Thankyou MasterChef Australia

I've haven't watched more than 5 minutes of it, but I'm going to miss Masterchef.

For a ratings nerd like me the results of the past several weeks have been unadulterated fun.

Because Australia's ratings system put emphasis on the whole of prime time rather than the core 7.30 - 10.30 period, nights are often won on the strength of the 6pm hour, which for Nine and Ten means a local news bulletin followed by tabloid current affairs.

Almost two decades ago, Ten bowed out of the 6pm race preferring profit over glory, so ever since the 90s, television ratings in this country has been a two horse race, Seven and Nine. Dull, dull, boring and dull.

But not this year. Amazingly Ten's 6pm hour is unchanged for almost a decade, but this show, Masterchef, has become such a viewer magnet, a watercooler show, an all ages crowd please, it has caused all sorts of upheaval all over the schedule from one end to the other!

Ten has had successful 7pm shows before - but nothing like this, among the shows which will be glad it's over next week you can count

Better Homes & Gardens
Has seen it's aud fall away by approximately 200,000 viewers as it clashes with Masterchef's Friday Masterclass - an ingenious idea which stands apart from the competition proper as a cooking class for the masses. I knew this was a good idea when I was invited by my mother-in-law (not in ten's target demo) to try a dish she learned on the Friday night show!

Nine's Factual/Reality department
Masterchef brought a quick death to such unforgettable fare as Missing Pieces and You Saved My Life forcing Nine to fall back on their current crutch - Two and a Half Men, a show repeated so often this year it's starting to look transparent.

Working Dog
What an embarrasment, Masterchef has proven revenge is a dish best served hot! At the end of last season all looked lost for Ten as its one remaining hit show, Thank God You're Here, defected to the Seven network for more money, the expected crowds for the lazy laffer were at first subdued as the first half hour butted heads with Masterchef, later Thank God was almost totally subjugated by some strategically placed 90 minute episodes! Seven didn't buy that show to run interference, they bought it expecting a big number which never came!

Home & Away
In recent years the departure of The Biggest Loser was the signal for people to flock back to Summer Bay, not this year - the venerable soap has endured an unremittingly harsh climate for the past 7 months, first with Loser, and now Masterchef culminating in the ultimate insult for the show - the first time (in my memory at least) that it has ever been outrated by Neighbours!!!

So thankyou Masterchef, whatever your actual entertainment value, it has been fantastic to see this kind of upheaval to the status quo - wishing you all the success in the future!

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.

There's almost no point

Friday 29 May 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Live Friday Night Football
Nine 7.30pm (Sydney & Brisbane only), Down 172,000 viewers week on week

Biggest Improvement
Masterchef
Ten 7pm, up 157,000 viewers week on week

Indeed most of Ten's lineup was up from last week - but it's coming from such a low base there's almost no point. The Law & Order palooza is no match for wall to wall sport on the other networks, not to mention the ABC's forensic skein Silent Witness (now up over the million mark). Only Masterchef is giving ten any traction on the night.

As was pointed out today on MediaSpy today by TelevisionAU, Masterchef on Fridays is not a continuation of the competition proper but rather a 1 hour cooking class run by the judges, thereby turning the show into a psuedo lifestyle hour and probably causing some headaches for Better Homes in the process.

Life on Mars, a show which started promising and then evaporated once word had come from the US of imminent cancellation, had it's 17th and final episode last night with 356,000 people still tuning in. In two weeks time Ten will be re-booting their Fridays with the US edition of So You Think You Can Dance

With two cycles of the dance show due this year (one in June and another commencing September) that should see Ten out for the remainder of the year assuming it's a success.

The Rugby League experience

Friday 22nd May 2009

The smartest thing Nine has done in some time is scheduling an additional episode of Two and a Half Men at 7.30 on Fridays for the southern (non Rugby League states), the womanising antics of Sheen not only gives southerners the experience of Rugby League without actually having to watch the game, it also gave Nine a combined 7.30 audience sufficient to outstrip Seven's all conquering Better Homes & Gardens. It also points up a substantial difference between Friday and the rest of the week.

Friday is probably the only night where an hourlong edition of Ten's Masterchef is being left in the dust, while the cooking show is still pulling a decent aud and standing out as Ten's only Friday bright spot, it dips under both Home & Away and Two and a Half Men, both of whom it regularly dispenses with during the rest of the week.

