Mnet Soap The Wild Cancelled
Shock waves reverberated around the industry this weekend when news broke that MNet’s new soapie The Wild has been cancelled by the channel citing poor viewership ratings.
The channel is said to be dumping the low performing show to use its money for other local tv productions, calling it a “difficult decision”.
According to the channel the show was basically a bad investment since its viewership was “not in line with the vast investment put in”.
The Wild could not even make the Top 10 of the channel's show. Given that the highest rated show on the channel averages just a mere 250 000 viewers and the lowest 150 000, that means the show was doing really bad.
Mnet had tried over the course of the show’s run to lure bigger audiences. The channel went as far as to re-purpose the show with its sister channel in an attempt to expose it to more viewers.
After just three years on the air the show will be remembered for being the first show in the industry to be picketed following a demonstration by disgruntled actors and industry workers.
It will be also be remembered as the show that launched Minnie Dlamini as a bona fide actress after her dismal cameo on Generations. On The Wild she impressed and made all naysayers sit up and notice. Now we know that she is not just a presenter but can easily take on acting if she chooses to venture that route too.
Personally I can not say that I am surprised that the show did not last as it was not doing well with the ratings and given that Mnet is a private channel they have to get their money’s worth on every production they invest on.
The sad part is that yet another brilliant show with some really good actors and writers has to be canned because as South Africans we would rather watch redundant badly produced shows than support shows like this.
Final episode of The Wild will air in March 2013
1 comment:
no Phil I think you're being way too harsh on the South Africans. I think The Wild lost it's way when it came to its target audience. Mind you the majority of South Africans are black people (mostly women) living on the poverty line. The only access we have to TV shows is Generations which is why it has the most viewership. Also it has built a loyalty fanbase over the years which TW doesn't have. It's not by choice that we watch this badly written shows. It's by circumstance. Also the younger Black/white middle class are not home at the time of TW. Our lives are busy and we have so much choice out there that it's hard to follow a soapy, especially a new one like TW. So really I think they were lost when it came to their market. Yes it's a good show. But if they want good viewership, take the show to SABC. It's that simple.
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