Television Rant

Two Words

2011-06-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

I have two words
Swamp. People.

I'm kicking myself that I missed it.

How do I know about this show - only through The Soup, that alone makes it must watch television.

Meanwhile what has happened to How I Met Your Mother.

I don't think that Seven has ever tolerated a 7.30 audience under 500,000 viewers - ever. Something else will be there next week.

Y So Sleepy?

2011-06-26T03:09:00.000-07:00

The combined audience at 7.30 - approximately 5.5 million
The combined audience at 8.30 - approximately 4 million
The combined audience at 9.30 - roughly 2.6 million

Now the drop between 7.30 - 8.30 I get, I was a kid once, 8.30 is a popular bedtime for kids who need to be at school the next day.

But 8.30 to 9.30?? Are there really that many adults going to bed at 9.30? That's a huge drop off for audience figures and its reflected by the pathetic viewer numbers of post 9.30 shows.

Ten's new drama the Defenders may as well be on oneHD with its Offspring lead-in counting for nothing. Similarly Criminal Minds is suffering from the same rerun fatigue as NCIS.

Back to Reality

2011-06-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

Well day two for The Block is still good, but kept in check by the bafflingly popular Home & Away (seriously I don't know a single person who admits to watching this show!)

Meanwhile the appetite for NCIS has waned, there was a time when reruns of the procedural would draw in 1.1million viewers without breaking a sweat. Not anymore, now that people have options on digital TV, its getting harder to justify reruns in primetime on the major networks.

Cock Blocked by Nine

2011-06-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

OK so the title has very little to do with the post in this instance - but Nine's revival of the Block as a strip has gotten off to a great start.

Elsewhere - Seven's coverage of Wimbeldon on 7TWO has delivered less spectacularly, and more worryingly their 9.30 show on the main channel (Air Crash Investigations) is dead in the water. When you're beaten by Rescue Special Ops you know you have failed.

Boys retreat to digital

2011-06-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

You know how I can tell that Seven has the female audience stitched up on Sundays? Look at the digital channels, male skewing shows dominated with 7mate's entire night, Big Bang, Top Gear all peaking over 300,000 viewers.

First Blood (aka Rambo) absolutely dominated digital on the night, how many women would be watching that? Instead they were all glued to Downtown Abbey on channel 7.

By contrast any digital channel going specifically after women last night bombed. 7TWO would do better running a test pattern on Sundays rather than persisting with Royal Upstairs Downstairs. Meanwhile GEM's The Reader bombed despite being the most recent movie to screen last night!

Think Small

2011-06-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Well there's no stopping Seven - the week's top shows read like a list of Last Week's top shows...

Dancing with the Stars, Downtown Abbey, Australia's Got Talent, Masterchef, Winners & Losers, Amazing Race and Glee.

So lets look instead at Digital TV and what's working and what's struggling.

Sunday:

Lots of movies on this night so digital dominance is never assured, if you're after a mature drama then GEM is your option, more brash blockbuster fare lives on GO!, 7mate and Eleven.

The abject failure of the night is Royal Upstairs Downstairs on 7TWO, surprising and yet not, because most of the potential audience for this crap would be watching Dancing with the Stars in prep for Downtown Abbey. A case of Seven cannibalising its own lineup.

Monday:

GO! back when it started was something fresh and exciting, now it's more or less cheap and nasty. The number of original series on the channel has nosedived and those that are left are victims of wildly inconsistent scheduling.

GO! is now a dumping ground for channel nine reruns, specifically Top Gear and the Big Bag Theory, propped up with Movie reruns (some quite good) and timeshifted stuff from the main channel (like Come Fly with Me in this particular night).

What happened to the GO! that drew me away from cable with TMZ, Seinfeld and a dozen shows aimed away from the mainstream?

At the first sign of competition these things were junked in favour of Top Gear reruns.

Abject failure is oddly enough on GO! which has hollowed out it's sked so much that any sort of regularity or consistency is roundly ignored by viewers - hence the poor performance of the Funniest Home Vids daily show (basically FHV without the crap about competitions or corporate sponsors)

Tuesday:

Seven's schedule on this night is still britcoms but is a slightly different shape than Autumn's lineup giving a bit of breathing room to 11 which has picked markedly this week.

Even The Office on a lowly 111K is posting its best result all season, but Ten's attempt to go retro and replace Raising Hope with Frasier bombed losing over 20,000 from its leading and knocking Nurse Jackie (which is now airing 1 day after its US broadcast) and Californication out of contention.

Special Mention has to go to BIG on GEM, a reality show (also on Nine - there's that timeshifting at work again) evidently so boring that nobody can be bothered to even make a wikipedia page about it, and it charted so low that it didn't even make the digital top 100 - surely a sign that your show is a waste of everybody's time.

Wednesday

You know if I ever bothered to watch GEM - I think I would grow to hate myself, If GO! has turned into a clearing house for hits you've seen before, GEM has turned into a 24/7 Fly on the Wall channel, and the flies are all over this one - with titles like "The World's Hairiest Person and Me", "Embarrassing Teen Bodies" and "Brothers & Sisters In Love" if there's such a thing as hell, this is surely the only channel they can get there - well, this and C31.

I have to give a shout out to Jersey Shore over on Seven Mate - its one of the biggest TV phenomena in the US to come down the cable in some years, by the same channel (MTV) that gave the world The Osbornes, a show that has had so much impact in the US has fizzled out here - yet the reasons are obvious, anyone who wants to have seen it - has seen it.

MTV on Foxtel plays this show constantly, everyone else would've torrented the thing two years ago, (which is an appalling wait for Australians in this day and age)

Thursday

On Thursday's everyone gets a turn, the older skew on the night seems to throw up a situation with lots of shows scoring decent numbers and nothing really failing (Except for Heli-Loggers whose potential aud probably went to bed at 9.30 - quick Seven better slot in another rerun of Family Guy)

Balls-Out Bogans and other observations

2011-06-05T03:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 29 May 2011

Well it's easy to see that the winner of the night was Seven, with their new series "Downtown Abbey" a period drama which will run for seven weeks (and have another series later this year).

Clearly everyone loves to see some toffey period action because it netted one of the biggest Sunday audiences of the year so far!

Monday, 30 May 2011

Virtually identical to last week, except No Ordinary Family actually added 70,000 viewers and Offspring and Masterchef went up as well. Winter is kicking in.

Over two hours Rescue: Special Ops actually did worse than last week's CSI double.

Tuesday, 31 May 2011

While a snarky part of me is happy to see a Lisa McCune drama fail (why couldn't it have been the sleep inducing Blue Heelers?) another, more reasonable part of me is baffled as to why Nine would pit this against Seven's top rating Tuesday slot. Seven has owned this night with Australian drama for years now.

There's no Aussie dramas on Wednesday or Thursday nights, why not try it there rather than unsuccessfully trying to divide (and supposedly conquer) your potential audience.

Oh BTW - Australia's Got Talent - biggest aud of the week at a shade under 2 million viewers - incredible.

Wednesday, 1 June 2011

I have to just put it out there. Mike & Molly is a flop, it pains me slightly cuz out of all the choices at 8pm on a Wednesday - it's what I watch, and its quite a decent show, but for whatever reason it is driving people away from Nine.

Big Bang Theory at 7.30 almost nets 1 million viewers and then the numbers fall off precipitously - recovering slightly for RPA, but not much.

Also what is the go with 9.30pm

Viewers at 8.30pm = 3,676,000
Viewers at 9.30pm = 2,604,000

That's a hell of a drop off and yet the digital netlets didn't feel it, all their 9.30 shows more or less maintained their lead in audiences, those viewers going to bed were all watching the analogue channels. Maybe the government is right to be putting set top boxes into pensioner's homes. Back to bed people!

Thursday, 2 June 2011.

Easily the biggest night for Digital TV, if you're wondering what it means when I've shaded a program green, it means their PEAK AUDIENCE was over 300,000 viewers, so you can be sure its a popular show.

GO! continues to prosper with its superior movie line-up, Charlie's Angels almost doubling last week's Miss Congeniality 2 (now you know why their hasn't been a #3).

Maybe Nine should think about putting RBT on Tuesdays and sending the less popular AFP onto Thursday night shopping duty. RBT shouldn't be good, its a show about the most boring minutae of police work - getting drivers to blow into a machine to test their blood alcohol. It should be boring, but for some reason the mix of balls-out bogans a... how funny is this - AS I AM WRITING THIS - a cop car has pulled someone over up the street from here and my street was flickering blue and red for a good 5 minutes. Naturally I hung out my window to see what was going on, and thus you can see the appeal of RBT.

Adversarial Advertorial

2011-05-29T18:23:00.001-07:00

I don't often comment about television advertisements, but in this case I couldn't resist...

The week that was

2011-05-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Lets have a look shall we...

Sunday, 22 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Ahh the eternal struggle between Masterchef and Dancing continues, with Dancing succeeding by sheer weight, being over twice as long as its cooking competitor.

Monday, 23 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Come Fly with Me drops week on week but Big Bang Theory actually rises! Go figure. Meanwhile The Amazing Race loses 100,000 viewers week on week while Ten's shows hold steady, though House suffers by having a month off the sked and probably not being compatible with Offspring.

Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Tuesday night is almost identical to the previous Tuesday with Nine continuing to bring up the rear with the dreary Customs/AFP double. Also Sea Patrol at this point is merely making up the numbers for Nine's drama quota, stick a fork in it.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

State of Origin (in 3 markets anyway - but that's all they need!) Normally on a Wednesday Nine is coming a distant third to the other two nets, who incidentally managed to continue their fight despite State of Origin. Indeed the Origin match seems to have brought in a lot of one-time lapsed free to air viewers.

In Sydney alone Origin netted in excess of One Million viewers - Sydney never produces that kind of number any more having the most fragmented audience and the biggest Foxtel take up in the country.

Thursday, 26 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Thursday belonged to channel ten with one of Oprah Winfrey's final shows giving them the edge at 8.30.

Ten often puts Oprah into Primetime as filler but this year has seen some of the more successful entries with Oprah's Australian specials pulling a healthy aud. Before that you'd have to venture all the way back to 1993 and Oprah's interview with Michael Jackson to find a primetime Oprah special that rated so well.

For the record Oprah's Final show on the Friday night netted 743,000 but came second to Nine's cross-city combo of NRL and the Mentalist (893,000)

Also Between the Lines (which actually Eddie's third vehicle this year - This is your Life being the show I'd completely forgotten about!) has been axed after consistently being outrated by its leadout - which suggests that viewers are avoiding it on purpose!

Nine fails to read between the lines

2011-05-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Eddie McGuire. It seems you can’t go three weeks in this place without another Eddie McGuire quiz show being foisted on the weary public.

Honestly it’s like they’re being mass-produced.

5 nights a week you can watch Eddie host a heavily modified version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ leading into the news, a few weeks back the book was unceremoniously closed on his new quiz show ‘Million Dollar Drop’ (an interesting idea hampered by being strung out over the course of a full hour)

Now Eddie’s back on screens without a moment to lose quizzing celebrities about sporting trivia with ‘Between the Lines’

Structurally at least, the show should be doing well, the celebs involved are generally watchable, the format itself seems tight, its light entertainment on a night stuffed with dramas and it leads directly into The Footy Show.

So why is it tanking?

I’m not sure why exactly – but I think the fundamentals of the show are good, but the viewer sees an advertisement, hears two words and just mentally tunes out.

Eddie Everywhere, the man, the legend.

Eddie McGuire is in many ways, in this day and age a unique creation, a throwback to the olden days of television when it was more regionalised.

You see television never took networking all that seriously until maybe the late 1970s. Until that time there were wild variations in schedules from city to city as the individual stations had a lot more control over program content.

That era saw the likes of Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton become household names despite the fact that their show (In Melbourne Tonight) was only seen live (if at all) in the Melbourne market!

Eddie is a similar beast, he rose to prominence as a sports reporter for Channel Ten Melbourne, but it was helming The Footy Show on channel nine which made him a star.

The Footy Show, lest we forget, was not like other shows, it was guerrilla television, starting in an era where Footy only ever aired on Seven, Nine put together a show about the sport with NO FOOTAGE, relying on the personalities of its presenters to bring in the viewers and people lapped it up.

An NRL based show was quickly created (Nine did –and still does- have the NRL rights) and Nine had Thursday nights sewn up.

Pretty soon McGuire was a household name in Melbourne, but north of the Murray he was a complete unknown. Luckily Nine has plenty of ‘event’ programming in need of an MC and in a role that used to be filled by journalist and daytime host Ray Martin, Eddie started popping up everywhere.

It started with Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 1999 – a big deal quiz show format which reportedly had everyone pulling a salary from channel nine trying out for the hosts role. McGuire got the gig and with it (and the show’s long run) viewers got another chance to see the man every week.

In case you don’t watch quiz shows or follow the AFL though, you could still see Eddie on such occasions as the Logie Awards, the National IQ test, The Tsunami Telethon (which itself is a crowning achievement in Aus TV IMO – off topic), A Current Affair just to name a few.

In fact channel Nine’s schedule was so full of Eddie at one point that they made the only logical move they could and appointed him CEO of the network!

Now there are two types of people working in front of the camera for TV networks, freelancers and stars.

Regular freelancers are hired on a show by show basis, by a specific program, these are normally actors or maybe presenters on a show made by an outside production company.

The network stars on the other hand, they’re employed by the network, and their job description can vary wildly depending on what the network wants them to do, one week they might be fronting a news program, the next they might be filming Christmas promos, the week after they could do a spot on a travel show.

All the while, their pay doesn’t change, they draw a salary and it doesn’t fluctuate depending on the task at hand (where as it would for freelancers).

At any rate, by the time he was CEO, Eddie’s salary had swelled to somewhere around $3-4 million!

A big chunk of that was no doubt negotiated when he was promoted to CEO, by reports (and we can take them with a grain of salt I guess) he’s still worth that even though he’s just back to being a TV presenter and for some time the network seemed to struggle with finding him something to do.

They plugged that gap with Millionaire Hot Seat, a good lead in to Nine’s News and a high output gig that IMO certainly justifies a big salary by the network.

But Nine keep trying to find MOAR projects for Eddie to front.

This year we’ve seen two so far, Million Dollar Drop and now Between the Lines (which was mooted all the way back in 2009!)

Million Dollar Drop bombed in a big way and it looks like Between the Lines is headed for a similar fate, but why?

A big part of the reason is McGuire himself and yet its not his fault. He presents the shows perfectly well, he’s a competent host, quick on his feet and charming to boot, but he’s also been oversaturated, remember he’s “Eddie Everywhere” every time his name is mentioned a subset of viewers just rolls their eyes and tunes out.

You’ll never win these people back (at least not straight away) no matter how hard you try, its not you (Eddie) its them. As unfair as it is, familiarity breeds contempt, it’s a cliché because its true!

Nine’s programmers look at these formats and think – ‘who do we have already on the payroll who can pull this off?’ and naturally Eddie is given the call, but what if they didn’t have the cost pressures of star salaries, where they could get a freelancer in to do the job, someone different that might bring in that casual aud, and let Eddie lay low for a while, doing his 5.30 thing, giving people the chance to miss him a little before putting him on the next big thing.

Just a thought…

Thursday, 19 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

NETWORK SKED

DIGITAL SKED.

Seven is unstoppable on Wednesdays

2011-05-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

NETWORK SKED

DIGITAL SKED.

Talents win again

2011-05-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

NETWORK SKED

DIGITAL SKED

Come Fly With Me (not you Newcastle!)

2011-05-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

Monday, 16 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

Monday was an interesting night with each net throwing a new show onto the pit of despair that is Free to Air television, with interesting results.

Seven is the network that is (and has been for the past 5 years) most likely to succeed and so they finally did something that I never thought they had the balls to do - a local version of The Amazing Race.

I guess the US version's ratings had gotten to a state where Seven felt comfortable shuffling it off to their HD channel, Where it has done well for itself but not in a Neighbours sense. (which is the current yardstick for analogue to digital transplants.)

An Audience of 1,258,000 (5th) 756,000 18-49 (3rd) is a good result for a first outing and like a lot of reality shows, I'd expect the aud for this to build over time.

Ten is the bottom of the heap network trying every damn trick in the book to claw its way up. It knows big event TV but drama has never been its strong suit. The season premiere of Offspring, a show about, who knows - some sort of Ally MacBeal wannabee (its not really aimed at me as an owner of a penis!). 927,000 (12th) and 588,000 18-49 (5th) is respectable but they'd be hoping for that to improve given the massive lead in

Meanwhile Channel Nine has done something quite remarkable. This is the former champion network in many ways a shell of its former self, so how they managed to debut a new show (a half hour mockumentary british sitcom at that) with a peak of 1.7 million is beyond me, but well done.

While I'm on the topic, Come Fly With Me (the show in question, basically a wholesale parody of those awful Airline reality docos) was subjected to the most baffling case of corporate idiocy that I've seen in years.

Essentially NBN (Nine's Newcastle-Northern NSW affiliate) chose not to take the show because of its 8pm timeslot, the reason? Well the previous show from these creators, Little Britain, was rated MA and considered vulgar (or something like that) and NBN was determined to prove that their viewers are hicks and couldn't handle such ribald humour in an earlier timeslot.

Notwithstanding that this is an affiliate that happily took episodes of Two and a Half Men at 7pm every night for umpteen years without controversy, the decision was baffling because, NBN is actually OWNED BY THE NINE NETWORK! It's an O&O basically and has been since SP Media sold it to Nine after the ownership rules changed a few years ago - so what's the deal with that?

Anyway - even they won't be able to ignore ratings of 1.4 million, so Newcastle viewers should expect to see it on next week without explaination!

MONDAY'S NETWORK SKED

MONDAY'S DIGITAL SKED

Run it up the tentpole and see

2011-05-21T04:27:00.000-07:00

TV in the old days was simple. You could put on really big show on a night and the big audience it drew would stick around for the surrounding shows.

They'd tune into the show beforehand so as not to miss out on their favourite and they'd be so buzzed they'd stick around for the following show.

This strategy in television programming is known as the 'tentpole' in TV terms both Dancing with the Stars and Masterchef are tentpole shows, but one network's tent seems to be made of a lot sterner stuff.

We're gonna need a bigger tent...

Looking at the performance of Dancing with the Stars a competition which is in its 11th cycle, its performance is simply phenomenal.

Even moreso when you consider that recent seasons have had a less than spectacular result for Seven.

Masterchef nets a more desirable younger demographic but Masterchef was never about chasing demos, it was its power as an all-audience draw that made it a household name - a performance of 1.4 million is not poor, but given the investment by Ten in the series versus Seven's much smaller outlay for Dancing and you begin to wonder whether the money has been well spent.

You can bet that the Masterchef prods will be scrambling to come up with some sort of hook to draw in the casual auds over the next few weeks, something to justify their huge pricetag. No doubt we'll see some of these gimmicks advertised in the next few weeks and we'll red flag them here as we see em!

SUNDAY'S NETWORK SKED

SUNDAY'S DIGITAL SKED

Thursday, 12 May 2011

2011-05-15T04:52:00.001-07:00

Ok so its not all bad for Masterchef. Seems like with AGT out of the way for a night the aud for Masterchef lifts.

Earlier in the week it was looking as if the Talent show and Dancing with the Stars were going to erode the ratings of ten's juggernaut.

Certainly ten's previous reality hits gave suffered from audience drop-off in the third year but a figure of 1.5million viewers in a Thursday shows there's not too much for ten to worry about yet, its just that Seven's reality skeins are having an unusually good year.

The Good Wife and SVU had their best weeks of the season so far but even then they dropped almost half of the Masterchef aud.

Worse though was channel Nine which can't catch a break! New show (buggered if I know what genre - Eddie McGuire vehicle that's a genre at this point right?) Between the Lines is his second major flop in as many months.

More on this after I take a look at his show for myself next week.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

2011-05-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

Well I can't ignore them any longer, not when they get results like that - I'm putting ONE on the chart.

Sons of Anarchy had an excellent debut on the HD channel, outrating other new entrants Spartacus: Gods of the Arena on GO! and Jersey Shore on 7mate.

Indeed Ten might like to consider swapping the Bikie drama (which has 3 seasons worth of eps to get through) with Lie to Me which is dying a slow and painful death on the main channel. 347,000 isn't an acceptable figure at 9.30 on analogue TV.

For that matter, Glee isn't doing all that well either - losing 600,000 viewers from its lead in. Ten needs to a) look at what breaks they are putting between shows - they shouldn't be giving viewers a chance to switch over and b) keeping shows in CONSISTENT timeslots - how many times has Glee been moved now? Whereas Criminal Minds has pretty much been on Wednesdays (with occassional sojourns to Mondays) since the dawn of time.

Tuesday, 10th May 2011

2011-05-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

Damage Control is definitely what Nine needs, just not the TV series with the same title. Last night not only saw Nine's third poor night in a row, but their first real disaster of the week with not one prime time show netting over 1 million viewers.

The decision to screen the original Underbelly to Victorians while showing some also-ran crap in the other states is starting to look a bit stupid. Sorry to say it Nine, but anyone living in Victoria who wanted to see Underbelly has seen it and slipping it into the schedule with scant promotion is not the way to wring extra viewers out of that first season.

It would have been better to hold off until summer and show it as a rerun/first run across the network.

Of course I'm ignoring the night's biggest story - Australia's Got Talent which is the second show in 3 days to take some paint of the almighty Masterchef, and not just a little paint either, Talent beat out the cooking show by a whole 300,000 viewers.

Either Seven is so strong this year that previously railroaded shows are being boosted or perhaps some people are tiring of Masterchef and are seeking an alternative?

Monday May 9th, 2011

2011-05-11T03:43:00.000-07:00

Good ratings for The Big Bang Theory in the face of the all conquering Masterchef. But Masterchef's highs still aren't rubbing off on the rest of Ten's sked.

Especially sad is GNW which didn't even air in the AFL states.

All I can personally say is thank FRAK that Seven has the AFL rights next year, they consistently have the most boring and stale lineup (from a 34yo male perspective anyway) and so I won't care one iota when AFL storms in on a Monday or Thursday night to disrupt the regular schedule.

Over on digital it was all 7TWO with GO! suffering a particularly bad night (only Top Gear appeared in the top 50) part of the blame there has to lay with their scheduling - to the casual observer GO! appears to have 4 shows: Top Gear, Big Bang, Two and a Half Men and Wipeout! and their scheduling has all the consistency and predictability of a game of roulette.

Nine outta just pick a night for each of these shows and use them to promote their less popular shows and stop peppering them all over the schedule.

Sunday May 8th, 2011

2011-05-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

Part of me wonders about the wisdom of Seven taking off their flagship public affairs program, Sunday Night, in order to show the aging crapfest Dancing with the Stars.

Then I see that Dancing beat Masterchef (though it came a distant second in viewers 18-49) and held that audience over 2 and a half hours and well frankly with those numbers who gives a crap about 'Sunday Night'

Loser of the night is actually no-one (thought I was gonna say Nine didn't you!) while Nine didn't pull great numbers for its telemovie (honestly networks in this country embraced telemovies at the fag end of their popularity as a format in the US but that's a topic for another post) and 60 minutes was down, they did get a decent aud for In Their Footsteps which actually surprised me.

Furthermore while Ten is facing a problem with hanging onto their huge Masterchef audience into the night, they are at least doing well in the 18-49 demographic with Merlin and Hawaii Five-0 posting good demos despite lacklustre overall numbers.

Also worth mentioning is the revamp of OneHD which kicks in this week, although Sunday night had purely sports programming it went well with a peak of 507,000 people tuning into the channel for Formula One racing.

Well see how they go throughout the week and if they start to make a blip on the radar - I'll start including them in the chart!

Thursday, 5 May 2011

2011-05-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

2011-05-09T03:59:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

2011-05-09T03:58:00.001-07:00

Monday May 2nd, 2011

2011-05-03T06:30:00.001-07:00

Sunday May 1st, 2011

2011-05-03T06:28:00.001-07:00

The Last Week on Digital

2011-04-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

Just a quick squiz at last week's numbers. Tis Easter Holidays so very busy around these parts, I'll be taking the next two weeks off from the blog but when I return the rant will be de-coupled (so to speak) from the charts - that way I can post the charts in a much more timely manner and rant about whatever is going on in the world of TV without having to directly relate it to the days ratings.

Why do I want to seperate the two - well looking at the ratings since the season started - and they're static. Channel 7 is dominating everything and basically making fools out of the other two nets, judging by the latest channel 9 promo I spied tonight - that isn't going to change anytime soon either.

So on a day to day basis the ratings themselves don't provide all that much fodder for discussion. However there is still a lot going on with TV at the moment so I will still have a lot to bitch about - but keeping it seperate from the charts will mean that I can get the charts up quicker (as they are actually quite simple at this point in time) and given that most people are probably here to see the ratings presented as a schedule grid I think overall it will be a good change.

Enjoy easter everyone :D

- Jason

The last 5 days

2011-04-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

The law of inverse proportions

2011-04-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, the Biggest Loser was the top rating show for Thursday pulling 1.2 million which has to be one of its biggest hauls this year.

Every year the audience for this show builds in the final weeks, it's almost inversely proportional to the amount of jiggling on display!

The AFL Footy Show had its anniversary which explains a timeslot win for the first time this season.

Over on digital there was a big turnout for Stargate Universe, but Star Trek TNG dropped out of the top 50 despite airing one of the best first season episodes (The Big Goodbye)

No gimmick to speak of

2011-04-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

What the hell? How on earth did Farmer Wants a Wife net more viewers for the reunion special than at any point in the entire season?

Is this a case of people saying en masse: "cut to the chase"?

Of course they were helped out no end by the moribund Lie to Me, a featureless crime show with a gimmick, drowning in a sea of crime shows with gimmicks. At this point people have to realise that these shows need engaging or interesting characters to stand out, much like a lot of Ten's procedurals the characters in this just seem to blend into the background, against Criminal Minds, a show whose premise contains no gimmick to speak of, yet their ensemble cast is a group of characters each of whom could carry a show, the difference is there for you to see on the chart.

Over on digital it was great night for Eleven and 7TWO and Decent for 7mate and GO! though how GO's programmers think its sustainable to run so many movie slots is beyond me, its almost programming by panic.

Still when you see the alternative, a steady schedule - as demonstrated by GEM, then maybe panic is the way to go, GEM's post 7.30 lineup across the week has more or less fallen off the map.

Big Trial Period

2011-04-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Well this is the first time I remember seeing figures for Brisbane's breakaway 7pm broadcast of The Big Bang Theory. That's because on Tuesday Big Bang netted 207,000 Brisbane viewers. To put this into perspective here's what its competition did in Brisbane:

ABC News: 146,000
Home & Away: 189,000
The 7pm Project: 148,000

It beat all three of them, yet Two and a Half Men running in the other four cities sees Nine in fourth place across the network. Now we know why come Monday Big Bang will be network wide at 7pm

Sons of Liberty

2011-04-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

Well the first big thing you'll notice is the switcheroo with George Negus moving to 6.30 to take on the big Current Affairs duopoly. I have high hopes for it so I'll reserve any comment until its had a bit of time to bed in.

Leaving that to one side there's plenty of things to be annoyed with here. A month ago Brothers and Sisters was netting 1 million viewers, now half an hour later and behind a middling show its doing half that number.

Ten have gone back to the Undercover Boss for the time being and the result is - pathetic, its funny actually - both 7pm Project and the Stand up comedy special net 750K yet 200,000 people decide to take the hour inbetween them off.

In spite of a MASSIVE amount of promotion, Two and a Half Men only netted 1 million viewers, its easy to see why - that show is now pedestrian compared to things like this...

But more of a worry for Nine is the Million Dollar Drop, 4th in it's slot and less viewers than the 5.30pm games shows, its a bonafide flop. Part of the problem IMO is that the show is nothing more than a vehicle for Eddie McGuire to sit there and chat to people (at copious length) while the rest of us wait for some sort of game show. Watching Eddie McGuire hosting a game show is like sitting through those Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden asks every question 3 times and then bickers with his girlfriend Rose. It's frustrating and it should be ended.

On digital check out the amazing performances by 7TWO and Eleven with Neighbours, Supernatural and Raymond all netting their biggest numbers yet.

Seven's turn

2011-04-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

Yep Seven's turn to win Sundays as the 6.30 and 7.30 slots continue their round robin between the networks.

Sunday Night got a timeslot win on the weekend that Nine confirmed the Sunday ACA as a permanent fixture. For all their trouble ACA didn't do to well on Sunday night (despite yet ANOTHER TV reunion - this time for The Sullivans). In principle it makes more sense to have A Current Affair on a Sunday than it does on a Friday! But shows like this are habitual so it's hard to break into existing prime time slot with a stripped show.

A rerun of NCIS at 9.30 for Ten didn't do much better than its spin off, reinforcing the notion that save for a handful of shows, (Big Bang Theory and Top Gear cheif among them) viewers are becoming weary of reruns. As I've read over on Media Spy some episodes of Modern Family (a sophomore show) have been rerun by ten 4 times already! Maybe ten should think about throwing in some Bondi Rescue reruns instead, save for cable I don't think that show has ever been rebroadcasted.

Question Time

2011-04-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

If GO! didn't have the Big Bang Theory they would be in the doldrums. In spite of showing over 9 EPISODES PER WEEK, the show is still GO!'s biggest.

Coming up in the digital world is Ten's scifi double of Stargate Universe and Star Trek The Next Generation. While Star Trek is amazing in so far as its a 23 year old show with zero promotion beating out other digital fare, but Stargate Universe is now in the top tier of digital shows along with Big Bang, Heartbeat and Neighbours as pulling over 200,000 viewers per episode.

Of the main channels - I have some questions:

How much longer can Nine justify the production costs of two separate Footy Shows to draw less than 700,000 viewers?
How on earth does Ten get any traction for their sickly US dramas?
What evil magic continues to keep Home & Away in rude health?
How much longer will Nine wear the 7pm ratings of Two and a Half Men?

Waving and drowning

2011-03-31T23:04:00.001-07:00

Ten have all but given up on Wednesday nights. They tried valiantly for a while with the cop drama Blue Bloods, that faltered so they wheeled out reruns of Modern Family a sitcom that in just over a year on the air feels like its been run to death.

Now they're slotting in Just 4 Laughs specials which is the equivalent of waving your white flag and surrendering the night.

Expect lots of super sized specials from Masterchef when it returns. As well as a concerted promotional push behind whatever drama they throw behind it.

Once again we were kings

2011-03-31T13:12:00.001-07:00

Winners & Losers continues on from its strong debut with winning ratings. Seven is just dominating this early part of the year and there's almost nothing the other two nets can do to stop them!

Ten must be counting down the days until Masterchef - but at this point I wonder whether the audience for that show will have already gotten their fill for culinary action by the time My Kitchen Rules bows.

Over on digital television Survivor puts in an excellent performance, just like The Amazing Race there are still decent audiences for these shows and while they might not look too spectacular on the analogue channels, on digital they are kings.

Pricing yourself out of the market

2011-03-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

In Mediaspy today there's an interesting report about the impending AFL rights negotiations with Citigroup warning that the asking price of 1 billion dollars is too high.

You can read that story here Citigroup issues AFL TV rights warning: $1bn is too high

Increasingly I think the commercial networks would be mugs to pay $1b for AFL rights. The ratings for AFL keep sliding down the slope each year and you have the added logistical headache of finding alternative programming for Sydney and Brisbane. Last Thursday’s match was beamed live into Sydney on channel One, only 9,000 people watched! How the AFL thinks they sustain 2 teams in that city let alone justify a billion dollar price tag for the rights is beyond me.

Ten will want to be involved again because they have the sports channel (I believe they’re also going after Rugby League which they had during the 80s), current Seven is suing Ten so I’m not sure that they’ll work together, but Seven needs a partner and I don’t think it will be Foxtel, unless Foxtel just partners up with Ten (I don’t think Nine will be a player in the negotiations)

You only have to look at the (non) performance of One HD which regularly nets only 1 or 2% of the Audience vs channels like 11 or GO! which get up to 5 or 6% to see that live sport is no longer king in this country.

Dead in the water.

2011-03-29T02:37:00.003-07:00

Ooh that's not good. Not only did Million Dollar Drop come a distant third in its slot, but it also got 36,000 less viewers than its lead-out CSI: Miami!

Consider this show axed.

All in all it was a great night for the ABC which saw a good turnout for 4 Corners.

Seven also continued its Monday hot streak with the unstoppable My Kitchen Rules.

Finally some common sense

2011-03-29T02:37:00.001-07:00

Check out the dismal figure for ten's NCIS: LA only 387,000 people tuned in for a show which has a long future ahead of it in its home market but looks like it's headed for oblivion over here.

I've been saying for weeks that ten needs to move this behind its more popular sibling but its taken them until now to act.

Let's hope the show's impending move to Tuesday nights pays off.

One way to get viewers

2011-03-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Thursday, 24 March 2011

Is there even a point now to taking ratings Surveys, just tick the box marked 7 and move on. My Kitchen Rules is a steam roller for Seven, so much so that its worth asking whether anything they have in the winter that can match it.

7TWO's british dramas have a similar hegemony over the digital spectrum. Posting big total audience numbers with shows aimed at older viewers while the rest of digital scraps over the under 49s.

On Thusrday we had Ten broadcasting the first match of the AFL season. Almost 1/3 of the total audience watched the match in High Definition giving OneHD one of its biggest audiences so far this year.

No Losers for Seven

2011-03-25T03:13:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

A very big debut for Seven's new series Winners & Losers ensures the best possible start for the Packed to the Rafters substitute.

It doesn't hurt either that My Kitchen Rules is now a major hit with 1.5 million metro viewers.

Over on Digital TV, GO! had a big night with Survivor: Redemption Island pulling a respectable 260K over 2 hours.

Million Dollar Flop

2011-03-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 20 March 2011

Monday, 21 March 2011

The debut for Nine's new gameshow - Million Dollar Drop did alright numbers-wise, coming second in it's slot, but I can't help but think it would've been better had they not used such bad actors for their pilot. The concept of the gameshow is decent enough, although I'm not keen on them constantly inventing formats designed to let Eddie MacGuire waffle on at length. But the "couple" who were in the opening show were excruciating to watch.

Also who the hell doesn't know that Australia only has 5 million-plus cities?? How did they find people THAT stupid?

A Scandal-Free Practice

2011-03-15T04:42:00.001-07:00

14 March 2011
MONDAY

Q: What is 11 years of Australian TV heritage worth in the ratings these days?
A: 37,000 viewers

That's how many more people watched ACA over Today Tonight on Monday. The reason, an A Country Practice retrospective with the series' creator - James Davern.

Frankly it was refreshing to see a retrospective on an Australian television without the requisite scandal attached, although Nine has been plowing this groud a LOT lately, a few weeks ago it was the cast of Young Talent Time.

At the rate they're going it can only be a matter of time before we see ACA track down the cast of Bingles.

On a side note they mentioned that Joyce Jacobs, who played Esme Watson, is still alive and in a retirement home, my jaw was on the floor when I heard that, especially given the roll call of former cast members who had passed away, they should totally interview her if its possible.

In other news, the news dominated proceding with every news program receiving a boost, including George Negus and his 6.30 lead out which both posted over 400,000 and Ten's 5pm news got over 900,000 which is its biggest aud in a while.

Q&A which featured the PM, Julia Gillard actually increased on Four Corners' audience - the first time I can remember something like that happening

Sea of Procedurals

2011-03-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

13 March 2011
SUNDAY

A great audience for 60 minutes edging in front of the 7.30 hour for the second week in a row, at 6.30 Biggest Loser again is top dog and Miss Marple hold the prize post 8.30. All the same as last week which means this is the pattern for Sundays going forward so the onus is on Nine or Ten to shake up their post 8.30 sked.

Nine has helped themselves somewhat with the new Harry's Law - a new drama from the insanely prolific David E Kelley.

Ten have nothing but despair with an underperforming Five-O and a moribund NCIS: LA. LA's problem is that its the most bland drama in a sea of procedurals. Its amazing that Ten have not as yet put this show on after the original. I suspect a lot who would ever watch this also watch O.G. NCIS on the Tuesday. Ten should (here I go again) move LA to 8.30 Tuesdays against the all-powerful Rafters leaving an all new original to clean up at 9.30.

On the digital spectrum it was all about The Amazing Race. Top Gear on GO! also did incredible figures.

You might have noticed I've changed around the format of the grid, its always a work in progress but this method gives me the opportunity to clearly display the pecking order in each timeslot without resorting to colour coding - which although cool, was becoming confusing with the mass of channels involved

Laid over Lie

2011-03-10T04:38:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

I thought Ten might have had some success with thier plan to sub in Modern Family reruns on a Wednesday night. Seems like I was wrong, viewers can indeed tell the difference between fresh and stale episodes.

The real casualty though is Lie To Me which was in the cushy 9.30 Tuesday slot but is now out on its own in the wilderness on Wednesdays. Why Ten didn't think it could anchor 8.30 is beyond me but leaving it with an incompatible and unpopular lead in is too much punishment. It was beaten by the largely unknown Laid FFS!

