It took some yahoo at channel nine to schedule complete shit and ABC to pack up Spicks and Specks a week early but finally Dr House got back in the black – for his final new episode this year.
The medical drama roped in over 1 million viewers, a first for its current season – another beneficiary of Nine’s stupidity (Christmas with the Kranks?? I mean come on!) was Seven whose Criminal Minds enjoyed a boost of 179,000 viewers week on week.
Nine can be happy with the performance of The Big Bang Theory which has better audience retention from Two and a Half Men than previous tryout Til Death and is pulling respectable numbers. A timeslot change is in the offing with this pair of sitcoms now moving to Sundays and Mondays at 7.30pm where I expect they will continue to rate well.
Seven held their nerve (much like Ten has with House I suppose) with The Unit and it paid off with the military drama coming a close second to surprise timeslot winner Life – see what happens when you ease the glut of dramas in the same timeslot. No such luck next week as Life makes way for Rush and Nine enters the fray with ER.
Futurama continues to be a puzzle – the show single-handedly kept ten’s 2005/06 summer afloat (along with short-run hit Surface) yet now with new episodes it seems to be floundering, I’m putting the blame squarely on lead-in Will & Grace which in four weeks has failed to fire. When your main 7pm comedic rival is doubling your audience and then continuing into the 7.30 timeslot then Futurama has zero chance of building a lead. Honestly though will Friends do any better over summer.
Here my advice ten – if you want your nights to succeed – then PROMOTE Friends – not just with some one size fits all ad, but with a new commercial for EACH EPISODE run it all through your news and then start the promos for the next nights show all through primetime – the only way your gonna make people want to watch a show they’ve watched before is by reminding them how good it was – and the only way you’re going to do that is by promoting the S H 1 T out of it.
As a last note the return of Prison Break did really well and bodes well for Seven to dominate late night over the summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment