The Gruen Transfer (TGT) is a show about advertising, how it works and how it works on us.
Hosted by Wil Anderson, who is even taller than he looks on TV, TGT decodes and defuses the commercial messages that swirl through our lives, with the help of a panel of ad industry experts. Each week on the program, Wil is joined by some of the best and brightest minds of the advertising industry, experts prepared to share the ideas and insights that drive them.
We catch up with news from the world of advertising and examine the tactics used to sell a particular product; it could be cars or chocolate or cleaning products.
In its first year on ABC1, TGT notched up all kinds of records. Its first episode had the highest rating ever for an entertainment debut on the network. It regularly won its timeslot, averaging 1.25 million viewers a week, and performed brilliantly in all adult demographics.
As well, the TGT website was flooded with people wanting to take the opportunity to make their own ads (10,000 of them across the ten weeks of the show).
Since then, we’ve been resting on our laurels. Actually, that’s not true. Season two, in 2009, had similar figures, and Season three in 2010 blew them both away, with our highest ever ratings, including a season high of almost 1.5 million viewers.
So many blogs and newspapers have written nice things about us that we’re getting a bit coy. If you really want to read them, they’re out there on the Web and in libraries. Meanwhile, here’s a bunch of quotes we completely made up:
“Like MasterChef, without the food. And the judges. And the ratings.”
The Australian, 27 December 2009
“Underbelly is much classier.”
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 August 2011
“We laughed. We cried. We were mugged on the way home.”
Herald Sun, 29 November 2008
“Watch it because the programs on the other channels don’t deserve encouragement.”
The Weekend Australian, 5 July 2009
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
The Daily Telegraph, 28 November 2010
“This televisual diversion demonstrates a firm but pleasing specificity in its holistic approach to the non-traditional osmotic transfer of information.”
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, June 16, 2010.
The Gruen Transfer is a co-production of Zapruder’s other films and ABC TV.
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