You might have noticed I've been experimenting with adding new digital channels ABC2 and now One, I'm not sure that it's worth it - ABC2 has a LOT of programs getting over the 100K mark but they are mostly daytime kids programs (by contrast Kid-Centric ABC3 is a non-event, partly because its catering to an audience - Tweens - that doesn't like what its selling.)

One HD - Ten's all sport all the time channel is now less sport and more manly stuff like Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch and action movies, its interesting that these diversions rate better for One than anything else on the channel!

This is what it has come to... a Sour Cream Grandma

2011-03-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

That's right, and dammit it worked! Talkin Bout Your Generation has struggled all month since its return, subjugated by Seven's all conquering MKR (which is still the top performer I might add) but stunt casting with the regular's family members helped Your Gen over the all important million mark.

The big loser from this was Big Bang Theory which is proof that two comedies cannot stand against each other in the same slot. I'm not sure what Nine should do here really, Tuesday has been its weakest night for years simply because of the strong offerings on the other nets.

The other thing which was weird about Tuesday night was the effect of two big shows (MKR and Rafters) on Digital TV, nothing after Neighbours broke 170,000 viewers, it was digital's lowest night in quite sometime.

What turning a blind eye gets you

2011-03-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

Monday, 7 March 2011

Now here's an interesting twist. A Current Affair, which has been languishing in the ratings since the season began, decides to wheel out a story from last year that captured national attention, the so-called "Hey Dad Scandal" so named for the old Channel 7 sitcom (yes it was as bland as it sounds) where it seems the youngest cast member was allegedly sexually abused by her TV patriarch.

Nothing particularly new was added to the story - police are still interviewing people and are yet to file charges, but the victim has decided not to wait for them and to bring civil action against her abuser and the folks who enabled this travesty.

Why I have nothing particularly enlightening to add to this case, from a television perspective its interesting to note that Hey Dad is one of the longest running shows ever on TV, at 291 episodes there's an awful lot of material in the can and yet its barely ever been rebroadcast, and now with this history unearthed which just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, the chances of it turning up in reruns anywhere are nil.

What broadcaster would buy rerun rights to this now? A series with this kind of success should normally expect a pretty decent post-release income from reruns and DVD sales, that's all gone for this show, done.

Maybe in future producers will report this kind of on-set behaviour to the police rather than turn a blind eye.

The Rigid Formula

2011-03-07T03:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 6 March 2011

Well 60 Minutes' foray into the ongoing Dicki-Leaks saga proved a ratings winner, coupled with an American interview of Charlie Sheen it was train-wreck television.

Still there seems to be some conjecture at the moment as to whether they were actually legally allowed to name the girl at the centre of this whole furore and the fact that they have (and continue to) has made all sorts of talking heads and TV lawyers nervous.

I wonder if it was worth to only beat Seven in the slot by 130,000 viewers and still lose the night due to the poor performance of The Mentalist.

Perhaps The Mentalist has reached that point where the existing audience is eroding but no new viewers are sampling it. Still the new drama Harry's Law did exceptionally well at 9.30 retaining more of its lead in than Castle (though coming second in the slot)

NCIS: Los Angeles continues to underwhelm, its not well promoted, I don't know why I would watch it (I gave up on NCIS back at the end of Season 2 - it was good but there was a formula to it which had started to feel stale)

Indeed, perhaps that is the downfall with procedurals; They follow such a rigid formula that they become stale after a time and there's very little that happens in them that is so out of the ordinary they can draw new Audiences to them, at this point unless there's some sort of major cast change I think NCIS LA will stay in the doldrums for now.

On Digital it was 4 programs, The Amazing Race, Escape to the Country, Big Bang and The Middle. Two older movies: Pulp Fiction and Alien also posted very good numbers last night

Charlie Sheen and Justin Beiber

2011-03-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Hang on - what's this? An actual post 7.30 show scraping past a million on a Thursday night? Wow, that honour goes to The Biggest Loser which improved week on week by 50,000 viewers.

CSI grew by a whopping 117K week on week (was it the episode where Justin Beiber got killed because I could see that drawing a crowd)

Meanwhile just about the only show which slumped week on week was, surprise surprise, Two and a Half Men, down more than 50,000 week on week. I think the problem with it may be that it just pales into comparison with the real deal which has been far more entertaining!

City Homicide is D.O.A.

2011-03-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

If there's a story on Wednesdays its the slow agonising death of City Homicide over on Seven, that this once 8.30 show is now drawing less than half the audience of its first two seasons is a crying shame. I suspect its already been confirmed as the last season for the show - but even so that's kind of depressing.

Still its not as bad as Ten, holy mackeral all their shows sucked last night, Biggest Loser posted one of its lowest auds yet, Blue Bloods is surely on the way out and Lie to Me would probably be doing a lot better were it not for Blue Bloods.

I do notice that Eleven has dropped Bob's Burgers, but closer examination shows that the show took a week off in the US so maybe it'll be back, at any rate a second episode of Cleveland did better in its place!

Kitchen Dramas

2011-03-03T00:25:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Another Tuesday, another total domination by Seven, except curiously, the 9.30 showing, Conviction Kitchen. It's doing well for a 9.30 slot, but given its lead in it should be doing a whole lot better. Perhaps the audience has got their fill of cooking from Seven's powerhouse MKR (which continues to impress three nights a week) Perhaps an audience raised on Border Security and The Force has very little sympathy for prisoners trying to reform.

Nine shufled around their sked moving Top Gear to 8.30 and reaping the benefit of a more stable Tuesday, though 20 to 01 may as well have been at 10.30 it did so poorly.

Talkin About Your Generation is having an abysmal run, it doesn't help that all three 7.30 competitors (MKR, Big Bang and Your Gen) are probably chasing the same crowd, as is How I Met Your Mother, The Simpsons and the Britcoms on 7TWO, maybe Ten should try out a drama early on Tuesdays, just sayin.

Not like the old days

2011-03-01T02:33:00.000-08:00

Monday, 28 February 2011

Hmmm. There was a fair bit of speculation at the weekend that Nine had axed the weeknight rebroadcasts of Two and a Half Men, it seems that they've only done so in Brisbane - so the figure you see for 9 at 7pm is for four markets only. Even so - excluding Brisbane, that figure is not up to Nine's usual standards. They need to take some action on 7pm and soon.

This is your Life had a successful debut for Nine at 8.30, the Academy Awards though didn't do too well for the rerun - it doesn't help that everyone spoils it and if you're anywhere near a media outlet between 4pm and 9.30pm you'll hear who won. The Daytime Live broadcast pulled 196,000 for a total of 701,000 viewers, not like the old days anymore.

Big Bang and the Big Hitters

2011-03-01T02:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 27 February 2011

The 7.30 hour on Sunday nights is turning into one of the most competitive of the week, the week 60 minutes was the timeslot winner and Bondi Rescue posted its best audience of the year so far (for a well promoted episode I'll note).

Last Week Modern Family was the victor at 7.30 whereas the week before it was The Force. Every one of the shows at 7.30 is attracting a healthy audience. If only the same could be said about 8.30.

A few weeks ago you could point to Seven's Bones and see how they're dominating the timeslot - then ABC had to wheel out that old bitty Miss Marple, I'm guessing it's not the same Miss Marple I remember seeing as a kid (yes it's been going that long) but 1 million viewers is a very good audience for the ABC and proof that while every other demographic in TV is eroding the old folks are sticking to their free to air TV.

Maybe it's time to address television's cult of youth where every show is tailored to 25-54 or 18-49, then again, this same Audience targeting allows us to have multichannels these days.

On the multichannel front the main news was Ten bumped Smallville to a 10.30 slot replacing it with a movie which did way better and liften Ten's share. NZ Next Top Model is still struggling - but so does everything against Big Bang and the big hitters on the main channels at 7.30

Oh Mr Sheen

2011-02-26T02:17:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 24 February 2011

It's just depressing isn't it, we should just close Thursdays down and forget about it.

You may have noticed if you're reading this blog on a regular basis that I've chosen to ignore Fridays and Saturdays, that's mostly down to the fact that apart from the smaller audiences, the schedules start to get ridiculously fragmented as different states follow their different football codes. A few years ago (and you can rifle through the posts in 2009 to check it out) I attempted to make sense of this haphazard scheduling, but I don't even think the networks themselves know if there's a net benefit to splitting up their schedule by state.

It will be interesting to see if this is the first year where the multichannels can carry the sport live into the outlier states when it comes to NRL and AFL.

As for Thursday night, The Biggest Loser and Home and Away are the only things anyone is tuning in for.

Look at Two and a Half Men at 7pm - only half a million viewers and now getting regularly beaten by Ten's 7pm project despite having a superior lead in - Nine needs an alternative 7pm show pronto and they must know it - it's dragging down their whole night.

The problem for Nine is - What can they put in there - not a game show - they're played out, there's no other broad appeal sitcom that has as much strip potential as Men and a new newsprogram up against ABC News and 7pm would be fatal.

There's always Entertainment Tonight or TMZ I guess (I'd totally watch TMZ if it was on at a decent time like a few years ago) or maybe Nine could be brave and kick off their nightly sked at 7pm rather than 7.30, maybe that's too brave. Whatever happens they will not tolerate low figures for Two and a Half Men for that much longer - they need an alternative soon!

While I'm on the subject - What the hell is going on with Charlie Sheen check out this story on TV Tonight I think Sheen is going off the rails and it wouldn't suprise me if Two and a Half Men has taped its last show.

It begins...

2011-02-24T02:16:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 23, February 2011

A pretty depressed night all around I think. My Kitchen Rules, Criminal Minds and The Biggest Loser were the only things that went well last night. Channel Nine's Mike & Molly won't last much longer in this timeslot - especially given the show's either side are doing relatively well.

City Homicide is demonstrating why it was axed with less than half a million viewers, still that's better than Blue Bloods which has haemorraghed viewers weekly since its debut. Perhaps a Friday slot (like in the US) would be a better play for this drama.

Of course yesterday all the real action in TV wasn't on the screen or behind the camera but actually in the board room with the long running Grant Blackley being ousted as Channel Ten CEO, replaced by Lachlan Murdoch as acting CEO.

Its worth noting that although the catalyst for this move is undoubtably the faltering 6pm newshour, the bigger problem for Ten has been the miss-step that is One HD which is trying to attract an audience for sport which just isn't there - the sports audience has been a vocal minority for quite some time.

Also, whilst their strategy with 11 has actually been quite sound, they don't have the mainstream following on the main channel to actually back it up. What I'm trying to say it with 7 and 9 their main audience is adults 25-54 who like middle of the road fare, both GO! and 7mate perfectly complement their main channels by offering targeted 16-39 shows and GEM and 7TWO catch the older viewers uncatered to by the mainstream channels with their heady mix of reruns and Old Brittania.

11 meanwhile is going after mostly the same audience as Ten, Ten (to its credit) has tried to skew older, entrenching US procedurals at 8.30 on every night but there's only so many mainstream viewers to go around and they're increasingly going for first run Australian shows over and above imported hits.

Essentially Ten needs to figure out who it's main channel is aimed at and then somehow come up with a compelling offering for those folks.

One thing is for certain, it will be very interesting to see what happens with both Ten and One over the next year - I've heard many incredible suggestions from dedicated music and movie channels to turning one of the channels over to Packer/Murdoch owned Sky News Australia, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Hard Habit to Break

2011-02-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Oh, that's not good. Today Ten chief Grant Blackley who has been in charge of Ten Holdings for two months, but in charge of Network Ten for eons was deposed by his board who installed Lachlan Murdoch as acting CEO.

This is the real world consequences of Ten's poor ratings performance so far this year. They literally have four shows that are doing any kind of business at the moment, NCIS, The Biggest Loser, Modern Family and Glee - everything else is flailing.

Like many in the media have noted - a major source of controversy with Ten's board is their new 6pm strategy of serious current affairs up against the entrenched news bulletins of 7 and 9. So far there hasn't been encouraging results, but it's early days and seeing as early evening viewing is built on habit - viewers attachment to Nine and Seven will be a hard habit to break and now it seems Ten may not even get the chance to try.

New debut Conviction Kitchen lost over half of its lead in from Packed to the Rafters which may not be an issue for Seven as its demographics were really good, placing in the top 3 in all 3 major age categories, which suggests a broad hit.

Meanwhile Nine dropped most of it Tuesday sked for live coverage of the shocking Christchurch Earthquake, unfortunately the audience seems to be suffering from disaster fatigue with Nine's extended bulletins placing 3rd in their respective slots.

Big digital ratings for Neighbours, Everybody Loves Raymond and Harry Potter, but not appearing in the top 50 digital shows were The Office, Nurse Jackie and ABC2's Good Game - which I personally enjoy, its sad to see it tank.

Somebody call a doctor

2011-02-22T02:21:00.000-08:00

Monday, 21 February 2011

In amongst the more serious news stories yesterday was a move by Kerry Stokes to merge the Seven Network and West Australian News Papers. Analysts pointed to Stokes moving while the ratings are hot.

They weren't wrong. Seven cannot put a foot wrong this season.

Monday night saw My Kitchen Rules go from strength to strength, while Bones fended off a first run Underbelly with ease.

Underbelly would be a real disappointment for Nine this year, I think the reduced viewership is mostly down to the nature of staging telemovies rather than a series - it gives the impression that the producers are at the fag end of their inspiration, if they don't have enough material for a series.

I'm not suprised the audience hasn't materialised.

NCIS did better than last week but will be benched to make way for House next Monday (itself making way for Lie to Me on Wednesdays which is making way for a second NCIS on Tuesdays - confused yet!)

Interestingly in the US, House and Bones are stablemates from the Fox network (for many years House was Bones' lead-in) now they'll be up against each other.

Whatever Ten does they'll be hoping for an improvement with Good News Week, the skein just can't make it over the half million mark which is scary stuff. Probably doesn't help that there's so much real, bad news around at the moment to distract. Also the ABC's Q&A would attract a similar young, urban audience to GNW. It might be worth it to consider moving nights.

On digital both 7 and 10 can be pleased with strong performances from Neighbours, Supernatural, Heartbeat, Jonathan Creek and Family guy. Nine on the other hand had a shocker - the Alicia Silverstone movie (there's something you don't hear very often) Excess Baggage bombed not even polling in the top 50 digital shows, as a consequence Vampire Diaries suffered its lowest numbers since the start of the season. Nine needs an alternative to movies on a Monday because people don't have the patience or attention span for them on this night, maybe later in the week.

Tolerance

2011-02-21T02:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 20 February 2011

Lots going on last night with every network having a turn at a timeslot win (the Blue boxes) Particularly impressive was the performance of Miss Marple on the ABC as well as Modern Family on Ten (probably helped by a very funny promo this last week)

Digital went well for Nine and 7 with big numbers for The Big Bang Theory and Escape to the Country, but the best Eleven could muster was 115K for Everybody Loves Raymond, the rest of their night bombed.

How much longer are Ten going to tolerate Smallville pulling in less than 100K per outing? Even more disturbing - how long will they tolerate the lacklustre numbers from NCIS Los Angeles at 9.30 on the main channel.

The Shape of things to come

2011-02-19T02:03:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Interesting that Thursday nights in the US are also a fight between Grey's Anatomy and CSI, also interesting that just as in the states both show are hurtling towards irrelevance at a breakneck speed.

Still they're doing better than The Good Wife which the space of a year in looks like its on the way out or at least to a later time.

At the moment with Ten if it's not NCIS its not attracting viewers to 8.30. In fact across the networks' extensive roster of US dramas only the long established shows are doing the business. Bones, NCIS, Criminal Minds - all these shows are old and replacements like Blue Bloods, Parenthood and Hawaii Five-O are struggling in comparison.

This does not bode well for the future when these aging hits finally shuffle off to cable reruns.

Over on Digital personal favourite Star Trek - The Next Generation is struggling inder the weight of its woeful early episodes, best for 11 is again The Simpsons, 7 can be happy with The Next Karate Kid which almost doubled the audience of last week's Karate Kid III and The Big Bang Theory continues to shine on GO!

Irrational

2011-02-17T02:24:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Man people cannot get enough of My Kitchen Rules! The top rating show of the night, followed closely by Today Tonight at 6.30.

Let's have a look at the 6.30 timeslot. It has been shaken up this year by the arrival of channel 11 which has installed Neighbours at 6.30 making it the biggest draw on all the digital spectrum. The replacement Ten Evening News has hovered under 400,000 viewers since commencement, indeed its lead in - 6pm with George Negus attracted 421,000 viewers, its biggest audience in weeks, no doubt bolstered by a rerun of 6pm at 10.30pm weeknights.

But Ten's predicament is a long term change so don't expect things to take off too quickly there, over on channel Nine though a trend is forming with ACA, they seem to be hovering around the 900,000 mark, unable to climb over 1 million. Meanwhile the nearly identical Today Tonight has a clear margin over Nine's tabloid.

Having watched both Nine and Seven's shows in recent weeks I'm struggling to figure what Seven is doing that Nine is not. Its almost as if Seven has the same irrational lead in news that Nine used to enjoy back in their 90s heyday

I wonder if 887,000 is the kind of audience Nine was expecting for Farmer Wants a Wife - the incessant promotion would suggest otherwise, perhaps the concept (a rural rip-off of The Bachelor) may finally be put to rest.

Chopping Block

2011-02-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Packed to the Rafters was down somewhat week on week but still managed a cool 1.8 million which is more than anyone else.

The biggest week on week drop was Lie to Me which lost 412,000 viewers from last week's NCIS, next worst was Top Gear which last 147,000 viewers. Ben Elton dropped an unsavoury 71 grand week on week which puts his show squarely on the chopping block.

Best on Digital was again Neighbours which came 4th in its time slot with 383,000 viewers.

$#*!

2011-02-16T03:50:00.000-08:00

Monday, 14 February 2011

A lot of shows suffered week on week falls this week.

ABC News down 110,000 week on week, 7.30 Report down 150K, Australian Story down 207K
My Kitchen Rules on Seven was down 141K, Bones was down 154K
Two and a Half Men was down 196K while Shit My Dad Says was off a whopping 258K, Underbelly was down by the same amount.

Over on Ten they had the big superbowl episode of Glee which saw the show's audience increase by 361,000 viewers! This is an excellent result for Ten in the slot and proves perhaps that Ten should focus on the musical numbers in their promos, but unfortunately none of this increase helped the 8.30 show NCIS, which although improved upon Undercover Boss by 90,000 viewers was a waste of an episode given that 699,000 in a slot against two other million viewer shows is appalling.

What's more the switcheroo did nothing to bolster the audience for Good News Week which actually shrunk marginally week on week!

6 of one, half a dozen of the other

2011-02-14T04:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Now that we have so many new channels to choose from, counter-programming has never been more important. You need something to make your shows stand out from the pack. Its no good any more putting two sitcoms up against one another, you're diluting your potential audience.

Look at the public affairs shows, Sunday Night and 60 Minutes, they air in different timeslots and get roughly the same number of viewers - could you imagine if they were up against one another?

With that in mind, (and excuse my language) why on earth do we have this procedural cluster-fuck in the post 8.30 period. Bones, The Mentalist, NCIS, Castle, CSI, Hawaii Five-O, for all I care you could be describing the same damn show!

US drama relating to law enforcement, Self contained episodes, centering on Murder or serious criminal activity.

Individually any of these shows could clean up, but together they're fighting a pointless battle. While Bones keeps its head above a million, the performance of The Mentalist is kind of startling, and just when you think CSI Miami's 531,000 represents a new low point for 9.30 drama, along comes the much younger NCIS: LA to undercut it by 100,000 viewers.

Surely LA cannot last in this timeslot much longer and I suspect ten will swap it for something completely different (ie: a different genre) before Easter.

Also how much longer can Smallville last 8.30 Sundays on Channel 11 while drawing under 100K. That seemed to be the benchmark that got 90210 pulled on a Friday night. As a fan of Smallville it doesn't fill me with confidence for the show's future on Australian TV.

3 night weekend

2011-02-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 10 February 2011

Well that's just appalling, Thursday is clearly STILL the day where the younger audience deserts the TV in favour of the box office and (in some states) late night shopping.

It has been like this for years, but multichannelling and audience erosion from Foxtel, PVRs, Consoles and the Internet have made it look even worse in recent times.

Nothing after 6.30 even scraped a million viewers.

Looking at the shows themselves, Seven seems to be pitching for younger viewers with How I Met Your Mother and Grey's Anatomy and by an large they're succeeding with those two shows taking the top slots for 18-49 and 16-39. Nine and Ten appear to be tussling over the older viewers with their crime procedurals but there's a bigger similarity between the nets

Save for The Good Wife and RBT, all of these shows are incredibly long in the tooth

Lets look at the stats

The Biggest Loser: 6th Season
How I Met Your Mother: 6th Season
Desperate Housewives: 7th Season
Grey's Anatomy: 7th Season
CSI: 11th Season
Law & Order SVU: 12th Season
Getaway: 20th Season

See a pattern - Thursday's are the TV God's Waiting Room. Shows that for whatever reason are profitible enough to keep going yet no longer the kind of water cooler cool that sustains shows that typically air Sunday - Wednesday

Even digital checks out on a Thursday - and though I'm personally happy to see TNG and The Golden Girls back in prime time, it does point to a night that Free to Air television has largely given up on.

I've been saying for years that Thursday is the new Friday night, but this schedule confirms it. Welcome to the weekend!

My Kitchen Pwns

2011-02-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

I had no idea that My Kitchen Rules was supposed to be on 3 nights a week - but why not with ratings like this - the reality skein just goes from strength to strength taking out not only the Biggest Loser - knocking it under a million but also (incredibly) a new episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Big Bang's lead-out, Mike & Molly held up well considering the depressed lead-in and Farmer Wants a Wife actually improved on the figure slightly but Nine won't be happy with its performance.

Indeed given the amount of advanced promotion (an admittedly stupid promo though) that Farmer has received compared to Criminal Minds - they really got shafted.

Almost tying Farmer Wants a Wife for second in the slot was the new Adam Hill's show which posted a really good (for the ABC) 889K.

City Homicide will soon be drawing a chalk outline around itself with a woeful 663K but then again nothing at 9.30 did that well even the usually reliable RPA faltered with only 744,000.

On digital Neighbours was again the top show with 7TWO's British dramas and All New Simpsons rounding out the top five - look at how an all new Simpsons ep reduces the audience for Family Guy by 50,000 viewers!

Finally it's worth noting that Two and a Half Men lost 140,000 from ACA and came fourth in its slot behind the 7PM Project, Nine might have to start looking for a 7PM alternative which is not going to be easy.

Bad Parenting and other disasters

2011-02-09T01:39:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Well, while Underbelly on Mondays has tumbled down from its lofty heights, Seven's Packed to the Rafters continues to draw a massive crowd to the network with almost 2 million viewers stopping by for the season premiere. Even better for Seven was the halo effect the show had on My Kitchen Rules giving that show its best audience so far this year with 1.55 million folks.

And then there's 9.30...

Look its not all bad - on the surface Parenthood improved week on week in the slot by 90,000 viewers but when you look at the lead in almost 1.2 million people deserted Seven after Packed to Rafters, not bothering to stick around for the American drama.

I either expect Seven to swap it with another 9.30 our (Desperate Housewives or Brothers & Sisters) or slot in something new altogether but either way expect this to find a 10.30 home pretty quickly, a 60% drop from 8.30 to 9.30 is not sustainable on anyone's books, let alone from the number one show.

Still at least Seven's programmers can take comfort with the fact that they're not Nine's programmer's.

Nine's 9.30 show suffered a 51.5% audience drop from a much lower base (the overplayed 18-49 draw Top Gear) which resulted in a lower audience (455K) the difference though, between Parenthood and Ben Elton Live from Planet Earth,is Parenthood hasn't been relentlessly promoted all summer.

Ben Elton has, to the extent that there's been some sort of faux rivalry started up in the media between Elton's show and Adam Hill's new show with Media favourite Hills being pre-ordained the winner (as far as I know they're not even in direct competition)

Admittedly Nine's promo was remarkably opaque with no actual footage of the show (it reminded me of the advanced promotion of David Tench Tonight) but still an audience under 500,000 at 9.30 is woeful and this show might be headed for the chop if it doesn't pick up quickly.

Actually, yesterday, GNW got under half a million in its 9.30 slot. Maybe live comedy is out of vogue (even Your Gen is down in Audience numbers at 7.30) replaced with the resurgent American sitcom.

Bad News start to the Week

2011-02-08T01:55:00.000-08:00

Monday, 8 February 2011

Underbelly, now in it's fourth 'season' of sorts - though instead of an ongoing series they will be a series of telemovies - has gone from a showstopping audience to merely a great audience.

1.3 million is certainly nothing to sneeze at - but it stands to reason that without an ongoing epic narrative thread the series will struggle to emulate the high point of "Tale of Two Cities" the show's lauded second season.

My Kitchen Rules keeps up the heat with Seven getting the edge over Nine in the 7.30 hour - Nine's sitcoms are still holding well but Ten's Glee, and in fact all of Ten's lineup on Monday - is falling apart.

