The Rigid Formula

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

6 of one, half a dozen of the other

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.

We have nothing to fear from those Golden Statues

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.

A moment in the sun

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.

Sunday Rant

That's right the RANT is back - let's jump into it!

Sunday 15th November 2009
Sunday night was good for Seven and bad, bad, bad for everyone else.


At 6.30 Ten’s Electric Dreams almost got done by Wipeout on the increasingly strong GO! While even the combined auds of 20 to 1 and Wipeout couldn’t match the might of Sunday Night with almost 1.3 million tuning in!


The Magic continued for Seven at 7.30 with Border Security and The Force proving that there were still people using their televisions in November, while 60 minutes really struggled, despite having a well balanced show. Australian Idol continues to be a disappointment, no amount of promotion seems to be able to interest viewers in this clapped out old format, yet still they talk about renewing it for 2010.


Bones was the only game in town at 8.30, Nine fell right off the map with some unknown telemovie, get used to it because this is the season when Nine starts trotting out bad first run Australian movies to shore up their drama quota (there’ll a forthcoming rant about that!) for the year – you’d think with Underbelly, Sea Patrol and Rescue Special Ops they wouldn’t have to do too much this year but we’ll see…


At 9.30 Castle almost broached the million mark, if only it could hold its ground in the US market! The final Rove managed only 760,000 viewers, imagine what they could’ve pulled had they promoted the move beforehand.

CSI: Time of Death

Sunday 7 June 2009



First of all, Monday is a public holiday - which automatically means that Sunday audiences will be down as people go out to fireworks or nightclubs or whatever. So even though the bulk of shows lost weight over last week it was to be expected, well mostly anyway.

Just like last week Ten did well with Merlin, Masterchef and Rove (and their decision to run Rove long won them the night) and Seven had great success with Sunday Night, Bones and Castle.

But Nine, Nine was having some trouble. Already they chosen to correctly single out HomeMADE a show which was a bit too late to the housing boom, that show is getting banished to Tuesdays, Nine's worst performing night.

But Nine's best minds need to now focus on what the fuck has happened with CSI!


This was once their flagship program, they have a rare commercial advantage with this show in that unlike NCIS, the Law & Orders, Bones, Desperate Housewives and half a dozen other current dramas, Nine is the only place on TV where you can see it. CSI does not show on cable, so it's audience can't be diluted by conventional means.

So what's going on? 810,000 viewers for two new episodes is a disaster! Plain & Simple. 4th place is a major disaster! I'm gonna call it...

Time of death 29 March 2009: that was the airdate of the first episode without Gil Grissom, which seems to be the moment a lot of viewers decided to say goodbye to the show.

Scoreboard

Biggest Drop
The Bear Man Of Kamchatka
ABC1 - 7.30pm
Fell 27% week on week on last week's Doctor Who Special

Biggest Lift
The Biggest Loser USA
Ten - 9.50pm
Rose 3% week on week

High Expectations

Sunday 17 May 2009

Second week in and HomeMADE continues to disappoint just scraping in at the million mark. I know 1 million viewers isn’t anything to sneeze at but for this show in particular it’s not a good thing.

Ever seen a promo for HomeMADE, you know a show has expectations for it when the sponsors’ logos appear in the promo. You know those expectations are huge when there’s about 4 or 5 logos along the bottom of the screen! That’s the kind of sponsor action you only see on big sporting telecasts! So I expect unless this show can pick up over the next 7 weeks then the good people at Nine will be giving away some free spots on their sked to some upset advertisers!

Merlin continues to buck two trends against, a) Scripted Drama before 8.30pm and b) Fantasy/Sci-Television, turning out to be a surprise Sunday night hit for the network, as is Masterchef. In fact Ten would probably kick arse on Sunday nights were it not for failing upstart Harper’s Island, in it’s second week the show dropped 151,000 viewers, I don’t expect it here for a third.

Seven, however, did well will their new starter Castle, the second star vehicle for Nathan Fillion who is familiar to Buffy fans and anyone who made the effort to watch Firefly, though Castle wasn’t as popular as the Bones rerun it replaced (shedding 73,000 viewers week on week) it’s still a promising start for this well promoted show. If only Seven put as much effort into promoting their long running imports (Lost, Desperate Housewives, etc) as they do their shiny new shows.