GLOBAL WARMING GETS LOW TV RATINGS

Maybe Australians are already too fried to care.

Viewers keen to save planet, but during favourite show; The green conundrum is affecting many products, not just TV
Paul McIntyre, March 8, 2007 (Sydney Morning Herald)
- …With so much attention on climate change and consumer research indicating viewers were keenly interested in a 2½ hour feast of practical advice on how they might save the planet, Ten [Network]'s ratings for the Cool Aid blockbuster on Sunday night were still a disaster…compared with…Grey's Anatomy and CSI…

- "Truthfully, we're confused," says Ten's network head of programming, Beverley McGarvey. "…We spent a fortune to get the audience there and it didn't work…"
- …Despite the focus on climate change, the green conundrum is alive across myriad product categories, including toilet paper…Australians spend $500 million a year on the stuff but just $20 million each year goes to brands using recycled paper. Since 2005 the category has been in decline…
- Toilet paper and TV shows are entirely different categories but both are facing the same challenge on the green front - how to get mass appeal and then turn a buck.
- The latest research says it should be possible…

- The biggest shock in this year's survey, however is that 50 per cent of Australians now say they will need to start "dobbing each other in" for bad environmental behaviour such as wasting water resources…[There are] disparities between sentiment and behaviour…
- Planet Ark's chairman and Australian frontman for Al Gore's hit documentary An Inconvenient Truth, John Dee, begs to differ.
- "We are naive if we think everyone is going to drop their spending habits overnight…When people say they really care about the environment they really do care. What gets in the way of rhetoric and action is price and quality."
- Dee argues education is critical…"So much of the Government rhetoric which has gone out to combat climate change has been around costing jobs and damaging the economy that households don't realise many of the changes they can make can actually save money," says Dee.