Kitchen Dramas

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.

Fake Hair is preferrable to Hot Hair

That's one of the many conclusions I can draw from last night's ratings where 20 to 01 trounced Australian Idol. I wonder (aloud) whether Idol is still profitable with a million viewers and 16-39 wins only - it seems to be on the decline - Mathison's departure and Sandilands' exit haven't helped it much and there's little to no buzz about the show at the moment.

20 to 01 meanwhile is a show that is totally reliant on it's competition if it's up against two good shows there's no hope, but if there's a weakness, a gap somewhere - it just soaks up the remaining audience - such is it's watchability.

Whether you're watching to catch the seams in Bert's hairpiece or trying to guess how they'll work a Heath Ledger reference in this week - you know it's easy entertainment - TV junk food as it were.

Elsewhere Nine has problems at 9.30 - I have no idea why, surely with a choice of All Saints and NCIS there's an under-served audience somewhere in there - whoever they are aren't willing to commit 2 hours on a weeknight to a rerun movie. Honestly aside from the odd Friday/Saturday movie I cannot think of any other night suited to two hours viewing of anything - there's so much 'else' to do, internet, videogames, hell even sleep! Speaking of which...

Leading in to something

You know, this year I'm becoming increasingly convinced that lead-ins mean next to nothing and two things bear that out on last night's ratings

The New Adventures of Old Christine
Nine decided, finally, to wheel this show out for another go behind yet another episode of Two and a Half Men (surely people have seen them that many times now they're burned onto the inside of their retinas at this stage!)

A crowd of over 1 million sat through an hour of Two and a Half Men and then promptly left! Having not seen the particular episode to judge, I can however say that Christine is a slow burn type of show which takes some viewing to get into - but is Nine going to have any patience when this show posted a figure 17% worse than the previous one week wonder Dance Your Ass Off!

That one show sent the rest of Nine's night down the proverbial - with even the resilient 20 to 01 buckling under pressure (and a timeslot change).

Talkin Bout Your Generation
Week on Week the 7pm project dropped 26.75% yet Generation actually rose 2% with 1.6 million.

Lead-ins are less of a factor than ever before and the audience is less patient and more fickle than ever!

A 20 to 01 shot

Thursday 4 June 2009

Biggest Disappointments
Mask & Memory
ABC 9.30pm down on Q&A by 38.58%

Sunrise
Seven Early Morning down Week on Week by 12.21%

Biggest Improvements
Rules of Engagement
Ten 8pm up 50.96% on Worst Week

Medium
Ten 9.30pm up 23.89% week on week

Well here something encouraging – another sitcom it starting to connect with the public and lo and behold it’s one them old timey laugh track shows!

Rules of Engagement, currently in it’s 3rd season (if it doesn’t feel that old that’s because all of it’s seasons have been shortened due to the dearth of available half hour timeslots on CBS and ten only debuted the show in 2008 anyway) is starting to take off achieving some of it’s highest ratings yet.

While still 3rd in the 7.30 hour the removal of the also-ran Worst Week has turned Rules into a viable competitor

Now that that’s’s sorted and Medium is lifting Thursday nights are starting to become a close-run affair, even Criminal Intent lifted its game with a 20.58% increase week on week.

It’s also the only night of the week right now where Nine has any sort of dominance, the Footy Show is on a hot streak in the southern markets right now with 687,000 tuning in to the AFL vs 375,000 rugby league tragics.

Meanwhile my hat is off to 20 to 01, back in 2006 (the show’s second season) people were wondering whether Nine could sustain the series beyond it’s initial 7 episodes but lo an behold there have been 87 episodes (yet 87) since then and the show is still going strong! Kudos!

Weight gained is viewers lost

Thursday 21 May 2009
Nine dominated prime-time last night with what is possibly the dullest, cheapest lineup in all of prime time, a travel show, a clip show and a football themed talk show – this is what attracts the viewers on a Thursday night folks.

