Sea of Procedurals

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

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

Tolerance

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.

Five-O gets Boned, LA quakes

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"

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

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.

Betting on NCIS

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Millionaire Hot Seat
Nine 5.30pm down by 88,000 viewers

Biggest Prime Time Disappointment
Two and a Half Men
Nine 9pm rebroadcast down by 84,000 viewers

Biggest Improvement
NCIS
Ten 9.30pm rebroadcast up by 216,000 viewers week on week

Ten had an absolute blinder last night helped immensely by a rerun of NCIS. The first run NCIS eps are due to finish very soon, what ten will do after that is anyone's guess but you can bet that they'll keep the reruns in the schedule

It's also a good bet that NCIS Los Angeles will be fast-tracked come September it's as close to a guaranteed hit that any network has next US season.

Nine continues to flounder with slipshod post 9.30 programming betraying a bare cupboard and a programming department that has lost it's zeal - honestly how many times can they play those Miss Congeniality movies - Nine are quickly morphing into a parody of last year channel ten endlessly rerunning the same movies in desperation to increasingly diminishing returns.

There's also a cloud over the future of HomeMADE, on a night where most shows gained viewers, HomeMADE lost 18,000 of them! There are unconfirmed reports that it has been yanked from Nine's Sunday Lineup, I have no doubt the series will be played out in primetime, the commitment to sponsors and a borderline ratings will ensure that, but I'm pretty sure the real estate/reno/reality genre is dead for the time being.