Feb 7 update: The Nine network has reportedly moved Excess Baggage to its Go! multichannel.

Channel 9's Excess Baggage is reportedly facing the axe, or demotion to digital channel Go!, within a week. Now I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but EB has presented itself as a textbook example of how to get the creation, marketing and programming of a show terribly, terribly wrong.

The concept probably looked good on paper. The idea was to do to weight-loss programs what Nine had successfully done to the Apprentice format -- spice it up with the addition of once-were and wannabe celebrities. (Genuine celebrities, of course, don't need to go on reality shows.)

The broader plan was for Excess Baggage to be the first of a series of programs, including Big Brother, The Block and a new season of Celebrity Apprentice, that would be "stripped" at 7pm, thus claiming that timeslot and gluing viewers to the station throughout the primetime schedule.

But the problems for Baggage began before it was even screened.

Mistake No. 1: Nine over-egged the show, running an extended "sneak peek" so often that even people well-disposed towards the program would have felt that they'd already seen it. For the rest of us, it just confirmed negative sentiments.

Mistake No. 2: Programming it against the similar, but already well established, The Biggest Loser, thus only ever being able to divide a finite potential audience. Crucially, TBL is a program that viewers don't hate, so why should they jump ship? (Also, as the Seven juggernaut Home And Away is also female-skewed, it placed three shows targetting a similar audience in the same timeslot. Nine should have gone the other way.)

Mistake No. 3: Removing the wildly popular US sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, from the 7pm slot, which it had made its own over the summer. Big Bang repeats were regularly trouncing first-run episodes of other shows on other channels. Nine was on a good thing, and should have stuck to it.

Mistake No. 4: Debuting Excess Baggage in a week when they knew it would be interrupted by the cricket. Of course, Ten cleverly forced Nine's hand there, by launching its 2012 schedule early. I guess that's more a misfortune than a mistake.

Mistake No. 5: Flogging it to death. One night last week, the show ran for 90 minutes. Viewers balk at committing that amount of time to a movie, let alone an untested new show.

Mystery keys.

A change in the weather.

Commercial Radio Australia has announced changes to the way radio ratings will be gathered and compiled this year.

According to a CAR media release, "The radio industry will start a trial of online data collection for the radio ratings, closely followed by the introduction of a world-first application for tablets and mobile phones, which will allow people to input their listening habits via these devices."

The release said the "innovative approaches" were implemented as a result of recommendations put forward by the its research committee which "has been investigating best practice for listenership audience measurement in a changing digital environment".

“Australian radio has one of the most robust listenership measurement systems in the world but that doesn’t stop us investigating ways to improve it further,” CRA chief executive Joan Warner said. “It also should be remembered that one of radio’s major strengths, its mobility and reach into all situations, conversely provides one of the major challenges for radio audience measurement.”

“Research company, Ipsos, will commence a trial of online data collection in March which will be a supplementary measure to the existing diary system, This will be followed by a world first development of an m.site/application which will allow people to fill in ratings information on tablet devices and mobile phones, which the industry believes will be a unique step forward and one that we are sure will be welcomed by the advertising industry.”

Ms Warner said the first phase of online data collection would begin in Sydney, with a group of 300 people able to enter their radio listening habits online.

The CRA release said the current tender for the radio ratings, held by Neilsen, would expire at the end of next year, and tenders would be called later this year for 2014, "with proposals for online and mobile applications to supplement the paper diaries, to be part of the process".

Comment: I have long said Australia needs a new means of compiling radio ratings. Perhaps this a step in the right direction but it appears to be flawed because it still requires people to fill in their own data. Only when technology can passively record exactly what people are listening to* -- rather than what they say they are or were listening to -- and the survey includes all their listening options -- including community stations and others not currently included in the survey -- can it truly claim any accuracy and authority. This is what advertisers should be pushing for. BD

* In her release, Ms Warner noted that CRA was monitoring developments in this field but "no other electronic device has proved to be reliable enough in terms of data collection to warrant further testing".

