Ah yes, it is that time of year when the pace picks up and the top 8 now becomes 6.
One of the best reasons to be excited by this is the quality of Rugby League that will be on show. Two more teams will exit while the winners go on for their chance at the 2011 Grand Final.
Another reason for NRL fans to get excited is that for the last 4 weeks of the season all matches can be watched live on free-to-air television. So it's certainly a good time be excited.
Unless, that is, if you live in Adelaide.
Watching NRL games on Adelaide's Channel 9 does take some dedication as games have been televised at 11:30pm throughout the season. Even the 11:30 time-slot has been a pleasant surprise after Channel 9 must have realised showing the nightly 6 o'clock news twice on a Friday was, pretty pointless. Hence the half hour improvement from somewhere around midnight.
Even the annual State of Origin series suffers from a delayed time slot. Three matches of prime time ratings potential left to wither in the 10pm shadows. To be fair though, as each game was played, the time was improved an hour so that the deciding third match was aired at 8:30pm in 2011. Just one hour after it could have been played live.
And so the trend continues into September. Except this time there is added competition.
Usually at the end of the year the only free-to-air competition for the NRL is the AFL, and it's own final series leading to the Grand Final, but this year is different. Channel 9 is practically competing with itself with Rugby World Cup rights just to good to refuse. It's hard to imagine only two NRL matches (from this weekend) could cause so much conflict.
Rather then use their three allocated digital channels, like they did over the weekend just gone, it appears Channel 9 has decided this is a bad idea. Looking at the TV Guide for this week, the Rugby codes will share Channel 9 late on Saturday night. The NRL second semi-final splitting two RWC games starting at, yep you guessed it, 11:30pm.
This is not only frustrating for the late time slot. The whole situation seems to come from Channel 9 conceding defeat in the face of the more favoured Aussie Rules culture in cities like Adelaide. Television ratings taken from OzTAM point to the fact that outside of Brisbane and Sydney, Channel Seven reigns supreme.
This is in light of recent newspaper reports hailing the NRL's television dominance this past season.
The NRL's dominance of the television market doesn't seem to extend outside Queensland or New South Wales, and it's subscription TV ratings are purely because the sport dominates the winter season on weekends. Apart from the Super Rugby competition.
With the NRL targeting big money for future television rights, the figures seem to show they could do a lot more at finding a network to better promote the sport. Especially with talk of expansion to Perth.
Before the NRL can even consider looking at expanding outside their more strongly supported areas, television viewership must improve on a national level.
But until that day, it looks as though there are more late nights ahead.
Further Reading:
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/tv-guide/81/0/#!/81/0/4/23/