What if They Showed You How to Save the Planet and Nobody Watched?

From the Land Down Under comes the story of a highly publicized television special that promised to show people how to save the environment. Sadly for the TV network, the viewers would rather watch their favorite shows:

TEN NETWORK's programmers are baffled. 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's ratings for the Cool Aid blockbuster on Sunday night were still a disaster.

Viewing numbers peaked at 618,000, compared with more than 1.6 million each for Grey's Anatomy and CSI on Seven and Nine respectively, and averaged just 464,000 people across the country.

"Truthfully, we're confused," says Ten's network head of programming, Beverley McGarvey. "They didn't come. It's not like they came to the show, sampled it and went away. They didn't come.

"We had study guides in schools, we had the full support of the print media, both editorially and with advertising, and an extensive [Ten Network] on-air campaign with a number of different creative treatments and different stances.

"We spent a fortune to get the audience there and it didn't work. We've talked about it quite a lot internally. We're disappointed."

Despite being blugeoned daily by the media regarding the perils of global warming, and despite public protestations of concern that many people might express when somebody else is watching, this story reminds us that in the privacy of their own homes when it comes down to really supporting all the global warming hype, most folks probably don't give a crap.