Monday May 9th, 2011

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.

Pricing yourself out of the market

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.

One way to get viewers

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.

AFL Monday Night game is a ratings dog

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

Farmer Wants a Wife, City Homicide wants a Miracle

Well - the combo of Knocked Up in the northern states and Desperate Housewives' season finale in the southern states was a winner for Seven, as was Brothers and Sisters and a special about the amazing landing of a commercial airliner on New York's Hudson River earlier in the year.

The schism in Seven's schedule was caused by a monday night AFL match a while back, next week they return City Homicide - back on Monday nights after a failed venture onto Sundays. I wonder whether the show will hit it highs of last year (flying around the 1.8 million mark at one stage) or just maintain a firm 1.2 million aud.

Farmer Wants a Wife also returned, also to a different timeslot (it was on Wednesdays 7.30 earlier in the year - consistency is not a buzzword at either of the private equity nets) to a decent rating but was incredibly bettered by The Big Bang Theory which was up after a disastrous week last week where people flocked to Australian Story instead (it may be that when OzTam start measuring Time Shifting - Big Bang will probably be one of the big benefactors)

Something wrong with the mix

Hmmm compared to recent Saturdays it was a bit of a quiet one for the networks.

Nine dominated held their nose in front at 6.30 with Funniest Home Videos but then slipped away at 7.30 with the often repeated Big Daddy. This and Nine's 9.30 movie (different in various markets) was enough to see them fall to fourth place on the night.

Seven drew a larger crowd with their movies The Wild (which was an almost wholesale rip-off of Madagascar) and National Treasure, both contributing to Seven's night winning share.

Ten's AFL gave them the edge in the 7.30 hour and they were competitive across prime time thanks to the sport, but lets spare a thought for The Simpsons, that extra 145,000 people watching in Sydney is probably 140,000 more than would have watched had the swans been playing!

The ABC had a shocker with New Tricks making way for the second season of East of Everything and suffering a 35% drop in their 7.30 ratings in the process, maybe they shouldn't be trying to mix Australian shows into their well established Brit line-up on this night.

As Per Usual

After a poor showing on Thursday, Nine's Friday lineup completely collapsed with a lone NRL game disastrously under 500,000 viewers.

Seven's AFL dropped also but not by nearly as much and the performance of The Princess Diaries held up very well proving an alternative to all the sport on offer.

Besides this it was a pretty uneventful Friday, as per usual...

A Credible Alternative

Friday turned out to be big for Seven with the AFL back in force after the split round giving them the edge to dominate the night.

Masterchef is still causing them headaches between 7 and 8 and So You Think You Can Dance is going in the right direction increasing by 6 percent, still not enough to get infront of Nine's Live NRL or Seven's AFL but it's now beating the alternative movies in the various markets

In the southern markets
Catch & Release 370,000
So You Think You Can Dance 473,000

In the northern markets
The Stepford Wives 324,000
So You Think You Can Dance 382,000

So although it's no match for football it is a credible alternative, moreso than Law & Order which it replaced.

Speaking of the venerable crime drama, ten quickly swapped the 10pm rerun for a CBS News special on Michael Jackson at 10pm last night and in 10pm terms, it did very, very well up 48.86% on the previous week's Criminal Intent rerun!

Split up and siphoned off

Every commercial network split their schedule last night – Ten for the obvious reasons (the start times for AFL and the fact that movies rate better for them in Sydney) Nine too was split by start times for it’s international cricket coverage, while Seven split up for the rugby union – which has more of a following in Sydney and Brisbane than the AFL but not much more judging by these figures!

Excluding news programs there were seven shows that beat the Rugby Union in it’s heartland, including such unbeatable favourites as Gardening Australia and a rerun of the kids movie Zathura.

The game is by definition included on the Anti-Siphoning Legislative Instrument which restricts Foxtel from bidding on sports rights where there is a significant national interest in the sport. Ironically with only 372,000 viewers – that’s only slightly better than Foxtel in terms of audience size – and completely pathetic in terms of Free to Air, and especially for Seven, the market leader.

Saturday 13 June 2009
Scoreboard

Going Up
Richard Hammond Engineering Connections up 57.54% week on week
Talk to the Animals (Nine) up 39.67% week on week
Gardening Australia up 23.72% week on week

Going Down
Seven's Rugby Union down 8.82% week on week

The Chef, The King and the Perfect Vagina

Ten has made their first major change to Fridays in an attempt to revive their fortunes on the night but the results were not good. For the first week in So You Think You Can Dance posted a significant loss for the net.

Retaining only 56% of the Masterchef lead-in the US Dance comp may yet find an aud (it has built in this slot in the past after a slow start) but it would not surprise me to see it moved to 8.30 with The Simpsons back at 8pm in order to bolster Ten's share.

Without the Simpsons on deck Nine's King of Queens was able to slip into the top 30 for the first time ever (remember it doesn't play in Sydney and Brisbane)

The AFL had a huge night last night, whether it's the freezing Melbourne weather, swine flu, the split round or just a chance to see two really good teams in action the audience rose a whopping 26.84% in the southern capitals week on week.

That was still nothing compared to SBS's customary 10pm sex docos, a title like 'The Perfect Vagina' was always bound to draw a crowd I guess with an amazing 67.48% increase over last week's 'Sex Blog Girls'

The Scoreboard
Friday 12 June 2009

Going up
AFL up 26.84%
Silent Witness up 9.99%
The Simpsons (6pm) up 7.83%

Going down
So You Think You Can Dance down 27.2% on The Simpsons, down 4.92% on Law & Order
Criminal Intent 10pm rebroadcast down 17.19% on previous week's 10.30 rebroadcast

The game they don't watch in heaven

Saturday 6 June 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections
SBS 7.30pm Down 33.86% week on week

Biggest Improvement
Bruce Almighty
Seven (Southern Markets) after Vicar of Dibley
Up 29.09% over Phenomemon

All 3 commercial nets turned their schedules into swiss cheese last night to accomodate various sporting events.

Seven had the classic North/South split for their coverage of Rugby Union, the Union was a ratings disappointment polling only 219,000 in Sydney and 155,000 in Brisbane - middling figures at best. Worse than this was the decision to rerun Christian the Lion, a wildlife doco they ran only 5 weeks ago on a Tuesday night! And topping that level of bad was the fact that it rated well! More people watched this rerun doco in Melbourne, than tuned in for the Rugby Union in Sydney! If you actually compare it week on week in the three markets with the first run Cheetah Man it comes out on top with a 4% improvement!

Nine and Ten adjusted their schedules for local time differences, with Ten starting their Saturday AFL match at 5 different times and Nine playing around post-7.30 in order to line up with start times for the Twenty/20 Cricket.

Static

Friday 5 June 2009

Biggest Disappointment
The Simpsons
Ten 6pm rebroadcast, down 11.88% week on week

Biggest Improvement
Law & Order Criminal Intent
Ten 10.30pm rebroadcast, up 37.27% on Life on Mars

Law & Order
Ten 8.30pm up 24%, 9.30pm up 21% week on week

Pretty ordinary night for TV, all the football codes were down, Silent Witness was down, oddly Law & Order was up, it was like the regular Friday crowd was out or something. I don't know why they would be - it's friggin cold at the moment (at least in this corner of the universe).

Better Homes & Gardens dropped for the second week running (albiet by a minor 3%), in the 7.30 - 8pm hour the show has competition with Ten and Nine both claiming over 1.2 million in that slot.

Since it started figures haven't been available for King of Queens so there's no idea how much it's loosing from it's lead-in and how that affecting Nine at 8pm, Next week of course Ten returns So You Think You Can Dance at 8pm which will either fizzle out unspectacularly or it will set the cat among the pidgeons on a night which has remained static for some time.

Consistency Pays

Saturday 30 May 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Saturday Night AFL
Ten down 68,000 week on week

Biggest Improvement
New Tricks
ABC1 7.30pm - up 182,000 week on week


Nothing big happening last night and a whole lot of missing figures making the picture even cloudier. Suffice it to say Nine was the winner on overall percentage with the ABC second for the night.

Nothing else that interesting happened, Nine's movies were both down on last week, but both were still good performers, Seven's southern broadcast of Phenomenon was down on last week's Meet the Fockers, but again not by too much.

Interestingly most regular series were up, aside from New Tricks, Gardening Australia, Foyles War, Vicar of Dibley, Rockwiz, Kath & Kim, The Bill and Funniest Vids were all up from last week. I guess on a night where almost anything goes schedule-wise, consistency pays!

Expect the original

Saturday 23 May 2009

Thought I might take an inventory of the week that was to see where the viewers are

This is real simplistic but might be fun

Sunday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.7 million)
12 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 4.8 million

Monday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.7 million)
18 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 4.7 million

Tuesday
Top Show: Talking 'Bout Your Generation (1.6 million)
16 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 4.7 million

Wednesday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.7 million)
17 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 5.1 million

Thursday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.6 million)
12 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 4.1 million

Friday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.6 million)
8 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 4.5 million

Saturday
Top Show: Seven News 6pm (1.4 million)
4 Shows over 1 million
7.30 Broadcast Aud: > 3.8 million

What does any of this prove? Nothing really - save that Seven News is really, really popular and next to the rest of the week, Saturday has hardly any viewers, especially beyond 8.30 where the collective broadcast aud drops from 3.8 million to a low, low 3.2 million, and then from 10pm drops again to 2.5 million.

