Back to Reality

Well day two for The Block is still good, but kept in check by the bafflingly popular Home & Away (seriously I don't know a single person who admits to watching this show!)

Meanwhile the appetite for NCIS has waned, there was a time when reruns of the procedural would draw in 1.1million viewers without breaking a sweat. Not anymore, now that people have options on digital TV, its getting harder to justify reruns in primetime on the major networks.

Cock Blocked by Nine

OK so the title has very little to do with the post in this instance - but Nine's revival of the Block as a strip has gotten off to a great start.

Elsewhere - Seven's coverage of Wimbeldon on 7TWO has delivered less spectacularly, and more worryingly their 9.30 show on the main channel (Air Crash Investigations) is dead in the water. When you're beaten by Rescue Special Ops you know you have failed.

Think Small

Well there's no stopping Seven - the week's top shows read like a list of Last Week's top shows...

Dancing with the Stars, Downtown Abbey, Australia's Got Talent, Masterchef, Winners & Losers, Amazing Race and Glee.

So lets look instead at Digital TV and what's working and what's struggling.

Sunday:

Lots of movies on this night so digital dominance is never assured, if you're after a mature drama then GEM is your option, more brash blockbuster fare lives on GO!, 7mate and Eleven.

The abject failure of the night is Royal Upstairs Downstairs on 7TWO, surprising and yet not, because most of the potential audience for this crap would be watching Dancing with the Stars in prep for Downtown Abbey. A case of Seven cannibalising its own lineup.


Monday:


GO! back when it started was something fresh and exciting, now it's more or less cheap and nasty. The number of original series on the channel has nosedived and those that are left are victims of wildly inconsistent scheduling.

GO! is now a dumping ground for channel nine reruns, specifically Top Gear and the Big Bag Theory, propped up with Movie reruns (some quite good) and timeshifted stuff from the main channel (like Come Fly with Me in this particular night).

What happened to the GO! that drew me away from cable with TMZ, Seinfeld and a dozen shows aimed away from the mainstream?

At the first sign of competition these things were junked in favour of Top Gear reruns.

Abject failure is oddly enough on GO! which has hollowed out it's sked so much that any sort of regularity or consistency is roundly ignored by viewers - hence the poor performance of the Funniest Home Vids daily show (basically FHV without the crap about competitions or corporate sponsors)


Tuesday:


Seven's schedule on this night is still britcoms but is a slightly different shape than Autumn's lineup giving a bit of breathing room to 11 which has picked markedly this week.

Even The Office on a lowly 111K is posting its best result all season, but Ten's attempt to go retro and replace Raising Hope with Frasier bombed losing over 20,000 from its leading and knocking Nurse Jackie (which is now airing 1 day after its US broadcast) and Californication out of contention.

Special Mention has to go to BIG on GEM, a reality show (also on Nine - there's that timeshifting at work again) evidently so boring that nobody can be bothered to even make a wikipedia page about it, and it charted so low that it didn't even make the digital top 100 - surely a sign that your show is a waste of everybody's time.


Wednesday


You know if I ever bothered to watch GEM - I think I would grow to hate myself, If GO! has turned into a clearing house for hits you've seen before, GEM has turned into a 24/7 Fly on the Wall channel, and the flies are all over this one - with titles like "The World's Hairiest Person and Me", "Embarrassing Teen Bodies" and "Brothers & Sisters In Love" if there's such a thing as hell, this is surely the only channel they can get there - well, this and C31.

I have to give a shout out to Jersey Shore over on Seven Mate - its one of the biggest TV phenomena in the US to come down the cable in some years, by the same channel (MTV) that gave the world The Osbornes, a show that has had so much impact in the US has fizzled out here - yet the reasons are obvious, anyone who wants to have seen it - has seen it.

MTV on Foxtel plays this show constantly, everyone else would've torrented the thing two years ago, (which is an appalling wait for Australians in this day and age)


Thursday


On Thursday's everyone gets a turn, the older skew on the night seems to throw up a situation with lots of shows scoring decent numbers and nothing really failing (Except for Heli-Loggers whose potential aud probably went to bed at 9.30 - quick Seven better slot in another rerun of Family Guy)

No gimmick to speak of

What the hell? How on earth did Farmer Wants a Wife net more viewers for the reunion special than at any point in the entire season?

Is this a case of people saying en masse: "cut to the chase"?

Of course they were helped out no end by the moribund Lie to Me, a featureless crime show with a gimmick, drowning in a sea of crime shows with gimmicks. At this point people have to realise that these shows need engaging or interesting characters to stand out, much like a lot of Ten's procedurals the characters in this just seem to blend into the background, against Criminal Minds, a show whose premise contains no gimmick to speak of, yet their ensemble cast is a group of characters each of whom could carry a show, the difference is there for you to see on the chart.


