Bad News Week - Monday 16 February 2009

Underbelly virtually held all of its gargantuan audience second week in. This is certainly shaping up to be high watermark in Australian television and channel Nine’s best chance at promoting their 2009 lineup, infact anyone with their TV tuned to Nine last night would have been inundated with promos for their struggling Wednesday lineup.

A decision which, a few weeks ago, I blasted as being sheer idiocy has actually worked out well for Nine (just a moment whilst I fetch a hat to eat) that decision being the axing of The Big Bang Theory replacing it with a hastily cobbled together factual series Customs, err sorry Vince Colosimo: Customs! I wish Nine had persisted with Big Bang in this slot because it strikes me that this Customs show is attracting a lot of folks waiting around for the next program, but anyway – despite the short-term thinking the move is still a great success.

Also a success is the Australian Ladette to Lady – question is can they carry that across to Tuesday nights and how long does the series even go for – the opening scenes suggested that the course at Eggleston Hall ran for four weeks – that doesn’t seem like a very long series to me.

Desperate Housewives lifted a little last night and incredibly Brothers & Sisters retained 94% of its audience which must be some kind of record. I fully expect to see 11 more weeks of Friday/Saturday encores for these two shows to keep the viewers up to speed while they flirt with the crims over of Nine.

Speaking of Encores, the remaining 500,000 people who haven’t seen Dexter on DVD or Showcase were entertained I guess – but Ten is hurting badly on Monday night – even after what was a fairly solid start to the evening by Neighbours and So You Think You Can Dance.

Good News Week has dropped week on week by 61,000 viewers while Four Corners rose by 143,000. Indeed these two shows seem to be fighting over largely the same audience and seeing as the ABC ain’t gonna budge it might be wise for Ten to move GNW to 9.30 (there’s a lot of Ex – Enough Rope viewers looking for something to watch) and Dexter to 10.30.

Of course that leaves the 8.30 problem – given that the slot will be a loss for the next 10 weeks anyway, why not encore screenings or Out of the Blue!! (OK maybe that’s going too far!)