So survival on Saturdays is much more incremental, and volalatile, although all the boradcasters have fairly standard Saturday skeds, only ABC has a truly stable sked with their unchanging lineup of New Tricks, The Bill & Foyle's War.

Seven and Nine are both in volatile positions, at the mercy of the movies they schedule while Ten is at the mercy of the AFL's schedule and the occassional movie in Sydney and Perth.

This week Nine struck gold with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the Johnny Depp remake of the Gene Wilder original which Nine rolls out at least once per year to high ratings, put in a good show with almost 1 million viewers across the night and probably the lions share of young demos as well. Expect the original to be trotted out any week now!

Was it all worth it?

Friday 15 & Saturday 16 May

Well that was the weekend

A little later than usual for your truly and really a pretty standard weekend by the look of it.

You’d think Ten would be reaching for the axe on their lineup with several weeks at below 20% but they look like persisting for the time being.

On Saturday night we had one of those odd occasions where not only were Sydney and Brisbane playing in (separate) night games, but also Adelaide and Perth meaning no Melbourne teams were represented. That meant auds were slightly down in Melbourne, the footy beaten in that city by Kath & Kim, Funniest Vids, Billy Connolly even Before the Game proved more popular. Football auds were up in both Adelaide and Perth (which you’d expect) but Sydney and Brisbane barely registered a blip on the radar.

I wonder when the next rights issue comes up (next year I think) whether Ten will look back at the deal they made to get the sport on their air (unlike Seven or Nine they guaranteed to screen matches in prime time in Sydney & Brisbane) and whether it would have been worth it.

Breathing Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headache Inducing Scheduling

Saturday 9 May 2009
Another Saturday, another unspectacular set of numbers, the 6.30-7.30 hour is good with almost 4 million watching free to air, but after that the audience tails of quickly, of course you have your AFL on Ten which did slightly less than Seven's game on Friday night, Ten had about 120k less watching in Melbourne, and a few more watching in Adelaide and Perth.

In order to acheive this comparable result, however, Ten needs to do a lot more legwork.

Seven airs the one match on Friday nights (never live because of the commitment to Better Homes and Gardens) 8.30 for all southern markets (and occasionally Brisbane), 11.30 for Sydney (and Bris at other times)

On Ten the picture isn't so clear cut, this is ten, which during the 90s was the most tightly synchronised network in this country, with little to no variation between the 5 cities, of course the territorial pursuit of Aussie Rules football has changed all that, observe...

The AFL last night aired in all 5 cities, starting at 5 different times! Perth got the game, Blues vs Dockers, from 5.30pm - 8.30pm, Adelaide picked up the game at 6.30 (after screening Before the Game, live at 6pm), Melbourne started at 7.00, in reality the same time as Adelaide - but two different games! Melbourne catching the Blues game while Adelaide opted for Kangaroos vs Port Power!

In Melbourne the Mick Molloy/Dave Hughes football talker Before the Game went from 6.30-7.00 and was Melbourne's second highest rating program of the night with 390,000 viewers.

Brisbane picked up the Blues vs Dockers match after 7.30 (Before the Game does not rate north of the Murray) and Sydney had an alternate sked featuring two Simpsons eps not seen in any other market and a movie shared with Perth viewers, finally airing the AFL to a paltry 21,000 viewers at 10.30pm!

It gives me a headache just trying to line up this insane schedule in my chart - I can only image what the oztam people (and for that matter Ten's Programmers) make of this beast.

Give the People What They Want

Friday 8 May 2009
When in doubt go with what works! Channel Nine has, for weeks now, struggled to get any sort of traction in the southern states to complement their Friday Rugby League dominance north of the Murray, we last night saw the dropping of Til Death moving The King of Queens back a half hour and putting in an extra Two and a Half Men.

The additional Two and a Half Men came second in Melbourne and Adelaide enough turn up in the top 30 on the back of only three cities. They're putting an extra episode on Mondays as well, replacing one of those factuals, that will make 8 episodes a week/9 in southern markets!

This is all well and good but I'm starting to recognise eps that I've seen before, and I'm more generous on reruns than most people so Nine is getting into dangerous territory here, betting that this sitcom has the legs of The Simpsons, all I'd ask them to do is look at what happened to Seinfeld, a show which you just can't stip early evenings anymore (save for the niche market of cable) because everybody seen the episodes three times over!

As I suggested Law & Order has hit the ground wheezing, it would be the perfect series for Friday nights, were it not for its even older skewing opposition and the fact that men are well served between Midsomer and various football codes, not to mention those war and sex docos on SBS, the real available audience is women and Medium didn't do it for them, neither do movies (it's rare that one pops into the top 30 on a Friday) the question is - what do women want?

Age Shall Not Weary Them

ANZAC DAY, Saturday 25 April 2009

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

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

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

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

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

Out of the Frying Pan...

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

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

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