The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Thursday 30 April 2009

A fairly substandard night all around with only Seven's news hour pulling any significant amount of viewers.

A Double of Law & Order SVU was an immediate ratings improvement over the 9.30 edition of Life on Mars with an additional 238,000 viewers for Ten at 9.30.

Bondi Vet gained 127,000 viewers week on week assuring this slow startup of a second season, I wonder whether they'll wait to 2010 or try to pump out another bunch of eps this year?

Masterchef continues the Biggest Loser's Modus Operandi of struggling at 7pm and flourishing after 7.30, overall the show is holding steady but the 7pm figure is a worry, a few more weeks and we'll see whether that's tied to low viewership on a Thursday or some other more compelling reason.

Ten needs Masterchef to fire because in TV switch on is everything, Nine and Seven have big switch-ons at 6pm, whereas Ten's 6pm aud is typically half of Seven's making the 7pm show all the more important.

Over on Seven it's time to ask the question - is this what they going for? An entire primetime under 1 million, the once great Grey's Anatomy barely holding onto viable, the spinoff stuck in second gear unable to get out from under the lead in (a lot like the just concluded Life)

It's weird that less than 5 years after rescusitating their anaemic Thursday nights (remember they gave up and started screening first run movies on Thursdays in 2004 before striking it lucky with Lost in 2005) they've ended up right back where they started.

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Wednesday 29 April 2009

Well one of the most shocking moves in TV land in the last year was the defection of Thank God You’re Here, a theatresports skein where celebrities imrpov their way thru a preset scene, from Ten to a much more cashed up Seven.

Seven reportedly paid between 1 – 1.3 million per episode for the rights to the show – you would think that’s a steep price but given it’s an hourlong format which will pull in excess of 1.5 million and repeats well I reckon it could actually make them a profit (provided the economy holds up) so from Seven’s end, despite the fact that it’s low, it’s a very sound business decision.

So what about Working Dog Prods?

At the time Executive Producer Tom Gleisner tried to justify this cash grab with the following…

‘‘It's quite understandable for people to assume that the only reason anyone switches networks is for money,''

‘‘But in our case the decision was based upon a desire to introduce the show to a new and potentially bigger audience. If money was our major motivating factor we would never have taken a year off making the show.''

Hmmm, OK so Seven is now going to deliver to this show an audience bigger than the 2007 season average of 1.86 million and the ratings peak of 2.13 million for the first season finale, alright lets see how they go!

Well first night in and yes there was a timeslot win and an average of 1.7 million viewers – very good, but not an increase by any means – we’ll see how it goes I guess.

As for the rest of the night, Nine scared the bejesus out of its audience first of all interviewing a NZ family affected with the swine flu (complete with face masks) which netted them 158,000 extra viewers, then What’s Good For You spent a whole half hour on the pandemic boosting that show’s aud by 258,000 week on week!

Nine suffered a drop later in the night for Cold Case with 110,000 fewer tuning in whilst Family Guy built week on week by 40,000 and Life grew 60,000, although that’s it for Life, that was the season (and possibly series) finale, a show that never got out from under the shadow of its lead-in a show which is now a shadow of its former self.

Speaking of Shadows, Lost improved slightly last night with a cracker of an episode, 'Dead is Dead' which gave some definite info on the old smoke monster, but ratings wise the show continues to be held back by one dumb scheduling move after another, look at the dismal performance of those 9.30 sitcoms - move this back to 9.30 damn you Seven, or sell the show to Ten who might treat it with respect.

Ten in general had a shocker with Masterchef falling further on its third night, there is the possibility with a more ten-friendly Thursday they could pick up, but it doesn’t look good.

The first ever widescreen episode of the Simpsons did alright as well rising 34,000 viewers week on week.

Joy in Repetition

Tuesday 28 April 2009
Well suprise suprise Nine actually did well last night with a night largely built on repetition, the 7pm rerun of Two and a Half Men was up 80,000 week on week, 20 to 01 a clip show built around rehashing favourite moments (this time iconic movie soundtracks) bested the previous week's commercial clip show by 406,000 viewers!

The new Two and a Half Men was up 206,000 week on week, while a rerun of Underbelly season 1 saw nine dominate the 10.30 hour, the network capped off the night with a rerun of that evening's Millionaire Hot Seat!

Ten and Seven, by comparison, fought it out with new fare, Masterchef took a major hit falling to 4th at 7pm against a suddenly resurgent Home and Away - to be fare to the cooking comp - once the auditions are over and we get a look at the regular shape of the competition then the show may build.