769,000 for a new episode of Glee is pretty woeful and Undercover Boss continuing its slide to the bottom the pile is nothing new - but a new episode of Good News Week coming BEHIND Q&A and not even managing half a million viewers is a cause for alarm

Ten, either get a better 8.30 lead in or swap it around with Boss - IMMEDIATELY - give it a fighting chance.

On Digital the top dog was Neighbours which seems to have been one gamble Ten has taken that is paying off. One wonders if either 7mate or Eleven would perform better on the night if one of them blinked - they're both hunting the young male audience on this night with the HD only 7mate coming out on top with Family Guy.

Five-O gets Boned, LA quakes

2011-02-07T02:49:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Well the 3 commercial majors had a decent night on Sunday with the best performers being the returning duo of Border Security & The Force which have stepped back to anchor a strong Sunday lineup for Seven.

Nine's Cricket kept them in the game for the night with 1.2 million viewers while the presence of Bones seemed to chip away at the audience for Hawaii Five-O which dropped 251,000 viewers week on week.

NCIS: LA meanwhile dropped 166K week on week to a much more precarious figure of just over half a million, about half of that audience were in the crucial 18-49 demographic which, whilst good, points to a show with an older audience and a declining one at that. I wonder whether Ten might move the show back behind NCIS Original in order to shore up its audience.

On Digital TV the big kahuna was again The Big Bang Theory, it was also the top demographic draw on digital with 201K 18-49 viewers. While the top rating movie (yes there are still Sundays movies if you have a HDTV! was "Dodgeball"

From Old and Bloated to Trim and Teriffic

2011-02-04T00:55:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 3 February 2011

The Biggest Loser is just going from strength to strength, 1.3 million viewers is outstanding for a show that last year looked shell shocked from being pushed to 7.30 to make room for the 7pm project.

A year ago Loser was struggling to break 900,000 viewers per outing. This year they've made the show leaner with 4 1 hour installments a week helping to shore up Ten's typically weaker back half of the week with older demographics.

Seven looks like it is using the night to play the demographic game putting the younger skewing Mother and Greys skeins as well as Desperate Housewives which for me is in that category: "Is that still on??"

Similarly why are the CSI shows still going? Surely they're played out by now. Nine skews old with these dramas and Getaway - the show that's so old it's forgotten half of it's length - ready to be picked up by RBT - a show with a premise that's simultaneously stupid and yet so brilliant you wonder why nobody thought of it before!

Nice to see Stargate and Star Trek the Next Generation doing well in their slots on Eleven - Australian TV needs all the sci-fi it can get.

Outside the primetime grid there's a lot of blog chatter about the performance of Ten's new newshour - 6pm and 6.30 News - which has dropped week on week from the mid 400's to the mid 300's - its way to early to call these shows either a failure or success, my sincere hope is Ten will succeed with this venture - their decision to deal themselves into the 6pm hour is the biggest shakeup that the TV schedule has had - and in the long run it will put their prime time schedule on an even footing.

A cyclone runs through it.

2011-02-03T01:58:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Last night primetime programming was suspended on Seven (and to a lesser extent Nine) for rolling coverage of Tropical Cyclone Yasi as it made its way through North Queensland.

Nine already had the Cricket commitment and Ten stuck to it's schedule (for the most part) and it paid off with an excellent debut for "Blue Bloods" the new Tom Selleck/Donnie Wahlberg police skein.

Today I've decided to only list the pecking order for 1st Second and Third and to largely leave the digital channels out of it because the digital figures are so close together and so reliant on demographics for advertising dollars that pecking order comparisons become meaningless.

Yes Heartbeat dominates whenever it's run, whilst 7mate's Sitcoms and The Simpsons do good work on Wednesdays, but they're all pandering to their own audiences and neither is very much in danger from the other.

But it's still interesting to see how much they're all getting. Indeed The Simpsons has taken a real beating on it's move to digital heaven, arguably the potential audience for everything goes down when you give people more choice - so the 200 thousand turning out for New Simpsons eps are the real die-hard fans, where as there's another tier who like the Simpsons but they'll catch it when its on and still another tier that watched it because it was the best thing on at the time, that third group no longer applies in the digital age - they have too many other choices.

For this reason I think when the analogue is totally switched off we will see the figures between the main channels and the digital channels even out a bit more as more people have the choice to watch something else.

Some Channels Do Ave Em

2011-02-02T02:59:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 1 February 2011

NCIS had an outstanding return last night giving Ten a leg up for the night. Viewers weren't as kind to the reruns though, Hawaii Five-O did okay for an encore but reruns of Top Gear and 20 to 01 on Nine really struggled.

On the digital front the Britcoms were once again unassailable. In a lot of ways 7TWO is eroding the ABC's audience. This is an audience that for decades knew if they wanted Britcoms they needed Auntie, sure Seven and Ten would have the occassional fling with the mother country but by and large the place to be was the ABC.

Now that 7TWO offers wall to wall British programming with pesky interruptions from docos or Australian Drama, fully one half of the ABC's post 8pm audience has up and deserted her for greener pastures.

Monday Night Boner

2011-02-01T02:28:00.000-08:00

Monday, 31 January 2011

That's more like it!

This time last week Glee could only manage 659,000 viewers this week the audience almost doubled with 6 shows after 7.30 pulling above 1 million.

My Kitchen Rules looks entrenched - not bad for a show which last year had a sense of the "me-too's" about it as Seven tried to emulate the success of Masterchef.

Bones continues to lock David Boreanaz into a boring procedural but still people watch it in droves.

In the 'stuff I'm watching' department - Shit My Dad Says (yes I swear by the original title!) had an encouraging start retaining most of it's lead in, in fact it's probably one of the best debut performances on the back of Two and Half Men that we've ever seen.

Like I said - sitcoms are back!

3rd place is no Loser

2011-02-01T02:12:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 30 January 2011

I think all three nets can be genuinely happy with their Sunday night this week. Well maybe not Seven, but the other two.

On the surface 1.3 million for Tennis looks great - but when you consider its the Men's Final - a match that has routinely pulled in 2 million viewers in years past you can see that Tennis has a slight problem.

Ten had an excellent Launch of their big new Sunday lineup with the constant promotion for The Biggest Loser and Hawaii Five-O paying off over the summer.

Modern Family meanwhile, confirms that Sitcoms are back in vogue with both eps pulling excellent numbers.

Apart from The Big Bang Theory on GO! there was nothing much happening on the netlets.

Splitting the difference

2011-01-31T03:47:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 27 January 2011

I'm not sure what Seven has planned for their Thursday nights, but so long as they manage to avoid breezy reality docos and headline US Dramas they should do fine.

Now there is an audience out there for these type of shows, on Thursday there was about 1.2 million folks eager to see them, the problem was they were split evenly between Nine and Ten whose schedules were eerily similar.

I wonder whether the audience for these series will increase as the season kicks in or if these shows are doomed to languish in each other's shadows - differentiation has never seemed so important as nowadays.

While were at it what is with Getaway becoming a half hour show - when did that happen?? They just can't get rid of it altogether can they!

And what was the ABC smoking? Lets see, "there's this show about a Vet, it's popular, has been on for 3 years it's called Bondi Vet, we have a show called Bionic Vet - lets put it DIRECTLY OPPOSITE."

Well done ABC, I know the ratings don't matter but those numbers are appalling for Aunty.

Aging Weapon 4

2011-01-31T03:24:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

Out of all the things going on Wednesday night - the most startling was - see if you can spot it...

That's right, Lethal Weapon 4, a 13 year old film starring Hollywood Persona Non Grata Mel Gibson found over 1.1 million viewers in an age where new release films routinely struggle to get half that.

There's hope yet for Mel even if Hollywood has turned their back on him. I myself am skeptical of the weird American double standard that sees Gibson sidelined while Chris Brown is making a comeback after punching a woman in the face.

Elsewhere the show that runs forever, Heartbeat (surely they must be in the 80s by now!) is the top digital draw while the heavily advertised Bob's Burgers has a mild debut with 120,000 viewers

Still being served

2011-01-30T02:48:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Tuesday night mostly belonged to Seven which at 8pm commanded some 1.3 million viewers across it's 3 channels.

Even though individually after 7pm no show pulled over 800,000 viewers there was still about 4 million metro people overall watching in the 7.30 hour, it just that they're now split over 15 channels rather than 5 like in the old days!

The netlets too are starting to have breakout performers, for a long time on GO! The Big Bang Theory has been the star performer on the network, whereas Family Guy and American Dad! are routinely the best on ground for 7mate. Eleven also has early breakout hits with The Simpsons and Neighbours but 7TWO's best of British mantra is paying dividends in total viewers, look t the ratings for Are You Being Served? A britcom from the 70s (and 80's - man alive it ran long enough!) that even had a sucessful repeat run on Ten back in 1992/93 has been ressurected on 7TWO with stunning results - proving the audience for these old shows is still around

Deciding on a Level of Success

2011-01-29T03:31:00.000-08:00

Monday, 24 January 2011

I remember a time when Sitcoms were an endangered species on Australian television, now they're everywhere - often in the same damn timeslot - look at the 7.30 hour - no less than 4 channels are competing for the same Audience: How I Met Your Mother, Glee, Two and a Half Men and Futurama. You'd have to think the audience for these shows is pretty interchangable, I wonder how many Monday's we'll see this before either Nine or Ten blinks. 789,000 for Two and a Half Men is pretty sad even in summer and demonstrates the diminishing returns of pumping this show to death and wider variety of alternatives on offer now.

One thing that stands out on examining the schedule is Seven's acumen in programming their second digital channel - 7TWO. 7TWO has been around for a while now but in the last year it has morphed into a repository of old skewing British fare. It gives them a clear point of difference from the more youth-appealing GO! and ensures there's always a crowd turning up to watch - look at the numbers, all three shows over 300,000 which I think I will nominate as the level for multichannel success.

Outta Control

2011-01-29T01:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday, 23 January 2011

I'm back folks!

I was never really gone, but I've had a busy year between welcoming a fantastic new member to my family, dealing with an increasingly hectic day-job and rediscovering my passion for Video Games which kept me away from the television for a good part of 2010.

What little TV I did watch was mostly via Foxtel so I lost touch with the world of Free to Air (FTA). But recently I'd begun to notice that FTA has done some catching up in the past year.

Two new channels (7mate and GEM) virtually sprang up out of nowhere and while there's a certain irony in 80's 4:3 reruns and Lifetime movies taking up valuable HD bandwidth - they still add to the variety and the main selling point of digital television.

Then we had ABC News 24, Launched in time for the snap election earlier this year - again taking up valuable High Definition real estate in a weird attempt to recover lost ground from Sky News which in 2010 had come into it's own with the outstanding Agenda and Paul Murray programs.

Finally this month we've seen the launch of 11, using the number (whoever at Ten got No's one and eleven reserved is a legend, far better than 72 or 23!) gives a sense of importance and more importantly the netlet's schedule is a huge throwback to the way Ten was back in the 90s, before the dark times, before Big Brother.

Back when I was still doing this blog on a regular basis I was covering the 3 commercial nets and the ABC, now look at it!

I've excluded SBS, the ABC netlets and OneHD (because it's a failure in my eyes) but even then - there's 9 channels - the colour scheme is getting a little crowded - so I'll appreciate any suggestions on how to present the chart going forward.

But here's the first new one anyway - the most striking thing about it is the number of shows under a million, almost everything. Sure it's still summer - but I suspect in the future anything above 800,000 viewers will be considered a rousing success!

AFL Monday Night game is a ratings dog

2010-05-11T03:20:00.000-07:00

Channel Seven had a shocker last night and you can put it down to 3 letters... A.F.L.

The Australian Football League is only popular in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory - that's one really big state, two smaller ones and two tiny ones, the other two really big states worship at the altar of Rugby League.

This creates a headache for the good folks in television - you see Television is a national business bu these sports are only successful in their home markets, despite the efforts of people to market the other code outside their home territories they largely go unnoticed.

The end result is that when the AFL is playing in Melbourne and Adelaide and Perth - the broadcaster has to find something else for the people in Sydney and Brisbane to watch.

This isn't a major problem on weekends, the AFL's natural primetime home is on Friday and Saturday nights, most nets just run movies on these nights so they can easily shuffle things around without disrupting their schedule in any great way, but lately the AFL has been encroaching on Monday nights eyeing off a prize of bigger licence fees in future rights negotiations for the promise of more prime-time matches.

