Download (partially lost Australian television internet web series; 2007-2008)
The show's title screen.
Status: Partially Lost
Friday Night Download (also titled Download) was an Australian TV show hosted by Mike Goldman, Ryan Fitzgerald and Bree Amer. The show first aired on 26 October 2007. A second series began on 17 October 2008, but the show was pulled from schedules only two episodes into its run.
About
Download showcases video clips collected from the Internet, such as those hosted on YouTube and Google Video. The show also prompted viewers to submit their own videos to the show. Download also labels and lists down the hosts' five favorite video downloads featured in an episode, with each one shown just before a commercial break.
Reception At The Time
The Sydney Morning Herald TV critic noted that the videos shown on the show could be viewed as easily on the internet without advertisement breaks, and as such claimed it should be "hosted off the pavement forthwith". The show only averaged 748,000 viewers on its premiere night and was beaten by the Seven Network's Better Homes and Gardens. Although the show rated good enough for Network Ten (the channel that broadcasted the show) to retain the show for their 2008 lineup, the show was axed when it slumped to 526,000 viewers in its last aired episode.
Possible Explanation for the Show's Cancellation
The show was titled Friday Night Download for its first season potentially to assist the show in ratings due to the massive success of "Big Brother: Friday Night Live" (which featured the same three presenters). This ended up working to the shows advantage although it's estimated that it only marginally helped ratings during that first season.
The ratings for the first season were only slightly strong enough to sway the network to go ahead with a second season the following year. This time, the follow up season would include a further four episodes giving the show a projected ten week run instead of six in the previous year.
There is a possibility that the 'Friday Night' part of the title from the first season was dropped because the TV channel which aired the show: "Network Ten Australia" couldn't promise the Friday night timeslot in 2008, so the show was renamed to simply be titled: "Download". However, this theory could easily be disproven due to the show still airing on Friday nights. The more likely explanation is that they changed the name of the show in an attempt to boost its success. However, the program discontinuing the 'Friday Night' portion of its name proved to end up being partly to blame for the shows failure as without this in the title, not all viewers knew to tune in to see the same three panel hosts from the then-successful, "Big Brother: Friday Night Live".
Just a mere two episodes into it's projected ten week run in season 2, the show was axed due to extreamly low ratings. The unaired episodes were never shown. In the lead up to the second season beginning, Australian entertainment website, TV Tonight, interviewed one of the shows panelists, Mike Goldman, and he had this to say about the the possible failure of the show:
TV Tonight: Channel TEN are in a climate of taking things off air quickly if they’re not working. What if I was to say to you they played the show for three weeks and then took it off?
Mike Goldman: That’s not gonna happen, because it’s an awesome show! It’s not boring, it’s fun. I’ve got a copy of the first episode I played to a stack of kids the other day they p*****d themselves. Absolutely loved it. So I’d be very surprised[1]
Lost/Found Episodes
Friday Night Download is one of the few pieces of lost media that once had the bizarre distinction of most of its unaired episodes being found yet most of its aired episodes being lost. This is obviously due to the show not having all that much fanfare and becoming mostly forgotten since it first aired. Until Jan 27 2024, only one episode of the show that actually went to air on television had been found (the first episode of sn 1). Initially, the majority of the found episodes were never aired on television and for many years, were only in the possession of people involved with the production.
The first episode of the first season as its original broadcast with the commercials was the only complete episode that was found from the first season (until Jan 27, 2024). All but one of the unaired episodes from the second season in 2008 were sent to YouTuber Sam Davis in early 2021 rendering them found. They were sent from the show's main host Mike Goldman who had sent a parcel of Goldman's shows to Davis beforehand. However, some episodes remained incomplete for reasons that are expanded on more in this section of the article.
The unaired episode of "Season 2, Episode 7" was not included in the sent parcel as a DVD meaning it's still entirely lost. It may or may not have been erased by anyone who previously had it in their possession. Two of the episodes that Sam Davis was sent on DVD were initially unable to be copied (despite countless attempts) because the discs were heavily scratched. One of them was episode 6 and the other was episode 8. In the end, with a simple toothpaste clean of the surface scratches and also using an apple external dvd drive to copy the discs, both were recovered as complete episodes.
When it comes to the unaired episode: "Season 2, Episode 8", while the DVD was labelled as "Download Ep. 8", the start screen says 'Episode 2'. This was proven to be an editing error in the master copy as the only two episodes to be aired that season had clips of them uploaded to YouTube the day after both episodes aired. In these clips, the hosts outfits are completely different to anything in the unaired episodes. So this DVD was in fact, episode 8.
On January 27th, 2024 the first five episodes of the first season of Friday Night Download and the first two episodes of the second season of Download were sent to Sam Davis, rendering them found. They were copies that had been remastered into a UHD format with Topaz Labs. These episodes were sent to Davis by a private archivist who goes by 'Kevin' on the internet.
List of Episodes
Season 1
| # | Air Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26 October 2007 | Found |
| 2 | 2 November 2007 | Found |
| 3 | 9 November 2007 | Found |
| 4 | 16 November 2007 | Found |
| 5 | 23 November 2007 | Found |
| 6 | 30 November 2007 | Lost |
Season 2
| # | Air Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 October 2008 | Found |
| 2 | 24 October 2008 | Found |
| 3 | Never Aired | Found |
| 4 | Never Aired | Found |
| 5 | Never Aired | Found |
| 6 | Never Aired | Found |
| 7 | Never Aired | Lost |
| 8 | Never Aired | Found |
| 9 | Never Aired | Found |
| 10 | Never Aired | Found |
Gallery
References
- ↑ TV Tonight's Download Axed news article. Retrieved 14 Aug '23