More disastrous for Ten was the performance of Lie to Me - losing 97,000 viewers week on week and dropping to its lowest figure yet - this was in spite of Seven's new hit (10 Years Younger) losing 121,000 week on week.

Another big night of TV tonight with a lot of really big questions, will viewers remember what channel Thank God You're Here is on? Will people instead feel the lure of a widescreen Simpsons? Will Russell Brand just fuck off already and let me watch Lost? These questions and more will be answered tomorrow - stay tuned

Wow

Monday 27 April 2009
Wow, just fucking wow!

I didn't think a four year old show, a reality comp at that, was capable of 2 million viewers anymore especially not against the year's biggest drama Underbelly, but Ten seems to have played it right giving Loser a massive send off and delivering a huge first night for Masterchef.

Not only that - but check out the figure for Neighbours!!! Over 1 million!!! Has that even happened since the 80's??

Big Week

Sunday 26 April 2009
Every April for the past several years Ten has a really big week, and this is the one, that’s when the finale of the Biggest Loser meets the premiere of Big Brother.

This year of course the scenario is a little different, Big Brother is no more, the show a victim of a myriad of bad decisions in the final season coupled with the standard viewer decline.

The Biggest Loser has surged in recent weeks and pulled in a very good result up 293,000 viewers week on week and 313,000 ahead of its nearest competition.

So You Think You Can Dance, by contrast, has limped along at times this year and although week on week it improved 281,000 viewers it struggled to hold sway against 60 Minutes and Seven’s The Force which has slotted into Sunday nights nicely.

Last Year the finale of Dance scored 1.8 million viewers, this year there were 416,000 less watching with an almost uniform decline in every capital.

What the show seemed to lack this season was buzz, if anything Biggest Loser had more press going in thanks to the behind the scenes antics of Ajay Rochester and Shannan Ponton whereas the dancing comp has been buzz-free since its return.

I’m not sure how ten can liven things up next year – some are suggesting a later start to the season, others are suggesting a new night.

Season three seems to be the point where ten starts mucking around with the format of these shows, for Big Brother season 3 saw the two-houses gimmick, Idol had change thrust upon it thanks to a Dicko defection, so the precedent is there, but also in both those cases a change in the format was followed by an audience decline.

A quick note that The Evidence seems to be doing well for Nine in the 10.30 hour and Bones actually beat CSI last night!! Perhaps people really were tuning in to see Grissom!

Remember to watch this space tomorrow, it’s gonna be a big night, the premiere of Masterchef, the finale of The Biggest Loser – up against, of all things, Underbelly, also the premiere of Eleventh Hour and Four Corners has a special on the recent Vic Bushfires which should see a good result for them.

Age Shall Not Weary Them

ANZAC DAY, Saturday 25 April 2009

Certainly not on ANZAC day where the over 55s held sway with entertainment on ABC and Seven, Nine which aimed for the family vote with what looks (on paper) to be an assured line up, found itself coming third with the other glamour option, sport, coming fourth on Ten.

Ironically Ten had one of the biggest audiences Saturday for the annual ANZAC day clash between Collingwood and Essendon but that was over by 5pm so in nightly shares it doesn't matter, one of the continuing bug bears for Seven and Ten execs regarding the AFL's devotion to daylight!

Nine trotted out a first run special tieing-in with the movie Kung Fu Panda (similar to the Shrek Xmas Special from a year ago) all the more weirdly given Seven currently has the Dreamworks output deal, nonetheless it was cleaned up by a 3 year old rerun of Kath & Kim and perrenial timeslot pwner New Tricks.

Special kudos also for Seven's Billy Connolly travel series which debuted last night pumelling the opposition senseless - if only they'd reserve a latenight slot for some of his stand-up specials!

Finally just another awful side effect of living in sport mad melbourne, last night while seven screened the AFL in Melbourne they showed some straight to video shite- The Last Templar - in the north, well last night was Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth's turn to endure the crap while Sydney and Brisbane enjoyed the far superior Independance Day :( (The Sooner Ten get the rights to that film and stick it in that fast rotation wheel - the better!)

Out of the Frying Pan...

Friday 24 April 2009
Ahhh if only we could all agree on a code of Football! Last night if you combined the audiences for AFL and NRL you would end up with 1.3 million viewers (717k watching Rugby League and 676k watching AFL in Prime Time) alas we are fractured nation - forever doomed to squabble over whose sport is best.

