On Monday, with little fanfare, NZ on Air announced the renewal of Filthy Rich, TV2's soapy inheritance drama, for a second season. I was surprised at the news, as I was far from the only critic to find the show a dated, horny mess.
And I had kept track of ratings throughout, and watched them curve sharply downwards at first, then display a listless drift.
"The brilliantly-made first series had an average 5-plus audience of 250,000," the email gushed, "and a total of more than 700,000 on demand streams across the series".
What's striking there are the numbers chosen to trumpet its success. The online streams are average - Shortland Street averages nearly 50 per cent more, according to industry sources.
But it's the 250,000 which astounds - Nielsen only makes public the top 20 shows, and The Block: Girls versus Boys last week came in 20th with 328,000 viewers. So it wasn't particularly popular in the mass market.
But the bigger question is whether the 5+ audience is even relevant? The show screened at 8.30pm on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and featured a ludicrous sex scene during the 6pm news in its first five minutes - so it's hard to imagine five-year-olds were a core part of its audience.
TV2 claims 18-49 as its target demographic, and the numbers there were even less pretty.
Simon Prast and Theresa Healey in scene from television series Filthy Rich.
It breached 200,000 (including timeshifting) on debut, on the back of a huge marketing campaign, but never again approached that number. The following day it dropped a third of audience - overnight - and only rarely broke 150,000 from there on in.
In the last census, according to Statistics New Zealand data, there were 1,798,125 people aged 18-49 in New Zealand. That this show, the second-most richly funded in our history, couldn't attract even 10 per cent of its target audience suggests it was not a product we wanted.
Critically savaged and mostly ignored by its audience, it limped along to a final pair of episodes watched by just 120,000 18-49 year olds across live, +1 and time-shifted. By comparison Step Dave season two, which aired just months beforehand, ended with a hair under 150,000 viewers over its final two episodes. It was promptly canceled.
By any sensible analyis Filthy Rich would have met the same fate. A bold experiment, unspooling its 20 episodes over 10 weeks. But an experiment which definitively failed.
Miriama Smith in the television series Filthy Rich.
Yet here we are, marveling over the enormous sums being thrown at the second season of a show no one wants. On Monday we learned that the second series received $6,896,419 in public funding to continue the saga of the Truebridge family for 14 episodes - a 16 per cent funding increase on a per episode basis.
This represented a shade over 45 per cent of the $15,238,680 allocated to local drama in the round - all of which went to shows to be broadcast on TVNZ.
Audience behaviour has shifted radically over the past few years: Netflix and Lightbox have helped drive huge growth in streaming, surveys suggest teenagers identify more with YouTubers than TV stars, Sky has shed significant numbers of subscribers for the first time ever and the entire media world is in a state of mortal panic at all times.
And yet here we are, making yet more Filthy Rich, a show out of time but flush with even more cash, and one in which our commissioners retain a mystifying belief.
It would be infuriating at any time, but I happen to be of the belief that we're living through an era of extraordinary plenty as far as dramatic and comedic talent goes.
There is a generation working in theatre, stand-up, reality and more bursting with talent and ideas. But they're trapped by a system which still leaves the power to commissioners, and therefore direct public funding, in a tiny number of people's hands.