Seven won the battle of the imports with Private Practice improving a healthy 67,000 week on week and giving Seven some hope that the show (which looked pretty screwed only a few weeks back) has a future.

No doubt they’re all being helped out by Criminal Intent, last night’s Vincent D’Onofrio episode lost 82,000 on the previous week’s Jeff Goldblum instalment, I have a theory, and it’s a crackpot theory, that the Goren episodes are actually turning viewers off because of the actor’s very noticeable weight gain. I don’t know, well see where this goes, but viewers seem to be cooling on this show, just a little!

Abusing the fans

Thursday 7 May 2009
Lots of big changes on the Ten sked last night and not the same level of success.

Rules of Engagement, a sitcom which has had two curtailed seasons (it was a midseason launch then ran head on into the WGA Writer’s Strike) returned to less than spectacular numbers allowing Nine and Seven to divide the hour amongst themselves with Bondi Vet falling away on the back of a poor lead-in.

Criminal Intent returned to SVU like ratings, but beaten handsomely by a 20 to 01 rerun, the 8.30pm hour was hotly contested last night with 4,322,000 people tuned in across the hour, the ABC benefiting from a retrospective special on Media Watch, a 15 minutes a week that tabloid journalists dread and a show whose attention from the news media is inversely proportional to its miniscule running time! The special pulled 911,000 viewers, one of Aunty’s best performances in this slot all year.

Medium moved nights to Thursdays, dropping from last week’s occupant (an SVU rerun) by 154,000 viewers but improving on Life on Mars’ sliding ratings and improving on its own ratings which were stuck under 700,000 on a low viewing Friday night. After last night there are 7 episodes left in the current season, after which they could virtually rerun the show in this slot for the rest of the year and it would probably produce a similar, if not better, number.

Medium’s debut adversely affected Private Practice. Last night I actually sat through an episode of Grey’s Anatomy to see whether I was missing anything (and no I wasn’t) but a new disturbing trick I noticed was that Grey’s Anatomy faded to black (no logo, or EP credit or anything) and then bang, right onto Private Practice, there was no promo for next week’s episode just a jarring jump to the next show.

To whoever is in charge of playout at the Seven network – this is abuse of the fans of this show – and I hasten to add, I am not one of them, but if my favourite show ended on a dramatic note and I didn’t get that space of the credits, or a promo to decompress and reflect on what I just saw, well that’s just low.

I get accelerated flow, In fact I’m a big fan of the kind of accelerated flow that American Networks practiced in the 90’s, back then the credits were all uniform (and yes off to one side, but legible) a promo for a related show would play and then you’d get a quick bumper to flag the next program, none of this jumping straight onto the next show – that is just arse.

So faceless Seven executive, just think about what you’re doing, by denying Grey’s Anatomy fans their show as a whole, you’re not only turning them away but you’re also hurting the prospects of the show you’re trying to promote, just look at the ratings (especially for Private Practice) it isn’t working!

Finally congrats to the AFL Footy Show had a big victory at 9.30 mostly thanks to some sort of heavily publicised stunt where Sam Newman got tarred and feathered! Meanwhile one of the stars of the NRL version seems to had serious allegations made against them to be aired at a future date on Four Corners – would somebody just can the Rugby League version already!

Joy in Repetition

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

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

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

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

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

Note to Nine: Viewers are not idiots

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

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

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

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

Thursday 19 March 2009

Just a quick post - Life on Mars continues to slip down 28 grand while it's lead in SVU was up 44 grand and pulled off a timeslot win against a much weaker 20 to 01 (down a massive 176,000 viewers)

The other thing to note is Bondi Vet, up into safe territory with 962,000 viewers (up 56,000 week on week) and not at the expense of other shows either with all 7.30 skeins up on last week. Perhaps there is a place at ten for dull factual shows after all!

