By LOUISA CLEAVE
The off-beat chat show Sportscafe is going mainstream in search of a bigger audience for its alcohol sponsor.
The live sports chat and interview programme will air on TV2 from mid-February after more than six years of attracting public attention, but only negligible ratings, on Sky Television.
Sponsor Lion
Red is behind the move to a free-to-air network and approached TVNZ and TV3 last year to negotiate a new deal.
Sportscafe creator Ric Salizzo said Lion Red had played "a big role" in negotiating with the free-to-air networks and Sky before Christmas.
Mr Salizzo, who presents the show with Marc Ellis, Lana Coc-Kroft and Graeme Hill, said he was in "unofficial talks" with Sky about whether Sportscafe would continue on the pay television service as a delayed broadcast or repeat.
A spokeswoman for TVNZ said Sportscafe would not screen on Sky at all.
Mr Salizzo said the decision to do a deal with TVNZ was not financial but based on where it would put the show and how involved it would be with the production.
"It's fair to say Lion Red had some influence about where we wanted to go."
TV3 head of sport John McDonald said he had been disappointed to learn through the network's sales department that Sportscafe was going to TVNZ.
Mr McDonald said Sportscafe had approached TV3 and he understood there was concern from sponsors about ratings the show was attracting on Sky.
ACNielsen figures for the live broadcast on Sky 1 last year showed the average audience was 99,400 people and the highest audience was 165,900. The repeat screening on Sky Sport regularly drew ratings of between 0 and 0.5 per cent of the potential television audience, or up to 17,700 viewers.*
Mr Salizzo said Sportscafe would screen at 9.30pm - a time-slot which could attract up to 300,000 viewers - and would feature the same panel line-up and content.
"It's pretty much made up as we go along so it's going to be pretty hard to change anything because there's no format. The people are the same and it's live so it's whatever comes out of our mouths, and who knows what that is going to be?"
Sky chief executive John Fellet said he was sorry to see Sportscafe go but the network was working with Mr Salizzo on other programme ideas.
* CORRECTION. In the original version of this story, the figures for the live broadcast were omitted and the figures for the repeat broadcast were incorrectly identified as the live broadcast audience.
