Breathing Room

Monday 11 May 2009
With Underbelly finished there was a little breathing room last night for other shows in the 8.30 timeslot to flourish. Seven lucked out getting a rare Monday night AFL match (they usually go to Ten) between two popular teams! The result was a thumping win with Seven combining the power of AFL with their popular dramas north of the Murray.

For reasons not yet revealed Melbourne viewers missed out on Scrubs meaning that different states are going to be out of sync for a while. Ten also has this problem with the AFL scratching two SVU eps and one Medium ep that southern viewers are yet to see. With AFL trying to make inroads onto Monday nights there are going to be more of these matches in the future causing all sorts of programming issues for the rights holders – ahh if only we all followed the same code of Football.

But we don’t and followers of Rugby League weren’t left in the cold last night, although they probably felt like a hot shower afterwards as the ABC’s Four Corners lifted the lid on the activities of Football stars and their groupies.

You know Four Corners is onto a hot story when the press is talking about it on the Monday morning before it airs – well the news media has been onto this one since last Thursday when former Cronulla Sharks player Matthew Johns revealed on the NRL Footy Show that he was involved in an incident examined on the upcoming program.

The report achieved drew one of the program’s biggest audiences this year winning its timeslot in Sydney with 404,000 viewers and even pulling a respectable crowd in the non-league cities.

Also rising in the ratings was Good News Week up an astonishing 277,000 viewers week on week, by contrast Supernatural fell off further looking very shaky in this 9.30 timeslot.

Also looking shaky is Eleventh Hour – Nine may give it one more week to see how it does behind Sea Patrol but its performance last night was dreadful, without the viewer magnet of Underbelly the show fell 296,000 viewers and managed only 676,000 – amazingly though with this poor figure it was second in it’s timeslot!