Mars Attacks - Thursday 5 February 2009

If there is one trend emerging from this week it is the slow disintegration of channel Nine. Back in the 1990s the once market leader had the strongest early evening lineup (Nine News and A Current Affair used to dominate the 6 o’clock hour) and the strongest late night (awash with young male skewing fare like the Star Trek skeins, Walker Texas Ranger and Renegade), this early and late night superiority meant that whatever Seven threw at them in prime time didn’t matter - they would still prevail in the 6pm – 12pm ratings battle.

So much of Nine’s strength at the edges has been diminished by costs cuts and poor programming decisions, their news lead in is pitiful and their news service is on the skids, their post 10.30 programming is no better, now confined to doco series better suited to cable and haphazard scheduling, Nightline is gone – a victim of cost cutting and erratic scheduling.

Contrast this to Seven. Since the start of this decade Seven have focussed on using their 10.30 timeslot to bring younger skewing shows to the fore – making late night television also appointment television, their early evenings are now a dominant force, bolstered by Deal or no Deal – a game show whose appeal escapes me but the numbers speak for themselves. Home & Away – their 7pm skein – continually reinvents itself year after year, picking up new viewers almost as fast as it loses old ones.

Over on Ten they are a mixed bag – their early evening schedule is targeted to young people (much like seven’s late night) in order to avoid direct competition with the news, but moves Ten has made in the past two decades have affected both Seven and Nine for better and worse.

Ten moving their news from 6 to 5pm was an immediate benefit to 9 and 10, giving Nine a dominating control over the slot and Ten breathing space to transform their news brand, at the same time their 10.30 news bulletin established a new paradigm as a late night news war erupted in the mid 90s – with Ten the only network able to guarantee a consistent starting time they saw off their competitors, first Seven, who turned to underrated series at 10.30pm (undercutting Nine’s 11pm series start time), Eventually Nine succumbed as well, first shunting Nightline to later (at 11.30 or even Midnight) and eventually axing it altogether – weakening their news brand.

Ten’s moves at 7pm have also been the catalyst for problems at Nine – the old setup in the 90s used to be Soap on Seven, Game Show on Nine and Sitcom Reruns on Ten – as a consequence Ten would rarely win – their innovative move in 2001 with nightly reality series Big Brother threw the game wide open – taking viewers from both their rivals and forcing Nine into Sitcoms at 7, now this year Nine will try a stripped reality show at 7pm, something which I never could’ve seen them doing in years!

This week it is Nine’s lack of early evening strength which seems to be hurting them the most in the ratings – for the fourth night in a row they came third behind Seven and Ten, their only successes last night were Celebrity Singing Bee, a limited run placeholder for aging travelogue Getaway and Adult Only 20 to 01, which many commentators view as a desperate attempt to lure an audience. Their scheduling of Kitchen Nightmares was a disaster – you can officially put anything with Gordon Ramsay in a file market ‘Late Night and Cable ONLY’ don’t expect it to remain there next week.

Seven on the other hand did well, even if it’s prime time shows tanked – they still could have won the night on the basis of their early evening and late night (a resurgent Scrubs) alone. Lucky for them their primetime also performed with Ghost Whisperer winning in total people and Grey’s Anatomy winning in 18-49s.

Ten also had a good night – it Biggest Loser ratings were up on Wednesday’s numbers and will probably fluctuate given the night, Bondi Vet however had a poor start posting an underwhelming total. Nothing Ten sticks in this post-loser slot seems to work all that well, factual series are not a natural fit for Ten, somehow they’ve gotten away with Bondi Rescue – but a show about a vet? Last year Seven screened no less that 3 factual shows devoted to Animals, they have that market cornered – I’ll be interested to see whether this experiment rises or falls in the coming weeks.

On the other hand – Law & Order SVU and Life on Mars performed excellently taking the shine off Seven’s night and adding some colour to a line up usually controlled by Wolf Films. Expect Life on Mars to rise next week when its main competition is the Lifetime reject series Private Practice.

Primetime Preview: Thursdays

7.30 - 8.30
Ghost Whisperer vs The Celebrity Singing Bee (later Getaway) vs The Biggest Loser/Bondi Vet

Hmmm, a lot of new in this hour - its been years since Ghost Whisperer occupied a 7.30 slot, the show has a solid following that seems to follow it all over the dialso it should do well.

The Singing Bee has appeal and has been primed by Ten's summer skein Don't Forget the Lyrics laying the ground for some success - but rumour suggests that Getaway will make a quick return to this timeslot which will equal disaster for Nine, the show is on its way out.

The wild card is Bondi Vet, for two years running Ten has extended their Thursday Biggest Loser which has always done well, but invariably the show following it (Jamie Oliver in the second season, Saving Kids in the third) has washed out, that could change though with Ten's Bondi Fetish growing another factual, plus rescuing animals seems to be all the rage over on Seven - so it could work.

The Hot Tip...
The Biggest Loser will win it's slot - then the rest depends on the appeal of a vet, expect both Ghost Whisperer and Singing Bee to do well, but once Getaway returns Nine will sink.


8.30 - 9.30
Grey's Anatomy vs Adults Only 20 to 01 vs Law & Order Special Victims Unit

Seven move Grey's Anatomy to it's US equivalent slot in order to build up a night which has faltered for them in recent years, it will easily retain 100% of its ghostly lead in, the test will be whether it brings any absent viewers back to Thursday night, which has increasingly been eroded in a cycle of low viewers and old skewing programs.

Ten has the ever strong Law & Order which has a mortgage on this slot. For those wondering why Ten has chosen to run with SVU rather than last year's suprise revival Criminal Intent, the answer lies in behind the scenes problems with Criminal Intent which has delayed production of half of the 16 episodes which may not premiere in the US until their summer, so SVU it is.

Nine meanwhile has zagged while the others zigged with Adults Only 20 to 01 - no word on how permanent that will be - perhaps its only a special but we just don't know. There's something to be said for a revival of the bawdy tits n' ass channel Nine I knew back in the early 90's, back when every movie promo had a minimum amount of female nudity and their idea of compelling drama was Chances!

The Hot Tip...
I expect Grey's Anatomy to post some big numbers upon its return but these will eventually decline to level off with the stable SVU, I'm only basing this on declining US ratings and suggestions of a preposterous 'ghost sex' storyline which will probably succeed in driving away non sci-fi viewers.


9.30 - 10.30
Private Practice vs Kitchen Nightmares vs Life on Mars

If you've been within 300 metres of a television this summer you no doubt will have seen promotion of Life on Mars, a US version of a british show about a time travelling cop, Ten have even wheeled out their old 70s logo for the promo which suggests they see a future with this one

Seven meanwhile is following logic by skedding the Grey's Anatomy spinoff after the parent show - that sounds like a good idea because in stray viewing last year I couldn't see much to distinguish Private Practice from any other estrogen-fest on TV, be it Strong Medicine, Judging Amy or whatever, the logo in the corner says Seven but my head screams W.

Nine has decided to retry Gordon Ramsay - after completely botching his re-entry late last year with scant promotion they look set to do it again this year. When you pour over the ratings figures for 2008 the top Ramsay show was consistently the US Kitchen Nightmares, when they came back with new eps of same show they failed to promote it - instead running weeks of Hell Kitchen promos before fronting up with Kitchen Nightmares and not alerting anybody - just bizzare.

The 9.30 timeslot is a no-brainer - Nine got a rap over the knucles from ACMA for excessive uncensored broadcasting of the f-word (that's "fuck" for those keeping score at home) in an M rated hour so moving it back lets them classify it MA but it also creates a weird problem - what if its a success and in four or so weeks The Footy Show comes back?

Kind of summarises Nine's entire Thursday sked - no long term thinking here...

The Hot Tip...
Ramsay could always surprise but I'll be darned if Life on Mars doesn't storm all over the slot.

Ten's Answer = More Tyra - Sunday 4 January 2009

Hey everyone

Even though the networks are still asleep at the wheel it’s time to get back into the fray and bring forth some ratings analysis – the first for this bright shiny new year and what can we see…

Ah yes – people like Cricket! Very good, good stuff people. After some middling ratings for the earlier test outings, Cricket seemed to get it’s game on yesterday with a gargantuan daytime audience of 1.1 million, even The Cricket Show a half hour time filler (they used to play sitcom reruns in that lunch break when I was a kid!) did spectacular business. All of this crickety goodness help Nine News to the No. 1 spot on the ladder last night

Seven News was still impressive though – given it’s lead in was the embarrassingly titled “Does My Bum Look Big?”

Seven got another big shot in with their reality shows, but the Rich List lost 100,000 viewers from lead in Hot Property and while it didn’t do badly (channel ten would kill for that number) – it was not a very confident performance from Seven’s perspective.

Channel Ten is in distress – I’m not sure how they’re keeping the lights on over there this summer because there’s an awful lot of PSA’s taking up commercial breaks on that channel right now which is a sad situation.

Don’t Forget The Lyrics seems to be a show that’s very dependant on it’s lead in, ie: you’re not going to seek this show out, it’s not appointment television the way that you will make a point to catch The Big Bang Theory, rather it’s the kind of show that you’ll watch if its on when you’re watching.

This is bad news if your lead in is the centre of the known universe: Tyra Banks. Tyra’s modelling quest now has less viewers on free to air than it does on Cable (the series’ weekly reach on Foxtel is 831,000 viewers) So what does ten decide to do? Axe the series you say? No – they’re adding another hour! This time 7.30 Mondays to replace the failed How to Look Naked.

Whilst I’m happy they’ve taken out that particular low rater – why replace it with another one. Of course this time tomorrow I could be eating my words and Model could be a big hit back on Mondays – but don’t hold your breath…

Cricket = Nine's Friend - Sunday 30 November 2008

Nine can be pleased with the first night of summer – the lead-in from cricket gave the early part of their night a nice lift over their rivals.

20 to 01 again proved the timeslot king, that is until summer stalwart Hot Property bowed at 7pm giving Seven a boost and further embarrassing Jamie Durie who once again came up short.

I expect 20 to 01 to lift next week as Thank God You’re Here bows out and comedy watchers are left with one remaining option, notwithstanding the unintentional comedy of Tyra Banks’ inflated ego.

Given the paltry lead-in you would think that Don’t Forget the Lyrics did alright to get to 830,000 but you’d be wrong, out of all the 7.30 shows on commercial nets Ten actually had the least increase with only 87,000 added, whilst Seven added 131,000 and Two and Half Men drew an extra 166,000 to the set.

I remember a long time ago when Nine had a mega hit sitcom in the form of Friends – they tried every conceivable show behind it – Caroline in the City, Veronica’s Closet (Good first season then stupidly re-tooled), Jesse (Boring show, good theme song), Spin City (underrated sitcom one of Nine’s best), Malcolm in the Middle (strong start then disappeared!?) and Two and a Half Men.

Now a and the ones that did then couldn’t perform well on their own. This year now that Two and a Half Men is a hit, Nine is trying to get a second, they tried Til Death and succeeded in growing it’s audience, except that the show looks to be on life support in the US and is therefore perhaps not a long term prospect so they’re giving another tryout to Chuck Lorre’s other show – The Big Bang Theory and so far, so good – if it can keep this sort of retention over summer then Nine has another long term prospect on their hands as it is also one of CBS’ best sitcom performers in the states, always improving on it’s 8pm lead-in How I Met Your Mother.

The last Monday sitcom CBS had which pulled better 8.30 ratings than it’s 8pm lead-in was Everybody Loves Raymond which in it’s second season was outrating it’s 8pm lead-in Cosby, it was moved to 9pm the following year where it stayed for the remainder of it’s run as the tentpole show for CBS on Mondays.

Finally, Ten seems to have been vindicated by scheduling School of Rock for the 800th time this season, I suppose in the eternal network game of rock/paper/scissors improbable comedy movie beats out fact based drama.

2 Channel Universe – Sunday 9 November 2008

Last night’s top rating show was Dancing with the Stars which has grown stronger in it’s last weeks, but nowhere near the dominating highs of it’s Tuesday night run. Nonetheless Seven can be happy with a night where all their shows (including one heavily rerun sitcom) performed well.

Nine too can be happy, 20 to 01 now dominates the 6.30pm timeslot and 60 Minutes continues strongly, moreover it’s North/South strategy paid dividends last night with CSI Miami picking up the slack from their underwhelming Rugby League telecast.

Ten meanwhile have locked themselves out of the competition, they got a decent figure for Australian Idol and probably won in the important young demographics (wait for the press release I guess) but their showing last night reveals a schedule with more holes than they can patch.

First of all they threw in NCIS reruns to stop the leaking at 9.30, this has shown some improvement in the slot. Californication was only retaining a woeful 54% of Rove’s Audience, the first week in for NCIS they retained 68% of same audience, this week the Naval drama did even better with 84% retention.

After patching the hole that was 9.30 they then had to try to fix the drop from Californication to The Office by scheduling the International Edition of The Daily Show but their 11pm figures have barely budged – it’s a pity because it’s currently the best post 10.30 lineup on a Sunday night but did you know that – I’m going to guess that you didn’t because Ten don’t promote it! They never promote any show properly unless it falls between 7.30 -10.30 (with the exception of Neighbours) Ten need to advertise The Daily Show and The Office then maybe some people will tune in.

The other part of their night where they’ve sprung a leak is at 6.30 – Thank God You’re Here Reruns, which at times have won their timeslot against subpar competition are now struggling where they once flourished but why?

First of all Seven and Nine have better 6pm lead ins – The News. People will usually watch the news to start their night, now Ten nets a timeslot win by slotting their news at 5pm, but those people don’t stick around for Sports Tonight or The Simpsons – what can they do about this – either Put the Simpsons at 5pm, then Sports Tonight leading up to The News at 6pm or Move Sports Tonight to 4.30 then News then find an hourlong show (it’s a weekend so it can be rated PG) to show leading up to 6.30 – just a thought.

The bigger problem though is Thank God You’re Here – the show has been in reruns forever, it is produced by Working Dog – a group which doesn’t seem to have it in them to produce anything that runs for a long time. Apparently there is another season of 10 (that’s right folks 10) episodes on the way – better savour them I guess.

It’s not like the folks at Ten haven’t tried either to coax these burnt out geniuses back for more – I’ve read numerous reports over the last two years about the back forth dance between Ten and Working Dog over this show.

In the meantime Ten has used the show to plug a hole in their schedule – but by now everyone who wanted to see it has probably already seen it – all it seems to have accomplished is whetting people’s appetite for something light and breezy in the timeslot and Nine has delivered it with the newly hot 20 to 01, a show that has been on the air for roughly the same length of time as TGYH, has approximately similar production values and the same ‘forget instantly after watching’ quality.

Strangely enough the people behind 20 to 01 haven’t attempted to ration episodes or take a year off or ruminate in public on the difficulties of producing such a show, yet that’s all we’ve heard from the producers of TGYH and yet now their precious show, preserved in amber is in the ratings toilet, no doubt it will be fished out for 10 more glorious weeks in the sun next year after which Ten’s long term problems will still persist and 20 to 01 will still be going (twice a week no less)

Viewers stuck in the outdoor room - Sunday 2 November 2008

A reprieve for the Outdoor Room? Anything is possible and the fate of Jamie Duries’ Big New Show™ looks a little healthier after it nudged a million last night – but still this is Seven and such a low figure for what does not look to be a cheap show, whilst a very cheap show (20 to 01) knocks it out doesn’t make for a good look, especially when compared to other hits on Seven coupled with the fact that they already seem to have a plan for 6.30 Sundays next year.