Only problem with this is Monday nights. Despite the overall decline in TV viewership, Monday is no Friday or Saturday - the nets wheel out some of their biggest shows on this night, Nine with their big name comedies and dramas, Ten with Masterchef (well that every night I guess) and Good News Week and even Seven with their factuals and female-skewing soaps.

Last night Seven had the hot potato carrying a match between St Kilda and Carlton. Melbourne viewers missed out on The Zoo, Adelaide viewers lost Find My Family and nobody saw Desperate Housewives.

Arguably Seven showed a level of uncommon shrewdness by pre-empting Housewives and Brothers & Sisters, avoiding last year's idiotic situation where the south was several weeks behind the north on airdates, but the replacement, a rerun of the movie Knocked Up in Sydney and Brisbane got severely knocked around by the competition.

What's even worse is the performance of the AFL match itself - normally this kind of disruption is justified because the result in the southern states makes up for the low performance in the north - not this time - look at the numbers:

Melbourne Top Shows
1 Masterchef 541k
2 Nine News 494k
3 ACA 446k
4 TT 427k
5 Two and a Half Men 424k
6 Seven News 413k
7 Two and a Half Men (r) 393k
8 The Mentalist 385k
9 The Big Bang Theory 384k
10 AFL 371k

That's right 10th place for the night

The situation is worse in Adelaide where the top program, Masterchef, drew 208k, Good News Week came in at number 10 with 115,000, even the 7pm project polled better at 13th position with 100k leaving the AFL in 15th place with a low 88,000 viewers

In Perth it was compounded by not even being close to live - they pulled 82,000 and 21st place for the night beaten by tough competition like 6pm Simpsons, ABC News and Deal or no Deal!

Well here's my tip for Seven, Ten and any other potential rights holder - if another one of these Monday night games comes up, kick it Foxtel and stick to your regular schedule, the monday night game is a dog - and it's not worth the damage to your night.

Only

Erosion

2010-05-10T05:36:00.000-07:00

This time a year ago - Merlin was riding high as the big new hit drama with 1.3 million viewers providing a big lead-in to the brand new Masterchef.

A year later - Masterchef is riding higher than ever - but Merlin is in the gutter - kicked to the curb by Mike Munro and Nine's factuals.

Nine's idea of sticking their Customs program on Sunday nights at 6.30 is a genius move sapping the heat out of Border Security (although BS still does pretty well for what was a rerun) there was a time when these Nationalist Paranoia showcases polled 2 million an outing - but that was the old television, before multichannelling, abundant PAY TV and internet enabled everything!

Underbelly returned to good numbers but far short of their 2009 form, still it's in no danger of cancellation - but perhaps budget cuts on future seasons if the numbers continue to soften

If House were on Seven it would have shipped to 10.30 last year - if it were on Nine, we'd only see it at Summertime, because it's on Ten - they persist with the 9.30 timeslot because they have no 10.30 slots, have nothing to replace it (so they can't wait until summer) and their multichannel is an expensive experiment in sports programming that no-one watches.

Never mind the Vicar

2010-05-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's more appalling - the performance of Criminal Minds and The Amazing Race (both have seen better days) or the fact that reruns of ancient Britcom The Vicar of Dibley managed to fend off Nine's Getaway!

The tragedy is there are so many hilarious new entrants to annals of British comedy that get ignored by the commercial nets until the ABC or SBS make them into hits (you may remember the Vicar's lineage goes back to Saturday nights on the ABC)

Frankly by my estimation the shows that did well last night (a grand total of 3 of them) were well promoted as opposed to the non-existent promotion for other shows on the dial.

Fans of Glee will be happy to note the good ratings which represents Ten's first high-school hit since Dawson's Creek (yes - that long ago!)

No way to Garner viewers

2010-05-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

Saturdays, err, I mean Wednesdays are turning into a 3 horse race with Ten's Masterchef and Seven's The Pacific both flanking Nine's Hey Hey revival - although Hey Hey is softer now that viewers know they can always catch it next week, at least Nine has gotten out 2 hours over 1 million viewers, the rest of the night on seven was decidedly ordinary with the reality skeins at 7.30 being locked out by Masterchef and Criminal Minds being beaten by Nine's US version of another SBS hit - Who do you think you are.

Ten deserves a rap over the knuckles for wasting a decent lead in on a pathetic movie - I've never heard of PS I Love You but from my channel surfing the other night I determined that it involved Jennifer Garner which is your first indication of FAIL.

You might be looking at the chart and wondering why I have a picture of Eddie McGuire next to the EPIC FAIL for Deal or no Deal - well Andrew O'Keefe is currently having is arse handed to him by Eddie's Hot Seat and if this keeps up for the rest of the season we could see Seven packing up the suitcases.

Big Winners and Big Losers

2010-05-06T04:12:00.001-07:00

Expect Tuesday nights to follow this pattern for a while - Masterchef dominated - it's audience rose by about 60,000, Australia's Got Talent stayed level at 1.4 million and is one of Seven's strongest performers at the moment.

Top Gear took a hit down about 150,000 viewers week on week - Nine shouldn't lose heart so much - viewers know Masterchef and Talent are limited runs while Top Gear will be on year round (given that there are other episodes playing on GO! thoughout the week - 1.2 million is quite impressive!

The big losers were the 9.30 shows with the huge family audiences fleeing in droves after 9pm. The turnout for the 9.30 episodes of The Big Bang Theory was abysmal - I'd admire Nine for trying out sitcoms at 9.30 but is it worth using Big Bang as filler material just as the show has started to catch on - might be better wheeling out one of their other starters like Community (currently on GO!) and seeing what happens.

The big winner on the night was Bondi Rescue on 1.3 million viewers up from 1.1 the week before - a stellar improvement.

Mondayitis

2010-05-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

Masterchef is breathing new life in Ten's previously moribund 7pm project (966,000) - something that The Biggest Loser was unable to do.

The question is how many of these people are just waiting around for Masterchef to start - we saw similar spikes last year with Neighbours' figures as Masterchef's lead in (though nothing as consistent as 7pm's improvement it must be noted)

Worryingly there is no halo effect for Neighbours and even more worryingly no impact on Good News Week which was polling better in total people earlier in the season, still it won the timeslot in the 18-49 demographic which is Ten's major focus these days.

Still it's a world of difference to Seven stuck with Mondayitis will all of their post Home & Away shows coming down under the million mark - Home & Away is also underwhelming given that it's longest serving cast member just walked away with the Gold Logie the night before.

Nine keeps chugging along nicely with good numbers for all their primetime shows and the continuing good performance of Hot Seat and Nine News versus Seven's Deal or no Deal/Seven News combo.

Today also pulled off a close win against Sunrise 386,000 to 370,000 mostly due to people hoping to see a repeat performance of Karl Stefanovic's legendary post-logies stint last year - I know I was - and I was thouroughly dissappointed in his sobriety :(

We have nothing to fear from those Golden Statues

2010-05-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

The Logies were last night and this lumbering beast of Australian television took a real hit to the nads last night - not so much with it's low Audience - it's had audience lulls in the past - but moreso from the fact that it's competition was successful - it seems the likes of Masterchef, Bones and even Castle have very little to fear from the Logie Awards, they have in past years been an incredible spoiler - disrupting opposing programs by sapping away their audiences for the night of night - last night - devoted auds stuck with their favourites, hell Bones, Castle, The Good Wife, even Merlin (though not directly competing) were all up week on week free of the spectre of Underbelly and perhaps aided by colder weather on the eastern seaboard.

Hey Hey vs The Pacific

2010-04-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

The first contest between Hey Hey it's Saturday and Seven's miniseries the Pacific.

Seven Wins

The New Kath & Kim

2010-04-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

Fresh meat for Tuesday in the form of a new series of Australia's Got Talent - this time with Red Symonds and Tom Burlinson replaced with Kyle Sandilands and Bryan McFadden - and the result was actually quite impressive with almost 1.5 million tuning in - still that can't compete with the all conquering Top Gear which is the most impressive public to commercial transition since Kath & Kim went to Seven (how's that working out for seven anyway?)

The Hypnotist

2010-04-13T03:28:00.000-07:00

As much as Sunday night heralded the start of a tough new season, Monday seemed to pass by with networks asleep at the wheel! The Zoo get's 1.5million viewers!? The Zoo - now I didn't watch it but with a title like "Miracle at the Zoo" I'm betting they're talking about the Elephant recently born at Sydney's Taronga Zoo which vets beleived would be stillborn. Certainly there'd be some interest in that - but 1.5 million people! Wow, why bother spending money on a script or actors at all when you just poke around a zoo with a camera!

Meanwhile in other depressing trends the top show at 8.30 was a rerun of The Mentalist! A Rerun! Kudos to Nine for hitting on their own flavour of crack (not unlike the kind peddled by NCIS over at Ten) where people will suck up reruns on multiple nights and love every minute of it. I've not watched enough of this show to ascertain but perhaps in addition to a Mentalist Simon Baker is also some kind of hypnotist.

Granted if an ep of Star Trek the Next Generation comes on, I'd watch it even if I've seen it a hundred times, but that's a personal thing on a cult show - is the Mentalist like that for some people? Is it that good?

While Star Trek may not get the kind of ratings I think it deserves, at least there's still an audience out there for science fiction as evidenced by the timeslot win for CSI Miami

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Maximum Impact

2010-04-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know why it's taken channel Nine a full two years to realise that big audiences don't hit the box until after Easter, with Daylight Savings over and the weather getting colder, people have more time to spend in front of the TV.

This post Easter spike in viewers has been the case for years, but still TV networks have insisted on trotting out the big shows in February for the fear of others gaining a first mover advantage.

This year was no different, for some shows - but for some locally made big guns there's been an uncharacteristic and welcome restraint. Nine has held back the launch of Underbelly for after Easter with maximum impact - a 2.2 million strong audience shows none of the erosion suffered by other shows since last year.

Furthermore 2 months head start did nothing for the Good Wife, which (as the new kid in town) has the most fickle audience in Underbelly's (considerable) wake. Less fickle are the viewers of Bones who gave the show a healthy (and respectable) number against Nine's behometh.

Nine has also saved Sea Patrol and the revived Hey Hey it's Saturday for the post easter season, while Seven has a new series of Australia's Got Talent, it's big Miniseries "The Pacific" and is still holding back new seasons of City Homicide and Packed to the Rafters.

Ten hasn't changed a damn thing about their strategy and so far they are suffering because of it. Still everyone expects the sophomore season of Masterchef to do the business but from where I stand with their early evening in tatters, and post 9.30 slots filled with underperforming US shows - Masterchef is looking a lot like Big Brother did back in the day - an insanely popular yet solitary asset that Ten pours all their resources into at the expense of a well rounded schedule.

Incidentally EPIC FAIL of the night goes to House, Ten might wanna think about scheduling reruns in this slot for the next 11 weeks until Underbelly goes away, cuz at 568,000 viewers - they ain't competing.

Everyone's ABC (unless you're interested in politics)

2010-03-20T00:33:00.000-07:00

Right now it's Saturday night, the night of the SA and Tasmanian elections. Posting here from Victoria there is exactly one outlet to view coverage of this election - Sky News.

The ABC has four different channels which they could use, ABC3 is all kids programming and ABC1 and 2 are currently pandering to the nursing home demo, they would surely be covering these elections in their respective state markets - so why not show that coverage on ABC2 or even the HD channel?

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott has been carpet bombing the media for the past year about his ambition to create a 24 hour News Channel to compete with Sky news - but he can't even give people out of the state an opportunity to watch election night coverage on two very precarious and interesting contests?

The results of these elections will have national implications on the continuing viability of COAG, not to mention the affects on Kevin Rudd's mooted commonwealth takeover of state hospitals. It's not difficult to imagine that there would be people outside of SA and Tasmania interested in following the count.

Epic Fail Mr Scott, when a cable channel run on a shoestring budget does a better job than the well-funded ABC - you've got real problems.

It must be fucking bad!

2010-02-21T03:08:00.000-08:00

Well - not to be outdone by Wednesdays - Thursday night has seen only one show after 7pm attract the magic million, Cougar Town, which was the subject of a bizarre non-sequiter rant from Seven CEO David Leckie during the week, delivered the good despite the abuse! Looks like Seven has another sitcom hit on their hands.

SVU must have suffered from being pushed back to 9pm (although it's not like people were watching anything else - so maybe they went to bed!) Similarly Medium took a hit for following so late - Ten might do better to start their news at 10pm rather than try to kick off a drama from that point.

Meanwhile the only thing continuing to make the creaking old Getaway look good is the shoddy performance of The White Room, Lets face facts here - if over 250,000 Home and Away watchers are compelled to avoid it - it must be fucking bad!

