Interesting to note that Saturday arvo rates well compared to "prime time tv viewing" on a Sunday night
That's true. The AFL captured about 90% of the TV viewing audience for that slot. They were up against the World News on SBS. The NRL captured 40% up against competitive Sunday night prime time programming.
There's this idea though that if the AFL shifts to an evening slot that a heap of viewers will some how decide to tune in.
But you have to consider -- what is stopping them from tuning in now?
People tune in their millions for a horse race at 3pm on a Tuesday whilst most of them are at work. Why? Because it's an event. You make an effort to specifically tune in for it based on your subjective opinion of the program's appeal.
Only 33% of Australians work on the weekend. It seems like a lot but you have to remember a large portion of that is flexible hours - people choosing what weekends and what hours they want to work (think casual event staff who get their booking week by week, office workers choosing to do over time etc). These are people who that if they wanted to watch the grand final they could easily shift their work commitments around to accommodate it.
You look at people who work weekends with set locked in hours that are the same every week - it's actually 10%. Of that more work on a Saturday afternoon from 12-6pm than on a Sunday night but not that many. A large percentage of that 10% are people in emergency services etc who have to be on standby across potentially any of those shifts. Again though it's not entirely impossible for them to make arrangements to watch the grand final if they deem it more important than work.
The point is if people really want to watch the grand final from 12-6pm on a Saturday afternoon THEY WILL FIND A WAY.
TV Ratings meters don't measure people who would have watched it but didn't bother to make the effort.
So when people say --
A lot of WA people cannot watch the AFL GF because they are at work (I was). So add a minimum of 10% to Perth AFL figures for the timeslot.
It's assuming that pretty much all of those people working would have watched the grand final when we know that out of the wider Australian population only about 17% -- 4 million out of 24 million -- actually tune in.
It's a myth!
Why do TV networks want the Grand Finals in Prime Time?
When the AFL wins 7 the 12-6pm slot what does it do to 9 & 10 advertising revenue for that period? Next to nothing because 9 & 10 aren't attracting a premium for that slot normally.
But when the NRL takes 4 million viewers for 9 on a Sunday Night that's ad money that's being spent at 9 instead of 7 & 10.
The networks want the games during prime time for the ad spends - not the ratings and certainly not for the benefit of the viewers.
And to anyone who might doubt this ask yourself this question: when have the networks ever placed the importance of giving the viewers more access over their ad revenues?
Remind yourself of that when you're complaining about watching a thousand ads during the AFL grand final...