Ten can be happy they managed two shows over 1 mill last night (that’s as many as they got for the whole of last week) and improved ratings for the NCIS rerun.

Overall it was another low rating night (though not the dead zone that Saturday was) with a slightly lower turnout than last week although everything more or less held it’s place from the week before without much variation.

Perhaps viewers are getting the jump on the networks and starting summer non-ratings a month early.

It will be interesting to see what happens tonight when Seven switch from Border Security/The Force to The Rich List and what the knock on effect will be for the City Homicide vs CSI battle.

Watch this space.

Seven's problems are other nets fantasies - Tuesday 28 October 2008

Last night was a very low rating night – unless you were channel seven that is with Packed to the Rafters and All Saints boosting their numbers from last week.

The biggest drop was to The Simpsons which lost 125,000 viewers week on week whereas it’s stablemate Kenny’s World actually got a lift as did The Chopping Block, however with both shows staying under 900,000 I doubt either will earn a second season.

8.30 seems to be a major switch on point and it’s a fair assumption to note that there a lot of people who on average now are only watching one hour of TV per night – that has probably always been the case to some extend but the proportion of folks who only stay for the 8.30 hour is growing.

At 7pm the 3 commercial nets attracted 3,084,000 people to the box, at 8.00 that number grew to 3,549,000. For the 8.30 hour it pumps up again to 4,133,000 essentially adding 500,000 people per hour, then an 9.30 a million people take off leaving only 3,163,000 holding a remote which is tuned to 7, 9 or 10. It’s a good bet that not all of these people are heading to bed – a good proportion would be headed to cable, with a lot more firing up the internet, even DVDs and Video Games would get a look in – the choice is endless. In the future 9.30 programs pulling over 1 million are going to get a lot rarer.

What about the retention from 8.30 to 9.30 – well unsurprisingly Nine fared the best but only because they had the least to lose with 20 to 01 retaining 91.3% of it’s lead-in, Rush retained 78.8% of it’s lead-in – you would think Ten would be aiming for at least 85% given the strong NCIS marquee and the fact that Rush is a similar show in content, but no amount of promotion seems to able to give it a lift – the show appears to have found it’s audience and is settled between 900,000 and 1 million. Ten needs to put in a concerted promotional push to get new viewers to sample the show because Rush is now decoupled from it’s lead in.

All Saint fared the worst in terms of retention with only 67% but it almost doesn’t matter because the show is streets ahead of it’s rivals – it does however present seven with a future dilemma – here they have a show, a steamroller in Packed to the Rafters which could be used to launch or boost anything on their schedule, yet if they move either it, or All Saints they risk killing the Golden Goose – of course, Nine or Ten would kill for a problem like that right now!

Consolidation Prize – Sunday 26 October 2008

All three commercial networks were in tactical retreat last night, rather than launch into something bold or new all three have (in recent weeks) fallen back on safe and predictable.

Channel Nine
Nine has been consolidating for two weeks now, extending their flexible nostalgia series 20 to 01 to a second hour in the 6.30 slot in order to stop the haemorrhaging caused by Battlefronts a widely criticised gardening show which I never personally bothered with on the sole pretence that it was a gardening show and we shouldn’t be (as a nation) encouraging this cheap trash on the airwaves. Nonetheless the show failed to fire even with the ample hordes of people who normally go for this sort of program (look at the millions transfixed to Seven on a Friday night) and Nine swiftly booted it subbing in a more broadly appealing hour.