Surprise Erosion!

2010-02-21T02:46:00.000-08:00

One of the features of television ratings in the past couple of season in this country has been the rapid audience erosion on Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays were always TV dead zones, where the only people watching seemed to be in their 60s and over (judging by the schedule)

Now we all know that there's a fair stay at home crowd in the 30-40 age range - these are the people with young families who might be home some of the saturdays - but generally these people are harder to pin down and these days with Cable, DVD rentals, the internet and video games there are far more options for this age group - so the networks don't bother to try to cater to young people on these nights.

But in the last few years the audience has been eroding on Thursdays as well. Starting around 2008 we saw drastic drops in Thursday audiences with the only successful shows being cop dramas and 20to1, it was like the people meter population was all on Thursday night shopping which would make sense except a lot of states do it on a Friday night!

Whatever the reason - I didn't see this coming - but for the second week running we have really low figures on a Wednesday night.

Only 4 shows after 7.30 made it past a million, the number one show for the night was a measley 1.28 million viewers (Customs) and former million raters Cold Case and Gang of Oz struggled to keep their shit together in prime time slots - and I don't even know what's going on with Burn Notice - egad!

Restoration

2010-02-19T04:03:00.000-08:00

If nothing else we now have rock solid proof that there are people who will not watch something, even if it may interest them, for the simple reason that appears on SBS.

There's at least 600,000 of these people in the 5 major metro areas according to Oztam!

Top Gear certainly performed well in it's new digs on Channel Nine, if Nine can keep up the interest it will go a long way to restoring a night which for them has been one disaster after another in recent years.

Though it had a strong debut, its 8.30 hour was bested by NCIS on Ten which demonstrated that despite the network's woes there are still some things on the channel people watch regardless of the lead in!

There is some concern over the performance of NCIS Los Angeles at 9.30 but as this was a rerun it's probably a very good result, much more concerning is Grey's Anatomy on Seven which collapsed under the weight of NCIS and Top Gear (I guess men managed to west control of the remotes on Tuesday night!) to burn two new eps to under 900,000 viewers is not a good sign for this show, though I'd be interested to see the timeshifting figures for these eps - and we'll come back to them next week when they become available.

The 7pm Project: Not Bad Enough

2010-02-19T03:19:00.000-08:00

Woah, My Kitchen Rules has very quickly gone from rip-off suspect to hit in a short space of time. Monday's figure of 1.47 million is the show's biggest aud so far and the first time it has won the 7.30 half hour.

It seems more people would rather be eating food than going without it, because while Seven was feasting on people meters, fifth season veteran the Biggest Loser was starving for attention, dropping to a woeful 678,000 viewers, which I'm pretty certain is an all time series low (or at least very close to it).

Alarm bells should ringing at channel ten right about now because the abject failure of the 7pm project is dragging down one of their flagship shows.

A few weeks ago I was of the belief that ten would stick with 7pm in the hopes that the Masterchef juggernaut would revive it when it rolled into town - but now that Seven has offered viewers an alternative to the cooking comp, they may just drop ten's show like a hot potato - especially given that 7pm seems to be doing its level best to drive viewers away.

So what's wrong with the 7pm project? Well, there are all sorts of nitpicky reasons floating around on the net like the short unsatisfying segments or people's personal dislike of certain cast members (Hughes and Pickering in particular are polarising figures) but the show is genuinely different to its immediate competition and it's not a bad way to pass a half hour, indeed the effort made to draw in mature viewers with guests like George Negus and Andrew Bolt has to be applauded, so why is the show losing steam?

Well, strip shows are not appointment television per se, they are habitual television, what other explanation is there for perfectly sane, reasonable adults watching night after night of Home & Away or A Current Affair, it's their habit, like smoking.

I'm of the opinion that habits have to be bad for you, they're a ritual self abuse, smoking, drinking, swearing - these are all damaging activities, we all know better, but we do these things in spite of ourselves.

It might be a better practice to watch PBS Newshour in the afternoon and wash it down with Lateline at 10.30 but where's the fun in that - where's the insidiously cynical plotting and bad dialogue? (Home and Away) Where's the chance to gawk at a celebrity satirising the worst aspects of his personality? (Two and a Half Men) Where's the shonky snake oil salesmen, biggest bra sizes and simmering (yet manufactured) outrage?

7pm, put simply, has no guilty pleasures, it's not stupid, or embarrassing, there's no exposes or puffed up self importance, there not even snark - most of the jokes are delivered in a PC good-natured fashion.

It's earnest, and that's not a good quality for TV, maybe kids TV, but then no-one ever got hooked on Totally Wild...

A moment in the sun

2010-02-18T23:17:00.000-08:00

Sunday nights are shaping up to be a real scrap with the return of Seven’s Factual Skeins giving them the edge over Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation which dropped a whopping 19% week on week.

It isn’t being helped by Biggest Loser which fell 13% week on week. With this continuing decline as the young audience breaks off to watch anything but analogue FTA the viability of this show has surely got to be called into question.

Still – it’s one of the few reality shows I can think of that has a video game out at the moment – so it’s not all bad!

So help me – I am not making this up!

Bones got the edge over The Good Wife thanks to its superior lead in coupled with a natural erosion of the sampling audience. Similarly it was close between Castle and House.

Nine would be happy with the performance of its Cricket and Olympics coverage, this is like a moment in the sun for sports on TV because as the year wears on and the country splits in two over their football preference the audience sizes will start to look more and more pathetic.

Fresh funny skeins not stale old laughs

2010-02-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

Well this is something new - we're in ratings on a Thursday night and not one show cracks the million mark! In fact not one cracked the 900,000 mark. There were viewers aplenty at 8.30 to watch Seven's sitcoms and SVU on Ten, so what's the go at 7.30.

I can see that the bad press and unsettled timeslot are working against Biggest Loser, I can also see that The White Room (for which I have not seen any promotion) might tank on the basis of being an unknown quantity, but what is going on with Getaway!?

I dare not get my hopes up that this mouldy cheap old Saturday Afternoon snorefest which has been keeping good alternative off Nine's Thursday sked for 18 years now might actually be ready to shuffle off, if only.

Overall channel Nine was very weak last night, the performance of 20 to 1 was remarkably weak last night - it's clear that given the choice of some guaranteed fresh laughs, people will chose that over the stale old clip show.

Even more encouraging was that the value of Thank God You're Here reruns has plummeted with the onetime megahit pulling a pretty average 700,000 in repeat. That show was overrated even when it was a hit.

At least you have Steve Leibmann

2010-02-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was a curiously low-viewing night across all the channels with only the bafflingly popular Customs and the milquetoast Spick & Specks making any real impression on the people meters.

The popularity of Customs was perhaps helped along by yesterday’s news story about Australia’s international terminals installing those nude scanners by next year

Only a few nights into the season and already I can see a trend emerging and a problem for programmers to solve.

Young viewers are mostly gone, at least large numbers of them are using the DVR or the internet or watching cable and the digital channels (Lost’s final season premiere was top of the digital pops last night with 216,000 viewers).

The ones that are left are spread so thinly that even youth magnets like So You Think You Can Prance are finding it hard to keep a million people in front of the box for two hours.

In their place the nets are trying to pitch to older viewers, notice how almost the hot young-skewing properties on Seven and Nine have made their way to 7TWO and GO! while people stuck with analogue TV feast on a morbid diet of docu-soaps and cop shows.

Now we have the situation where two cop shows can’t exist in the same space – look at the 8.30 aud for Cold Case, a veteran show for Nine was smothered in fourth place, suffocated by the more agile Criminal Minds – itself headed for veteran status in it’s fifth season and struggling to maintain a healthy figure.

The low, low audience for sophomore doco Gangs of Oz might suggest that people are starting to tire of this real crime stuff – seriously anyone who is way into this has an entire cable channel along with numerous shows on other channels to sift through day after day – Gangs has to be pretty special to make its mark and the problem is – it has no real hook – Crime Investigation Australia the CI series which is rerun on Nine at least has Steve Leibmann.

Whatever we're watching - It's just not cricket

2010-02-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

Tuesdays are another night I'll be watching with interest as Nine attempts to shake up Seven and Ten's duopoly on the night. Frankly Top Gear can't come soon enough as people seem to abandon cricket when presented with more exciting options.

Indeed both Biggest Loser and My Kitchen Rules were up 200,000 viewers a piece on the previous night, while the return of NCIS absolutely thumped channel Nine. NCIS LA - though a rerun - did not fare as well, though the 800,000 seems pretty standard for a 9.30 rerun.

While I'm talking about that - 9.30 reruns seem to be all the rage at the moment, Nine is rerunning The Mentalist 9.30 Monday and Thursday, Seven is rerunning Thank God You're Here 9.30 Thursday, perhaps with the 9.30 slot's diminishing returns we will see the advent of American style 2 Hour primetime schedules.

I hope not.

Lose some weight

2010-02-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

Monday nights have been in place for two weeks now and there were very few changes, Nine’s Monday comedies came off a little from their premiere figures, Big Bang was beaten in its slot by Australian Story.

The 7pm Project was up slightly, but disastrously The Biggest Loser went down by 17% the biggest drop on the night.

Without following TBL this year I can’t say if the drop is due to the content of the show, perhaps it’s the target audience, a lot of whom would also be amenable to watching Seven’s My Kitchen Rules which only airs twice a week to Loser’s six times!

I don’t know about you but if I were an avid reality viewer with limited time on my hands I might splice it between the two shows.

The moral of this story is – now that it’s at 7.30 – The Biggest Loser could possibly stand to lose some weight!

Of course the greater moral could be to move it back to 7pm where it will enjoy a greater install base and therefore better ratings.

Of course – that opens up the final half of the year problem, but so far 7pm isn’t proving to be the solution!

Stacks On!

2010-02-08T20:46:00.001-08:00

Sundays are the it day again, last year the advent of Masterchef and (more importantly) Sunday Night proved that 60 minutes was no longer the immovable object it once was.

To respond to this new paradigm Seven and Ten are piling on Sunday nights with some of their biggest shows, although Seven big early evening hitters won’t be back until next week, Ten debuted a new lineup with last year’s breakout hit Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and the new, heavily hyped US drama, The Good Wife.

While Generation came up against stiff competition, the Good Wife, and House came up trumps giving Ten solid ratings to boast about.

Nine is currently rumoured to be brining Underbelly into the Sunday night fray either after the Winter Olympics or after Easter, it should be a game changer if it can repeat last year’s performance on a bigger night, but more importantly will it restore some sheen (and perhaps relevance) to its lead-in 60 minutes?

The 7pm Reject

2010-02-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

You know how I could tell that I'd barely watched any free to air TV over the summer - I was genuinely shocked to come across Grey's Anatomy last night! Seven's decision to bring this to Tuesdays seems to be a good one as the series struggled to get attention on the older skewing Thursday night.

Ten meanwhile continues to sink, the 7pm project barely scraped past half a million viewers, you'd wonder how far Ten's "commitment" to this show extends. Despite being the only fresh material in its timeslot over summer it actually went backwards and a general lift in audiences hasn't helped at all.

7pms performance seems to be affecting not only Neighbours before it but the Biggest Loser afterward. Although Loser has always performed better after 7.30 than before - this year it seems to be struggling and given its start time against varied competition, viewers may find it easier to opt out in deference to other 7.30 shows, that if they'd started watching at 7pm.

Unfortunate Reality

2010-02-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

After opening on Sunday night with a quite respectable 1.1 million viewers the Biggest Loser plummeted on its second outing falling more than 300,000 viewers in the process.

While it certainly wasn't helped by its lead in the anaemic 7pm Project (674,000 viewers and a distant fourth) a bigger problem may be the controversy surrounding one of the contestants who is up on some very unsavoury criminal charges, subsequently that contestant has had to be excised from the show in the editing room which is reportedly causing all sorts of headaches for viewers trying to follow a narrative jumping around more than your garden variety Tarantino film.

Ten just can't take a trick with their reality shows of late, last year's public lynching of Kyle Sandilands completely sucked the oxygen out of Australian Idol, now this story which is just off putting and unfortunate - what's next? Maybe a Masterchef contestant turns out to be a cannibal!!

Speaking of Masterchef, Seven's cash-in-o-rama had an uninspired sampling given the amount of promotion the show has gotten over summer, perception is working against them with this show - it feels like it's ripping of masterchef and it feels like it's ripping of My Restaurant Rules, still it did better than Loser so it could turn out very nicely for Seven.

Nine meanwhile steamrolled everyone else with their comedies and (lo and behold) a consistently programmed hour of The Mentalist all timeslot winners!