If you don't like sport there's always Midsomer Murders on ABC, Old fashioned murder mystery preferred by almost double the audience watching the more high concept kind on Channel Ten, Medium will be off to Thursdays very shortly to take advantage of the younger audiences on that night while Law & Order will air double eps in its place.

But Law & Order could be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire, Law & Order skews heavily male in its demographics putting it squarely in competition with... you guessed it - Football and that's a fight it can't win.

Fourth & Down

Thursday 23 April 2009

The Footy Show really did well last night in Melbourne netting an average of 413,000 viewers over an almost 2 hour span becoming Melbourne’s second most watched show of the night behind Today Tonight.

As The Biggest Loser races toward the finish line Home & Away continued to flounder, it has placed third or lower on every night this week aside from Tuesday (a night which Seven dominates) that’s a poor showing for the long running soap.

Home & Away has proven itself durable, but also vulnerable, especially to Ten 7pm flights of fancy. In the early part of this decade it was Big Brother which gave Home & Away very real problems at 7pm, with only Nine’s lacklustre 7pm performance for comfort.

These days Nine is resurgent with reruns of a sitcom which still has 2 more years guaranteed (and could conceivably run for another 4 years on it’s current form) and Ten is about to launch Masterchef, how Home & Away winds up for the year will depend a lot on how audiences take to Ten’s new reality play.

Seven continues to swing for the fences on Thursdays making it their 3rd night playing for 16-39 year olds behind Monday and now Wednesday, the return of Heroes did alright but I wonder how long it will last before getting the Lost & 24 treatment?

Something we should all Ponder

Wednesday 22 April 2009

Last night everyone had a reason to smile, and a reason to worry.

Ten can take heart that The Simpsons has settled nicely on Wednesdays and has scored some of its best numbers in years thanks to the better timeslot.

They can also worry about Life a show whose audience won't grow no matter what Ten does, it's very likely when Life leaves the stage in a week's time it will be for good, soon to be replaced by Numb3rs, so will Numb3rs improve ten's numbers at 9.30 or is the slot itself a problem?

Nine can be pleased with Cold Case which has bounced back after erratic scheduling over summer, a breif fling with 10.30, now with Seven's Gangs of Oz dispatched we see Nine dominating the post 9.30 field.

But they should be worried as to why The Mentalist seems to be fading, for the past couple of weeks it's been neck and neck with House which indicates that perhaps either its aud have lost interest due to a cliched format or worse, erratic scheduling (witness what AFL interruptions did to Life on Mars)

Seven can be happy with Australia's Got Talent which routinely been Wednesday's best performer, and ecstatic even that the channel ten megahit Thank God You're Here will be filling that slot next week.

They can also fire someone over the boneheaded decision to move their crime docos and bump Lost for a sitcom lineup at 9.30.

My Name is Earl has always gotten good ratings on Thursdays, then late 2007 Seven started fucking with success (sound familiar) by moving the show to Sundays, now it's on 9.30 Wednesdays?? I'm all for having sitcoms later into the night, but this show was a success at 8pm, why on earth would they mess with that?

Family Guy fared even worse - I can't help but think if Ten was screening this show it would be an 8.30pm hit, instead Seven, admirably keep persisting, but the old axiom that people watch shows and not networks continues to be proven false - both show and network need to mesh and Seven does not equal Family Guy.

As for bumping Lost, how do you insult fans of this show any further??, oh yeah bump their show behind a low rent comedian whose entire schtick seems to be poking fun at old educational videos.

Seven are currently at the top of the heap in TV, so these kinds of incompetent programming mistakes probably don't bother their top brass too much, but you really have to wonder if they managed to be consistent with the scheduling of their shows, how much more dominant they'd be.

Note to Nine: Viewers are not idiots

Tuesday 21 April 2009
First Tuesday back from the break and a real surprise in a new makeover show (yes that’s a genre now) called Ten Years Younger in Ten Days. It’s a rare occasion that a 9.30 show out-rates its 8.30 lead in but there you go, not only is that figure remarkable but the boost it delivered to Eli Stone was quite substantial.

One can imagine that if the show holds these viewers in a few weeks time it may get the switch to 8.30 bumping the Saints back.

This is the fourth week with no Packed to the Rafters and still Nine has failed to capitalised, new episodes of Two and a Half Men should be pulling significant audience but ill-conceived lead-ins and an over-saturation of the show have led to the bizarre situation where a 5 year old rerun beats a new episode!

While I’m at it – what is the deal with these horrendous shows at 7.30? Commercial Breakdown?? Isn’t that kind of cheap and nasty programming the reason Seven’s Sundays were a basket case throughout the 90s, just awful cheap filler and viewers know it too.

An Extra Boost for the Hot Seat

Monday 20 April 2009
So Underbelly has been in reruns for two weeks and look – the audience dropped, remarkably. While 1.8 million probably means it will be the top show for the week – it’s still an even 300,000 viewers less than it’s last new episode and a far cry from it’s mammoth premiere figure.

Most of the drop off appears to have occurred in Sydney (down 152,000) and Brisbane (down 67,000).

Aside from this Nine can be pleased that after 7.30 they swept the night leaving everyone else to pick up the scraps.

Ten fared the worst with one of those el-cheapo specials that seem to be filler for the E! channel raking in a dismal 624,000 and landing a distant fifth behind the other broadcasters, this seriously diminished the performance of Good News Week which lost to a rather compelling Four Corners special on how the recession is affecting the city of Wollongong and the surrounding Illawarra region.

Scrubs watchers take heart that although the show placed fourth in its slot it did rise week on week by 83,000.

Finally Eddie McGuire’s new foray into TV, Millionaire Hot Seat had it’s debut last night. This is Nine’s latest attempt to create a stable lead-in to their 6pm news – in the 5.30 slot (with Extra in Brisbane) Nine raked in 699,000 viewers to Seven’s 776,000 and Ten’s 977,000. To be only 77k behind Seven is much better than they have done in the past – hopefully for Nine the show will build and not go backwards, but they have their work cut out for them – the only market where Hot Seat beat Deal was Melbourne, they got a good overall number because Extra won it’s timeslot in Brisbane.

Special

Sunday 19 April 2009
Well first night back after a two week break in television land (I had a one week break myself due mostly to a busy schedule and a temperamental internet connection, so my apologies if you were checking in here to no avail!)

After two weeks of phoning it in Nine and Seven roared in to split up the night amongst themselves, well check that – it mostly went to Nine, not sure what they were showing on 60 Minutes last night but the show had a big boost with 1.5 million tuning in, more surprising was the performance of Backyard Blitz, this show, rumoured to be already on the shelf, pulled of a timeslot win in what is one of the most volatile slots of the week.

It’s amazing how much the press is speculating on the fate of both blitz and Sunday Night when in reality there isn’t much difference in audience between the two, expect to see Sunday Night continue and Blitz to be back in some way, shape or form later in the year – it’s one of Nine’s more reliable shows.

Neither Bones, nor CSI set the world on fire at 8.30 but at least they can hold their head up high and feel good that they’re not Beyond the Darklands, anyone truly interested in the examination of serial killers on a Sunday night can tune into CI over on Foxtel and see some much higher profile subjects been tackled, a figure of 684,000 for channel seven at 9.30pm would be sending alarm bells to the programs makers – why they switched timeslots so early in the show’s run is one of those bone-brained decision which a certain “special” programmer seems to specialise in!

God's Waiting Room - Easter Saturday 11 April 2009

Saturday

I could have sworn that The Pink Panther was on only a few weeks ago and yet here it is again billed as a comedy premiere - well, I was half right - The Panther aired not long ago in the southern states whilst the movie last night was a Premiere in Sydney and Brisbane - well if it was some kind of bizarre programming strategy from Nine this same yer rerun only outdone by Paulie - no not the life of Pauly Shore but instead a pedestrian kids movie about a talking parrot - uggh

Ten and ABC cleaned up last night with Football and fogies - indeed 7.30 kingpin New Tricks was appropriately subtitled "God's Waiting Room" which is more a description of the main location of the show's audience.

Unanswered question of the night has to be why Seven gave up on their rerun sitcoms and Malcolm Douglas for even more boring docos and kiddie fare? I know it's Easter but why mess with what was working?

Finally a special shout out to Ten for scheduling Trading Places - one of the all time great comedy movies of the 80s and emminently watchable (even just to see a great rack!) 400,000 viewers between 11pm and 1am is no mean feat - kudos!

Friday 10 April 2009

Friday


Very very low rating night all around - which is to be expected for a Good Friday. Medium and Law & Order continue to struggle in the face of pretty lacklustre competition - meanwhile there's no available figures so we can't see the result of the great southern experiment by Nine to stick Sitcoms in opposition to the Simpsons on Friday night.

Meanwhile Better Homes and Gardens continues to dominate the 7.30 hour - tripped up only slightly this week by the absence of Melbourne from the network for the annual Good Friday Telethon.

The Jig is Up! Thursday 9 April 2009

Thursday

Another Thursday Night AFL Match - this time on Seven helped them to a winning share on the night - viewership was down everywhere else with a thinning out of the sample size due to the holiday weekend.

Nine Held their ground early on with Getaway and Adults Only 20 to 01 but the pairing of The NSW Footy Show and a movie called The Big Bounce was a big disaster.

Meanwhile two other 9.30 skeins are struggling as well, Seven moved 9.30 Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice to 7.30 (when has that ever happened!) for a "special" episode - well the jig is up, only a core audience seems to like this show and no-one else is buying.

Still that's better than Life on Mars, repeated interruptions in the southern states and the news that the show was cancelled in America have caused the ass to fall out of the ratings for this show. It is a pity because even though the series will only have a limited run (17 episodes) it will have a definite ending with the showrunners warned ahead of time in order to give the show some closure, and having read the spoilers I can tell you - it's definitely an interesting resolution!

Nine moves up the dial 22 places - Wednesday 8 April 2009

Wednesday

While Ten scores with reruns on Tuesdays, Seven drops the true crime chicanery and dishes out a double Criminal Minds with great results - at 8.30 they were only bettered by the ABC's light entertainment double, then at 9.30 they owned the hour.

Ten's House and Guerilla Gardeners were both up week on week, although Guerilla Gardeners fate has already been sealed with a move to 6pm Sundays in the wings after Easter.

Meanwhile check out the performance this week of The Simpsons and Neighbours in the 6pm hour - are the school holidays helping these shows or what?

Channel Nine meanwhile had a good night until 8.30 - a new double of What's Good For You and RPA (somewhat reminiscent of the old Our House/Money Wednesday fixture I guess) won the 7.30 - 8.30 hour, then at 8.30 everyone had the night off - Southern viewers were subjected to a two hour Footy Show, though this sort of Wednesday stunt is quite common at this time of year the Footy Show is no longer the major draw it once was, perhaps its time to limit the number of 8.30 screenings of this stuff which, rather than win local market ratings, seem to just disrupt the networks programming.

In fact Sydney - with The Mentalist and Cold Case was the only Market which resembled the network last night, Brisbane viewers got some sort of local fashion awards??!? Is this channel nine or channel 31?

NCIS Spin-off discovered - Tuesday 7 April 2009

Tuesday


Geez, Seven not only rested their big series for the Easter break but now they've handed over the running of their programming division to their local stations as evidenced by some fairly unknown (read: cheap) romantic movies.

They were no match for NCIS which is king of the network over at ten, similarly in the US the show is the star of the 2008-09 season for CBS so much so that the network is developing a spin-off series for next season.

Ten has already beaten them to the punch and has discovered the perfect spin-off from NCIS - more NCIS. At 1.3 million viewers those reruns are money in the bank!

Disturbingly over on Nine (where Gordon Ramsay gave it the old college try and failed spectacularly) two hastily cobbled together gonzo shows managed to outrate the preceeding seven weeks of Wipeout!

Time for a Holiday - Sunday & Monday 5-6 April 2009

Sunday

It's Easter school holidays and by startling coincidence it also means the networks go on holidays for two weeks with all crucial series rested during the break.

On Sunday Night that meant Bones at 8.30 on Seven and this week's recipient of the "About A Boy" award for most overplayed movie: The Shawshank Redemption subbing for the CSI twins. Meanwhile Ten remained, the same with their reality comps hurtling towards the finish line, The Biggest Loser, especially has been one of the star performers of Ten's lineup in the last two weeks and the next two should be no different with the clear air of non-ratings providing more room for the show to grow in it's final weeks.

Perth is once again out of whack with the east coast over football match times and Seven's choice of a special on one of the world's worst serial killers, BTK, proved a poor option at 9.30 - especially since CI had a much more in depth look at that story about a month ago on their Serial Killer Sunday.


Monday

Nine chose to rerun Underbelly, that reruns pulled in around the million mark is impressive given there's very few who probably haven't seen the episodes at this point!

Again the story though turns out to be Seven and Nine's non-ratings capers have given ten a chance to be on top with Good News Week pulling some of it's best numbers all year (although down on last week's stand-up)

Even Four Corners, which has been in the doldrums from it's second week on received a welcome boost to 3rd place in it's slot with 957k. It's leadout - Spooks fared a lot better also than The Cut whose audience it virtually doubled.

Seven chose to replace their soaps with the lightweight comedy Father of the Bride II, this was a mistake - not only did it earn them fourth spot between 8.30 and 9.30 but it represents a missed opportunity to get a leg up for the Housewives while Underbelly is absent, instead only Ten (and ABC I guess) took advantage of the lull.

Seven's programmers should well remember back to 2006, at the start of that season (the show's second - which was generally regarded as weak) it was reported they were selling commercial time on that show for $100,000 per 30 second slot, then only 6 weeks in they took Housewives off for two weeks during the Commonwealth Games, upon the show's return the ratings had plummeted with people either weaning themselves off the habit or finding alternative means to get hold of episodes.

Now the show is operating with even less followers and Seven seems determined to drive them away also! Gottaloveit.

Friday 4 and Saturday 5 April 2009

Good News, Bad News - Thursday 2 April 2009

A Week on Week comparison for channel Ten obviously sees ten down without the aid of AFL footy but away from that schedule upheaval Ten has some good news and some bad news...

The Good News
Law & Order SVU got the better of Nine's 20 to 01 with probably its biggest audience of the season, helped along by (of all things) Bondi Vet!

Dr Chris Brown is finally over the million mark and no doubt a second season confirmation is only a formality.

For a show which is not a typical Ten format (and has therefore struggled for attention) it has grown consistently each week. Last year it seemed like the whole "Bondi" franchise would be dead on the tarmac with the abject failure of Bondi Rescue Bali, but the success here must surely be encouraging someone to hunt for the next Bondi reality skein, Crime & Investigation channel looked like they were getting in on the act last Thursday with The Bondi Gay Murders, but that was just a one-off CIA ep!

The Bad News
Oh Yeah - the disruption (two pre-emptions for AFL matches so far this season) has not been a good thing for Life on Mars which this week finished its run in the US, not sure if this show will see the other side of easter at 9.30 - we may be looking at a 10.30 move.

Some are even suggesting a Friday night swap with Medium (Personally I would swap out the male-skewing Law & Order to take it away from male-skewing sports), other have reasonably pointed out that Ten has not been so quick on the trigger this year - and that is true - but remember they still moved Dexter out of prime time and in a few weeks Guerilla Gardeners (which has been treading water at 700k) is moving to 6pm Sundays (replacing a low-rating Simpsons rerun) so even though Ten is more patient this year, I still think Life on Mars may see out its run in a different slot.

Bumper Harvest - Wednesday 1 April 2009

Another instalment in what is becoming a topsy turvey week – this time it was Nine’s turn to shine.

With their second reality series bowing out in as many weeks Farmer Wants a Wife finally got one over Seven’s Talent show and dominated the night, Even the Mentalist did well, maintaining his aud from the previous week despite screening an hour later.

Everything else on Nine’s rivals took a hit with House and Life both down as well as Seven’s entire lineup finding itself in the red.

The only question left to ask is how fast can Nine come up with a new crop of country bachelors?

Ten’s Guerrilla Gardeners continues to limp along, Ten proved this week that they can pull of a good Monday night share, and their Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are in order. Saturdays continue to be an issue north of the Mexican border (err Murray River) and Fridays are passable I suppose but it seems to me that this Gardening show is the only thing standing between Ten and a decent slice of the Wednesday night pie.

Who knows? Perhaps with no farmers to compete against next week may see these trowel wielding activists jump up in the ratings, certainly perseverance is paying off for ten’s other light factual skeins but if Easter rolls by with no improvement, then I’d suggest a quick trip to the compost heap for this show.

Show's Over, everyone spread out - Tuesday 31 March 2009

First Tuesday without Packed to the Rafters provides an opportunity for channel Ten to grow at Seven’s expense.

NCIS grew 159,000 viewers to a massive 1.55 million, Bondi Rescue followed it right up the charts growing by a whopping 345,000 viewers week on week. 132,000 of those came from Wipeout whilst 204,000 of them came from Find My Family which suffered slightly from the loss of its lead-out, confirming that at least some of the people were hanging around for the following show.

Two and a Half Men also gained week on week with an extra 134,000 viewers at 8.30 whilst All Saints saw a modest increase from its 9.30 numbers – all in all 426,000 metropolitan viewers deserted FTA at 8.30 with the conclusion of Packed to the Rafters.