The move paid off for Nine which now rides in first place in the timeslot

Channel Seven
Seven dropped to disastrous numbers with the US adaptation of Kath & Kim and wasted no time subbing with reruns of the original. They were duly rewarded for their diligence pushing back into second spot ahead of Ten

Channel Ten
Poor Ten, their initial move at consolidation (ie: reruns of Thank God You’re Here at 6.30) looked great until Nine put them in check with 20 to 01 a similar light appeal show which has the advantage of being able to seem fresh even when it’s not. For ten the recalcitrance of producers Working Dog is a thorn in their side with a knock down concept sitting on the shelf while a bunch of overpaid and over-respected producers whine about having to recharge their creative juices – it’s not the Sopranos people – it’s a fucking cheap concept, just make some more already!

To add to Ten’s woes they took a second tactical retreat this week, pulling back their niche comedies (Californication and The Office) to 10.30 and putting up a second hour (repeat) of NCIS, generally reruns of NCIS have done exceptionally well but the bubble may be starting to burst with last night’s instalment pulling similar embarrassing figures to it’s timeslot predecessors.

In other news
The other big thing last night was Nine’s Rugby League world cup which didn’t really set the world on fire, one wonders if it will do any better next week with a match to be staged in Melbourne, the Main Beneficiary was Dancing with the Stars which saw huge gains from stranded viewers of The Mentalist and CSI Miami to become the night’s third most watched show.

The Seven Steamroller - Tuesday 7 October 2008

This is becoming a familiar story on Tuesday night with Seven having locked in it’s audience for yet more doco-dramas at 7.30 and the all conquering Packed to the Rafters which jumped an astonishing 143,000 viewers in a week.

Pulling off a quadrella for Seven is the long running All Saints which hung on to 69% of it’s lead in to win the timeslot.

This is obviously a massive boost for Australian drama which since 2007 has been heavily invested in by both Nine and Seven with very few flops.



A different story is playing out over at Ten, having put all their chips in the reality pile at the start of the year their schedule has fallen apart and their one attempt at scripted Australian television this year, Rush, which is as good any cop show that you’ll see, has been scheduled – in a moment of breath-taking stupidity – against All Saints.

Ten’s programmers obviously judged that All Saints would be ripe for the picking, indeed it was been beaten regularly by reruns of NCIS, but nobody counted on the confluence of three factors – the promotional push given by Seven’s Olympic coverage in August, the lead-in delivered by the year’s most watched regular series and the tragic death of one of the show’s actors which focused media attention on All Saints in it’s first week back.

If the brains behind Ten are smart they will swap out Rush for Life and give their cop show the benefit of a better lead-in and a clear run on a Wednesday. But I don’t think they’re that smart…

Even more disastrous than the non-performance of Rush is the failure of The Simpsons at 7.30. With the Simpsons being the perennial Tuesday Family Hour occupant and having so many reruns on the schedule, viewers seem encouraged to check out the alternatives. For a while there the obvious alternative was Wipeout a show dedicated to people making fools of themselves on a giant obstacle course in the mold of a Japanese game show, but Wipeout’s last two instalments (last night was the season finale) have been clip shows which have not attracted the same audience, when Chopping Block returns next week expect a small dent in Seven’s reality hour and the remaining Wipeout viewers to flee back to The Simpsons.

The Simpsons has got to be losing ground to RSPCA/Find My Family also – especially with younger children and people in their 30’s and 40’s.

Finally the ennui over Wipeout has put the kibosh on Nine’s “Adult’s Only” Two and a Half Men, the romance isn’t over just yet because the 7pm strip still netted 1.15 million viewers and a second place in the slot but it indicates that the 8.30 competition is strong and perhaps viewers are beginning to look at the Charlie Sheen sitcom in a similar vein to the way they view The Simpsons – ‘it’s on all the time, so if I don’t catch it now – it’s alright’ Essentially Supply is beginning to outstrip demand!

A surprise of sorts was the good performance of 20 to 01 Greatest Movie Scenes, it was well promoted during the week and obviously provided a reasonable alternative to all the Australian drama on the other channels, but it’s still nowhere near it’s performance 2 years ago and it feels like the concept is on it’s last legs.

Looking forward to tonight the big question is: Will Jamie Oliver rescue Ten’s Wednesday Night?