South Brisbane Railway Station.

Dear Weather Bureau,

First of all, I would like to genuinely and sincerely thank you for all your hard work in times of disaster, when your skill, your radars and your other technology have warned us of weather emergencies. Without doubt, you have saved countless lives over the years, and you have prevented a great deal of property damage by warning people of violent weather events. Along with many others, I truly value that aspect of your work.

However, isn't it about time you acknowledged that all your training, and your technology, simply does not equip you to predict anything other than an imminent threat?

I know I am not alone in saying that I am sick of seeing "seven-day forecasts" on the TV news, online and in newspapers, that are wildly inaccurate.

Please, can somebody from the Bureau of Meteorology make a clear statement that, by and large, the weather is unpredictable.

Suburban mural.

ABC Radio has its first permanent home in Brisbane in five years. 612ABC's top-rating breakfast host Spencer Howson (pictured, above, on the ABC webcam) was the first voice to be heard from the new South Bank studios this morning, when his guests included Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk (below).

Along with other ABC employees, 612, Radio National, News Radio and Triple J staff abandoned the broadcaster's long-time Coronation Drive, Toowong site after the discovery of a "cancer cluster". The local radio staff have spent the past five years in temporary premises at Lissner Street in Toowong, while other ABC employees have been working from different sites in Toowong and on Mt Coot-tha.

You can listen to 612, and see images from the webcam, here.

Update: Howson also welcomed to the new studio veteran ABC announcer Russ Tyson (below, right), and his colleagues Phil Smith, Tim Cox and Kelly Higgins-Devine.

Australia Day.

I have been involved in a discussion on Twitter on how much longer free-to-air television will be a force in Australia. I ventured that FTA stations would be in trouble within 10 years if they fail to change their primary emphasis from being distributors of shows produced elsewhere to creating their own content.

Two other people disagreed -- not to my proposition, but to the timing. One said it might not be as soon as 10 years, another said it would be more like 5-8 years when we see the first FTA station fold.

Now, of course, all the FTA networks will deny they are in trouble, but they most certainly are. The fact of the matter is that they don't have a collective monopoly any more; viewers can already access the content they want in many ways other than sitting down in front of a TV set at a designated time.

To use a current example, sure you can get plenty of The Big Bang Theory on Channel Nine and its sister station Go! If you're a fan, though, you can pay for a Foxtel subscription and get even more of it on the Comedy Channel.

Of course, both the FTA and pay-TV options rely on you watching whichever episode they decide to screen when they decide to broadcast it. You can time-shift it to watch later, or maybe stream it on the network's catch-up site, but you can't see it right now. However, if you're a BBT tragic, and you're prepared to take the legal risk, you can download the episodes you want to see when you want to see them. Say you missed a particular episode from series 1, or you want to show your best friend an ep you think they'd enjoy, well it's out there for the picking.

While Hollywood rightly wants to stem the tide of illegal downloading, the genie is already out of the lamp. They can't prosecute everybody who shares torrents, so the only real solution available to content creators is to enable people to download what they want, when they want it - and to make them pay for it.

And, when that happens, as it surely will, the FTA networks (and, to a lesser extent, pay TV) will have lost their biggest earner. Producers will either sell their content directly or through a model similar to iTunes or Amazon's Kindle book store. No role for the TV networks there.

For a short time -- be it five or 10 or 15 years -- FTA will continue play a role in introducing new shows to audiences, but that function will eventually be taken over completely by social media (in whatever form or forms it will take in the future) and other means of peer-to-peer recommendation.

Bottom line: the direct distribution of TV shows will bypass the existing networks, so to survive they will have to ramp-up the production of original content -- be it news, drama, comedy series, reality shows or whatever.

The only way for them to survive will be to sell this original content, or make it available via an advertiser-supported model, on demand.