Exactly. And I couldn't help but feel sorry for Appliances Online. I imagined their executives sitting miserably watching their $5k vouchers going each week, hoping desperately for an uptake in sales so they didn't have to sack their Marketing Manager for such a dodgy call. I figured that they weren't getting the increased sales they'd hoped for at the start of the show, so when the intruders were being introduced, they said no way are these extra dudes getting anything. That's why Ch 9 canned the Friday and Sunday shows - the audience numbers, particularly in the buzzing demographics, couldn't pull in the advertisers like Big Bang and others could. No advertising dollars = no show. So it was left to the poor old sponsors who were stuck in hopeful pre-show contracts to stick to the bare minimum spend they'd signed on for. It's going to be so hard to sell the BB concept to new advertisers, unless they can convince them that the next series will be a big hit, akin to the old days. Might actually help us get Up Late and Friday Night Games again. Or as Sonia suggested, if they run on Go next year, advertising time slots will be cheaper, so the series won't be burdened with huge expectations from the start. If we get BB again next year, it will be substantially different because commercially speaking, it has to be.