Over on digital it was great night for Eleven and 7TWO and Decent for 7mate and GO! though how GO's programmers think its sustainable to run so many movie slots is beyond me, its almost programming by panic.

Still when you see the alternative, a steady schedule - as demonstrated by GEM, then maybe panic is the way to go, GEM's post 7.30 lineup across the week has more or less fallen off the map.

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.

Million Dollar Flop

Sunday, 20 March 2011



Monday, 21 March 2011



The debut for Nine's new gameshow - Million Dollar Drop did alright numbers-wise, coming second in it's slot, but I can't help but think it would've been better had they not used such bad actors for their pilot. The concept of the gameshow is decent enough, although I'm not keen on them constantly inventing formats designed to let Eddie MacGuire waffle on at length. But the "couple" who were in the opening show were excruciating to watch.

Also who the hell doesn't know that Australia only has 5 million-plus cities?? How did they find people THAT stupid?

What turning a blind eye gets you

Monday, 7 March 2011

Now here's an interesting twist. A Current Affair, which has been languishing in the ratings since the season began, decides to wheel out a story from last year that captured national attention, the so-called "Hey Dad Scandal" so named for the old Channel 7 sitcom (yes it was as bland as it sounds) where it seems the youngest cast member was allegedly sexually abused by her TV patriarch.

Nothing particularly new was added to the story - police are still interviewing people and are yet to file charges, but the victim has decided not to wait for them and to bring civil action against her abuser and the folks who enabled this travesty.

Why I have nothing particularly enlightening to add to this case, from a television perspective its interesting to note that Hey Dad is one of the longest running shows ever on TV, at 291 episodes there's an awful lot of material in the can and yet its barely ever been rebroadcast, and now with this history unearthed which just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, the chances of it turning up in reruns anywhere are nil.

What broadcaster would buy rerun rights to this now? A series with this kind of success should normally expect a pretty decent post-release income from reruns and DVD sales, that's all gone for this show, done.

Maybe in future producers will report this kind of on-set behaviour to the police rather than turn a blind eye.

From Old and Bloated to Trim and Teriffic

Thursday, 3 February 2011

The Biggest Loser is just going from strength to strength, 1.3 million viewers is outstanding for a show that last year looked shell shocked from being pushed to 7.30 to make room for the 7pm project.



A year ago Loser was struggling to break 900,000 viewers per outing. This year they've made the show leaner with 4 1 hour installments a week helping to shore up Ten's typically weaker back half of the week with older demographics.

Seven looks like it is using the night to play the demographic game putting the younger skewing Mother and Greys skeins as well as Desperate Housewives which for me is in that category: "Is that still on??"

Similarly why are the CSI shows still going? Surely they're played out by now. Nine skews old with these dramas and Getaway - the show that's so old it's forgotten half of it's length - ready to be picked up by RBT - a show with a premise that's simultaneously stupid and yet so brilliant you wonder why nobody thought of it before!

Nice to see Stargate and Star Trek the Next Generation doing well in their slots on Eleven - Australian TV needs all the sci-fi it can get.

Outside the primetime grid there's a lot of blog chatter about the performance of Ten's new newshour - 6pm and 6.30 News - which has dropped week on week from the mid 400's to the mid 300's - its way to early to call these shows either a failure or success, my sincere hope is Ten will succeed with this venture - their decision to deal themselves into the 6pm hour is the biggest shakeup that the TV schedule has had - and in the long run it will put their prime time schedule on an even footing.

Splitting the difference

Thursday, 27 January 2011

I'm not sure what Seven has planned for their Thursday nights, but so long as they manage to avoid breezy reality docos and headline US Dramas they should do fine.



Now there is an audience out there for these type of shows, on Thursday there was about 1.2 million folks eager to see them, the problem was they were split evenly between Nine and Ten whose schedules were eerily similar.

I wonder whether the audience for these series will increase as the season kicks in or if these shows are doomed to languish in each other's shadows - differentiation has never seemed so important as nowadays.

While were at it what is with Getaway becoming a half hour show - when did that happen?? They just can't get rid of it altogether can they!

And what was the ABC smoking? Lets see, "there's this show about a Vet, it's popular, has been on for 3 years it's called Bondi Vet, we have a show called Bionic Vet - lets put it DIRECTLY OPPOSITE."

Well done ABC, I know the ratings don't matter but those numbers are appalling for Aunty.

Aging Weapon 4

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

Out of all the things going on Wednesday night - the most startling was - see if you can spot it...



That's right, Lethal Weapon 4, a 13 year old film starring Hollywood Persona Non Grata Mel Gibson found over 1.1 million viewers in an age where new release films routinely struggle to get half that.

There's hope yet for Mel even if Hollywood has turned their back on him. I myself am skeptical of the weird American double standard that sees Gibson sidelined while Chris Brown is making a comeback after punching a woman in the face.

Elsewhere the show that runs forever, Heartbeat (surely they must be in the 80s by now!) is the top digital draw while the heavily advertised Bob's Burgers has a mild debut with 120,000 viewers

No way to Garner viewers

Saturdays, err, I mean Wednesdays are turning into a 3 horse race with Ten's Masterchef and Seven's The Pacific both flanking Nine's Hey Hey revival - although Hey Hey is softer now that viewers know they can always catch it next week, at least Nine has gotten out 2 hours over 1 million viewers, the rest of the night on seven was decidedly ordinary with the reality skeins at 7.30 being locked out by Masterchef and Criminal Minds being beaten by Nine's US version of another SBS hit - Who do you think you are.

Ten deserves a rap over the knuckles for wasting a decent lead in on a pathetic movie - I've never heard of PS I Love You but from my channel surfing the other night I determined that it involved Jennifer Garner which is your first indication of FAIL.

You might be looking at the chart and wondering why I have a picture of Eddie McGuire next to the EPIC FAIL for Deal or no Deal - well Andrew O'Keefe is currently having is arse handed to him by Eddie's Hot Seat and if this keeps up for the rest of the season we could see Seven packing up the suitcases.

Restoration

If nothing else we now have rock solid proof that there are people who will not watch something, even if it may interest them, for the simple reason that appears on SBS.

There's at least 600,000 of these people in the 5 major metro areas according to Oztam!

Top Gear certainly performed well in it's new digs on Channel Nine, if Nine can keep up the interest it will go a long way to restoring a night which for them has been one disaster after another in recent years.

Though it had a strong debut, its 8.30 hour was bested by NCIS on Ten which demonstrated that despite the network's woes there are still some things on the channel people watch regardless of the lead in!

There is some concern over the performance of NCIS Los Angeles at 9.30 but as this was a rerun it's probably a very good result, much more concerning is Grey's Anatomy on Seven which collapsed under the weight of NCIS and Top Gear (I guess men managed to west control of the remotes on Tuesday night!) to burn two new eps to under 900,000 viewers is not a good sign for this show, though I'd be interested to see the timeshifting figures for these eps - and we'll come back to them next week when they become available.

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.

Midsomer Massacre

Earlier this year the ABC had some great Friday night success with the British Mystery series Midsomer Murders, the show pulled a consistent million each Friday against Football codes, chick flicks and Ten’s Law & Order so it makes sense that they have returned the show to a better timeslot – Sunday’s no less, with outstanding results.

Midsomer really put the cat among the pidgeons after causing consternation for Nine’s Rescue Special Ops diping below 900,000. Whilst Rush experienced similar humiliating figures last season, that was on Ten in a 9.30 slot, this is Nine in an 8.30 slot, not to mention the beating 60 minutes is copping lately.

The Ashes seemed to also impact the commercial nets after 8.30 last night with only Bones putting in a respectable number.

Rove had a minor relaunch without Hughsie and Carrie (on other duties at 7pm) after several weeks away and it landed with a thud taking in only 832,000 viewers, worse was the performance of follow-on Rules of Engagement - if Ten is trying to turn this show into Two and a Half Men by running it everywhere - it ain't catching on!

Last night also gives us the first ever figures for GO! Nine’s new foray into multichannelling and a largely successful one at that with flagship show The Big Bang Theory netting 207,000 – impressive given that this channel is only cleared in approximately 45% of homes (households with digital receivers independent of Foxtel)

The chart is right here...

Making an ASS out of U & ME

So Nine had a problem - their problem was Tuesday nights

They looked at what was popular in Australia

Shows about Dancing do well

Shows about weight loss do well

They looked at what was popular overseas

A US cable show about Dancing + Loosing Weight is doing well

So Nine assumed that it would do well here...

well...

The proof is the pudding

And there was whole lot of pudding on TV last night - a lot of it uncovered in ways not before explored outside of certain fetish videos available from reputable Fyshwick retailers!

Did it hook the viewers in - No
Did viewers feel like some hardcore sex jokes on Two and a Half Men afterwards - No
It it likely to remain in this timeslot - No

Continuing the debacle

Well, they've done it Ten has won a week of television, I don't think that's happened since the final week of summer 08 (Jan 2008).