Why is this so? I'm thinking because in Australian parlance - Friday is the weekend, not the day itself, but by Friday night, you are in weekend mode. The same 18-49 crowd that Ten is wooing with Masterchef is most likely out on Friday night doing something else.

It hard to know what demographics are actually watching Law & Order (that's the original), the show had its best chance in weeks of gaining some traction with the finish of ABC's popular Midsomer Murders but instead managed to lose over 30,000 viewers week on week. This is in spite of Midsomer replacement series Silent Witness losing 193,000 week on week from it's forbear.

Why on earth ABC actually took Midsomer off when there's a good year's worth of eps to get through is beyond me!

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.

Friday 10 April 2009

Friday


Very very low rating night all around - which is to be expected for a Good Friday. Medium and Law & Order continue to struggle in the face of pretty lacklustre competition - meanwhile there's no available figures so we can't see the result of the great southern experiment by Nine to stick Sitcoms in opposition to the Simpsons on Friday night.

Meanwhile Better Homes and Gardens continues to dominate the 7.30 hour - tripped up only slightly this week by the absence of Melbourne from the network for the annual Good Friday Telethon.

Rinse and Repeat - Friday 13 February 2009

Both Nine and Seven had sporting events on Friday night which managed to fracture the schedule across the country.

Seven was split down state lines with Sydney/Bris showing encore episodes and the southern states carrying AFL.

Nine was split by time zone due to their live cricket coverage - viewers in Bris, Perth and Adelaide were treated to an encore screening of Underbelly

I'm not even going to attempt to spot a trend in all that mess - except to say that a national sport (Cricket) easily outperformed a regional sport (AFL). The irony is that I'll bet you the rights to the AFL costed Seven way more than the cricket rights costed Nine.

Ten at least ran a consistent sked - and although they were again up against a mountain of sport - they seemed to do a good job of anyone not tuned into the cricket.

The Kids are Alright - Friday 12 December 2008

Credit where credit is due, Seven knows how to program effectively. Holding off the premiere of Madagascar until summer might seem bizarre, but it was perfectly timed to take advantage of the sequel’s theatre release. Clearly big family movies are an important draw on Friday nights as has been proven in recent weeks with the Harry Potter series and Ten’s Nanny McPhee.

If this proves anything it’s that now more than ever you have to program to the audience available. Using Fridays to burn off adult films is no longer a good option. During the year the older audience has been split up all over the place with only the ABC (by virtue of having regular series after 8.30) commanding a consistent audience on the night.

To Ten’s credit they have decided to hedge their bets, Family hour for kids, post 8.30 with Crime Dramas. It will take some time for the young skewing ten to attract some older viewers on this night but it’s a worthy experiment and we’ll keep checking back here to see how it goes.

Better for Ten was the performance of The Simpsons which is pulling a better number in that slot than anything since the demise of Friday Night Games. Perhaps Ten should give this hour over to it's animated comedies and not bother experimenting with niche cable formats in the future.

Nine was the flunky of the night with appalling turn-out for Australian Geographic, you know it’s bad when you could be beaten by Ice Road Truckers. One wonder whether it will be in the schedule next week. Their choice of Movie, The Last Samurai, was unsuited to Friday night – back to the drawing board guys.

No use trucking when they've all trucked off - Friday 31 October 2008

You know we're headed for summertime when everyone struggles to stay over 900,000 (let alone a million) and last night was a clear example with the old skewing Seven commanding the biggest audience, although many of the Better Homes Devotees must've stayed out in the garden last night as the show experienced a deflated turnout.

Harry Potter's second week was well in line with his first and Nine can expect this sort of turnout for the next several weeks as they churn through the series.

Over on Ten it's all doom and gloom, while the figure for Ice Road Truckers seems suspect (only 3/5 markets are noted even though the show had 100% clearance) but what is unmistakeable is that Will & Grace is floundering and an ultra-violent rebroadcast of the Terminator is gunning for an audience that just isn't at home.

Indeed T2 had two things going against it - first of all Ten's print predates the invention of digital television with a hoary old 4:3 broadcast making it look like the oldest thing on the box last night, secondly young males out for a bit of bloodshed movie action would've been hard pressed to go past last night's Fox Classics double Death Wish and Death Wish II! Fox Classics is building up a great reputation of screening some real classic films now all they have to do is discover widescreen and then we'll have something.

