Hey Hey Its Saturday 50th anniversary special smashes the ratings
Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s reunion special has proven a smash-hit success with viewers.
The Hey Hey We’re 50 one-off anniversary show, which aired on Seven on Sunday night, became the ratings winner of the evening, even outperforming Nine’s reality juggernaut The Block.
Hey Hey attracted a whopping 1.22 million (metro) viewers in the 7pm timeslot, compared with 920,000 for The Block.
However, dive into the ratings a little deeper and the story isn’t the overwhelming success the topline numbers suggest.
Despite being 300,000 people ahead of The Block in “all people”, Hey Hey We’re 50 only ranked third among viewers aged between 25 to 54, and fourth for viewers between 18 and 49 and 16 and 39.
This means Hey Hey We’re 50 had a disproportionately high percentage of viewers over the age of 55, and advertisers are more attracted to younger demographics.
Meanwhile, the much-hyped Celebrity MasterChef series had a relatively successful launch and landed in third place for the timeslot with 620,000 viewers tuning in to see how well stars including Chrissie Swan, Ian Thorpe and Gold Logie winner Rebecca Gibney can cook.
Hey Hey’s 50th anniversary special brought back original host Daryl Somers, and featured messages from celebrities including Molly Meldrum, Red Symons, Marcia Hines, Dave Hughes and Rhonda Burchmore.
Hey Hey It’s Saturday originally aired for 28 years on Nine before being brought back for 20 more episodes in 2010.
The reunion’s ratings send a pretty strong message – but even before they were released, it was clear from social media that fans at home were loving the hit of nostalgia:
When the one-off anniversary special was announced earlier this year, Somers said in a statement that he was “absolutely delighted” when Seven approached him with the idea.
“Trawling back through the vast archive has been almost as much fun as doing the show in the first place, so I hope we can offer a few laughs, not only to the diehard Hey Hey fans but to all Australians, as we desperately need a touch of levity at this time,” he said.
Channel 7’s decision to bring back Hey Hey came just a few months after the show faced accusations of racism.
The controversy began in March when Somers told the Herald Sun: “You probably could not get away with half the stuff you could on Hey Hey now because of the political correctness and the cancel culture. It is a shame because showbiz does not get much of a chance.”
In response to his comments, a Twitter user made a compilation video showing all the times Malaysian-born singer Kamahl was subjected to racist jokes and stereotyping on Hey Hey.
After the clip went viral, Kamahl was interviewed on ABC’s 7.30 and said about his Hey Hey appearances: “Hey Hey was a landmine and I knew that I would get blown up here and there, but there were some instances that were harder to stomach than others.”
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He continued: “It’s like losing your underpants. It’s stripping you of everything. It’s like being naked. It’s a terrible feeling.”
Somers later apologised to Kamahl in a public statement, saying: “I want to make it very clear that I and all members of the Hey Hey team do not condone racism in any form. I have always considered Kamahl a friend and supporter of the show, so I deeply regret any hurt felt by him as a result of anything that took place on the program in the past.”
Somers continued: “Hey Hey It’s Saturday never set out to offend anybody but always strived to provide family entertainment.”
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