The Roast Is Dead. Long Live The Roast! — Televised Revolution

The Roast had recently achieved the impossible. It convinced its young audience that there was a reason to tune in to broadcast television. In the past year it seriously found the funny and stepped up its game. The team at The Roast were consistently funnier and more on point with their satire. It began to resonate with the audience and started to build a genuine momentum that was yet to get anywhere near its peak. The Roast was a show with a bright future ahead of it.

And then yesterday it was cancelled by the ABC.

The conservatives war on the ABC has taken the scalp of the beautiful The Roast — that magnificent bird who flew too close to the sun. A victim, no doubt, of the cost-cutting and restructuring required as a result of government budget cutbacks.

But can The Roast be saved? The ABC is far from an option at this point, but perhaps another network could pick up the show. There’s certainly value in doing so. The Roast can offer access to an audience that have become increasingly difficult to reach with a format that lends itself very well to the digital audience. Its segments can readily be shared online and there is already considerable support for The Roast across social media and on sites that lead the youth cultural voice like Junkee.

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So, where can The Roast go? SBS are already committed to The Feed and would be unlikely to take on another similar-ish show. Likewise Ten are already committed to The Project. It doesn’t quite meet the tone of Channel Seven. One could almost see it fitting in on 7Mate, but Seven haven’t yet committed to any original series for 7Mate and The Roast feels like it’d be a reach for them.

There are two outlets, however, that would make for potentially suitable homes for a reconstituted The Roast:

FOXTEL The natural inclination for many would be to suggest that Foxtel pick up The Roast. It’s a natural fit for The Comedy Channel and would provide the subscription TV service with a known and appreciated comedy brand. It would certainly benefit Foxtel and they’ve recently gone to the effort of picking up A Place To Call Home from Channel Seven. They’re certainly not above picking up shows from FTA networks.

But is it a good fit for The Roast? They may lose some of the important twenty-something audience that one presumes are a core part of the shows audience (an audience segment that have less money to spend on luxuries like Foxtel), but it would be a well-resourced home that can provide them better marketing and a higher profile. The positives certainly outweigh the negatives.

CHANNEL NINE/STREAMCO This is a perfect home for The Roast, being mutually beneficial to both The Roast (along with its viewers) and Nine/StreamCo. One of the difficulties for StreamCo is to provide a value proposition to potential subscribers when it launches in 2015. It will be facing competition from US streaming giant Netflix and from subscription TV heavyweight Foxtel with their Presto service.

Unlike Netflix, StreamCo will not be able to leverage off the international coverage and hype surrounding original series launches. Instead they are going to need to offer hyper-local content as a point of difference. What could be more perfect than a topical comedy show that reflects Australian news and culture. At launch StreamCo are going to need to heavily target tech-savvy and culturally driven younger consumers — they’re far more likely to immediately embrace a streaming service than older, more traditional TV consumers. What could be more perfect than The Roast to reach this audience?

StreamCo can offer The Roast on demand from the late afternoon/early evening, with the show being repurposed on Nine for a one-off airing in a late night 10:30pm/11pm time-slot. Nine has a history of running late night variety and topical news programs, so this would fit nicely. It’d be The Roast: Coast To Coast.

The Roast deserves to live on. It was cut down before it reached its prime and had considerable potential ahead of it. It would truly be a shame to see one of the few bright sparks on Australian television extinguished too soon.