that exact agism they told us was not on for employers and the like. Also the advertisers are saying that we as an audience are not worthy of their advertising dollar, not worth supporting a show we love. The millions who watched and loved APTCH are not worth the time of Seven and Advertisers because of their age. If you look at the comments on this page you will see a different story. You will see people of all ages and all demographics asking why their favorite show has been axed. There are millions of people across all demographics that love APTCH. Women and Men alike. But Seven does not think they are worth investing in as an audience. They are being ageist, though they are trying to hide it. I have a theory about what was supposed to happen this year. Seven as I mentioned did not heavily publicise A Place to Call Home. I think they were hoping that we had lost interest in the show and that when the show aired it would not attract anywhere near the numbers it did last season, and that viewers would taper off over the season. Yet it didnt and this robbed Seven from being able to axe the show citing poor ratings as the reason. They couldnt come out and say that it was too expensive to make or that the age of the viewers wasnt right for the advertisers they wanted to attract, so they just said nothing. Just that they were axing the show. We pushed for more information, but theyve said nothing. Thats because they cant explain the real reasons why theyre not continuing with the show for fear of appearing ageist and exposing their major advertisers as equally ageist. When A Place to Call Home was commissioned it was common knowledge that it would be a 3 season storyline. You could see that they were setting up season 2 to lead into season 3 with major storylines to continue on. But then they axed it and had to hurriedly wrap it up with a pathetic 2 minute ending. When they announced the axing the backlash started and its been relentless and I hear that Seven are on the backfoot. They werent expecting it. Weve been petitioning, and calling and posting on Facebook, and some of it has made an impact, but now we need to take things to the next level. The calls to the station have been unrelenting, but unfortunately they do not go any further than the switchboard. The receptionists are told not to put us through and they have no power anyway. The facebook posts are only seen by the publicists who are running the APTCH facebook page and they have no power to do anything. The complaints officers will respond to our letters but they will not do much else. I doubt any of the letters will get to the big suits in the network. So we need to change our tactics. We need to write to different people. One of the posters has mentioned printing out Facebook comments, and we need to do this. Lots of us. We also need to target particular people. All you need to do is pick a post in the SAPTCH page or the official APTCH page, print out all the comments, and write a letter saying you want Season 3 to be filmed, and you are tired of all the reality TV shows, and want priority given to dramas like APTCH. Tell them that you will boycott the Seven network and its shows if they dont do this. We also need to write to advertisers like Woolworths, Spotlight, Bunnings etc - any of the advertisers and tell them the same thing. The people in the Seven network we need to write to are: Tim Worner - CEO Seven Network Brad Lyons - Head of Programming John Holmes - Executive Producer Julie McGauren - Executive Producer. The mailout needs to be huge to make them sit up and take notice. We need lots of letters and Facebook printouts. Can you help us out by picking a post on the APTCH Facebook page or the SAPTCH Page and mailing it in to one or all of the people above with a letter saying why you want to save our favourite show? I have also created a group - the Save A Place to Call Home Group on Facebook. If you are interested in finding out more and helping with other ideas in the campaign then reply to this thread and I will send you an invite. If we want to save APTCH we need to change our tactics and the people we are targeting. I am also thinking of starting petitions to the advertisers that have advertised during the show asking them if they support Sevens agist attitude. Thanks for reading this large post. Cheers, Peter.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 08:33:20 +0000