Sunday 10 May 2009
Another Sunday, another round of series premieres, this time Nine debuted it’s great white reality (or is realty) hope for 2009: HomeMADE.
It had the perfect lead-in for once Nine’s 6pm news tied Seven in Sydney, won in Melbourne and Adelaide with only Brisbane and Perth letting down the side, but it was a great aud for Nine news which at 6.30 – completely falls away.
HomeMADE from the much ballyhooed creators of The Block lost 471,000 or 31.5% of its lead-in, by contrast Sunday Night, Seven’s current affairs beast lost only 17% from Seven News, was up a whopping 336,000 viewers week on week, within millimetres of a timeslot win and for the first time that I’ve noticed, actually eclipsed 60 minutes in the audience stakes, with the 30 year veteran only managing 1,181,000 off the back of the HomeMADE lead-in.
Ten, however, has the most to smile about, Merlin, a retelling of the medieval tale made all the more better by the lack of Sam Neill represented a massive switch on for ten with an additional 725,000 tuning in after The Simpsons finished, representing a lead-in “retention” of 225%
Now for the real shock, Masterchef, with no Logie awards in its way, raised 376,000 week on week for an average aud of 1,470,000. The Ten reality machine has done it again!
The only thing that prevented them from winning the night was the non-performance of new limited-run serial thriller Harper’s Island, only 576k tuning in at 9.30 for the murder mystery proving that Aussies prefer to see old British geezers get offed, rather than young American hotties! (Well maybe not – I’ll leave that kind of deep cultural analysis to Tribal Mind!)
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this at 10.30 in the coming weeks, the problem is, what the hell do you put after Rove, Rove is, as a show, essentially a late night format, yet it airs at 8.30, Ten have tried just about every format under the sun after this show and nothing seems to take, part of the problem is that once you get to 9.30, the teens start going to bed for school the next day, I don’t know the demographic breakdown of Rove, but I’d imagine they make up a sizable proportion given the audience drop-off that seems to take place no matter what show follows, whatever Ten puts at 9.30 Sundays, they’re going to need something that will entice older adults to switch over from the opposition.
3 comments:
I don't think you're right about the teens going to bed at 9.30, it's more likely the adults that go to bed earlier than the teens these days.
The problem for any show that follows Rove is that, by the time Rove is on it's normally goodnight for Ten in general, take a look at the drop-off from the massive lead in Rove had from Master Chef last night - a show that skews mostly the the under 49's.
Fact is, they just don't really LIKE Rove very much. I think he looks like a 40 something trying to be an early twenty something, the younger gen can see through that falsity, and are probably to sophisticated for Rove, anyway - he's old news now.
No need to reply.
That's true - there is a huge drop-off. I would like to get hold of the quarter hour breakdown for Rove because I reckon the peak would be right at the top. I haven't watched it much this year but last year I would regularly stick around for Petespace and then find something else to do - like Jay Leno - the only good bit is the monologue then you tune out!
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