As for Ice Road Truckers, Ten just can't seem to take a trick, like I said several weeks ago, Friday has two audiences, Families and old people, ABC and Seven pitch to the oldies every time, Ten and Nine need to fight it out for the families, Ten pitching to a male audience on a Friday night, after footy season is completely the wrong target.

Squinting for laughs - Friday 24 October 2008

Seven continued it's dominance of Fridays with it's lifestyle flagship pulling a phenomenal 1.5 million across the big 5 markets.

As good as the news was for Seven - it proved absolutely bleak for Ten with Download attracting only half a million across the five cities, not a good look for ten.

The show itself is alright, the hosts are good together and they genuinely make an effort to keep it lively - compare the studio segments on Download with the insipid segues on Funniest Home Videos and they have them beat hands down.

Where Download suffers in comparison to Nine's laffer is in the quality (ie: picture quality) of it's clips, whilst Funniest Video's clips are often blurry or grainy (ie: Home Video quality) they still take up the full 4:3 frame, Download reduces the screen size to maintain some sharpness but the result is you have to squint to see what's going on.

When you're on Youtube with your face about 20 centimetres from the screen it's not a big deal - but watch it on TV sitting 3 metres away and it becomes a problem!

United 93 didn't do Ten any favours and may have been a better play on Sunday night where more adult fare (especially topical) can find an audience, not that the kids movie did all that well, Nine proved the law of diminishing returns with Harry Potter diving to 892,000. In a sense it's not bad on a night where not even Nine's news managed 1 million, nor is it that bad given that the movies running time can be expressed in days rather than minutes, but it is a low rating and the unpteenth time the film has been aired.

Absolutely no idea how Seven's Sydney/Brisbane movie "We're Here to Help" did in the ratings, but the International Rules game in the southern states did OK, although with figures well below normal AFL averages - looks like it's going to take a while for the game of gaelic football to really catch on in Australia!

Ten Learns the Secret to Success - Friday 17 October 2008

Well blow me down - that's 6 shows over one million this week thanks to 'Nanny McPhee'

Ten has demonstrated for the first time this year that it understands how to get an audience on Fridays - program for the people who are home!

All this year Ten's Friday night shows have been aimed at teens or young adults, action movies, teen comedys, Top Model, nothing has worked until tonight.

So why has the premiere of British Kids Flick Nanny McPhee done the business for ten, especially coming off an incredibly low base of a lead in?

Simple - there are two types of audiences home on a Friday (& Saturday) night, Families with Children, and old people.

The old people last night were well catered to with Taggart (has that show been around for decades or what?) on ABC1 as well as Better Homes & Gardens, which I guess alleviates the lonelyness, I have no other explaination for it's extreme popularity.

So that leaves families - looks like they split up between Download & Wipeout/Hole in the Wall for the first hour but then all flocked to channel ten after 8.30

Whatever adults remained (about 1 million) split up between two violent movies on 7 and 9.

So next week Nine will be playing Harry Potter (welcome to high rotation) expect a boost for them, probably at ten's expense.

Nobody's Watching - Friday 10 October 2008

Well nobody except those rusted ons who like their gardening and family movies. Frankly Seven is playing the other networks like fools.

Nine somehow condensed Wipeout to half an hour and followed it up with the insipid Hole in the Wall - this was a disaster - a disaster one can only chalk up to either zero promotion for this lineup or a lack of viewers on a Friday.

Ten's Next Top Model was even worse, surely any future cycles of this show will be off to TenHD, although one wonders why Ten keeps persisting with this show - it had a season in the sun last year but ever since it has struggled to keep it's head above 900,000.

The movie issue is a big one and demonstrates what is going wrong with Friday nights. Here we have 3 movies against each other, Seven goes the PG Family Comedy route and scores, Nine choses a thriller (in Melbourne at least) and bombs, Ten goes for an action flick (a predominantly male genre) and also bombs. Both Nine and Ten were trying to cater to an audience which just isn't there on Friday Nights.

The chart I've put up is for Melbourne Viewer numbers only because I have no idea what Nine showed post 8.30 in other cities and whatever it is it's impossible to find the numbers on it, but here you can see that as with most nights - Nine News and Two and a Half Men are all that's keeping the network afloat.