Seven didn't help their case at all with the continuing debacle that is Prime Time Rugby Union, this time the game they play in heaven (and really expensive schools) pushed Seven's news in Sydney and Brisbane back and back, by which time everyone seemed to be tuned to either New Tricks or Harry Potter.

Also I take back my quip about Harry Potter's diminishing returns, although movies 1-3 seem to be played out - the fourth installment "The Goblet of Fire" can still draw a crowd and for a long night running to 10.55pm!

The Shape of things to come

With Masterchef picking up all sorts of steam in the run up to it’s finale Ten is on an absolute roll with Good News Week posting great figures and extending from 75 to 90 minutes tipping the network over the edge for a rare Monday win (All people and key demos from 6pm – midnight)

Seven and Nine both must be hanging on for dear life waiting for this cooking show to end so their early evening shows can breathe again, How I Met Your Mother did only marginally better on Monday than in it’s 10pm Wednesday slot languishing in 4th place, pitting this show against Two and a Half Men (and now Masterchef) has been an absolute disaster for Seven, the network is still Number one by a comfortable margin but like Nine in the 90’s this is actually more by virtue of its News/CAF hour than anything happening after 7pm.

Seven has already made several moves this year remeniscent of Nine in it’s heyday – chasing diminishing ratings with big dollars (Thank God You’re Here), shafting series back to 11pm at the drop of a hat (Heroes, Lost) and counterprogramming for spite.

Oh yeah, spite, what the hell am I talking about? Well simply put spiteful programming sees a network take on a successful show with a show that would appeal to the exact same audience with the object of railroading the original timeslot occupant, Nine was a master at this tactic, one of the most famous examples was taking on Ten’s US Hit NYPD Blue with their own Megahit ER on Thursday nights, we all know who won that battle, but it’s a good bet that most of the people who watch ER would also watch NYPD Blue, Nine forced viewers to choose.

Seven has tried the same crazy game of chicken here this year with ‘Mother’ and they’ve flopped spectacularly.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Seven emulates Nine’s old tactics (the very tactics that used to piss viewers off and led to that famous label “Nein”) because half of the Nine Network is now on the Seven payroll but for god’s sake Seven please – you don’t have to become them to beat them, you’ve already won!

Something like a phenomenon

Monday 8 June 2009

It was good news for all networks last night thanks to that phenomenon known as the public holiday!

The same event which suppressed the audience on the Sunday night served to boost it to new heights on Monday.

Early evening shows got a huge boost with people indoors earlier due to the bad weather, the football and the day off work.

Ten recorded it’s biggest audience yet for Masterchef, an average of 1.8 million viewers over the hour representing a 22% increase week on week.

Remember last year when this project was being mooted and people just shook their heads thinking it would never work? Well you should all consider yourselves told! Masterchef is the surprise hit of 2009!

Also making an impact – Seven news, 555k clear of channel nine and almost 1 million viewers clear of channel ten!

It used to be that Seven was winning night to night but Nine News would win on public holidays – the theory being an improved turnout among working stiff who would normally be commuting at 6pm.

Well that situation has well and truly reversed – Seven is now the choice for the bulk of the workers too! They are, for lack of a better word, entrenched.

Finally the other big thing to happen last night was Millionaire Hot Seat venturing into prime time giving some 1.2 million viewers a chance to sample the show, Hot Seat won Melbourne and Brisbane but ten Recruits took the other cities.

I wonder if this is a push for yet another prime time game show or Nine’s way of promoting the show to a wider audience. Either way they could consider it a success, though here’s a sobering thought, Hot Seat recorded it’s best ever 5.30 audience with 812,000 viewers, in the same timeslot Ten News brought 1,167,000 while Deal or no Deal pulled in 1,075,000! Still some room to make up there.

Scoreboard

Going up
Hot Seat (5.30pm) up 23%
Masterchef up 22%
Scrubs up 18% (excluding Melb market)
Today Tonight up 15%
Deal or no Deal up 14%
A Current Affair up 14%
Seven News up 13%
Media Watch up 13%
Desperate Housewives up 12%
Recruits up 11%

Going Down
Jonathan Ross Show down 11%
Top Gear Australia down 8%
Supernatural down 8%
Good News Week down 4%

Nine Blocked from Success

Sunday 24 May 2009
A very good night last night for both Ten (winning the night with 29.3% of the 5 city audience between 6 and midnight) and Seven, both nets stomping all over Nine’s former stronghold.

The drama, Merlin, had it’s best week yet for Ten rising 127,000 week on week, similarly Masterchef rose 215,000 week on week with what surely must be its biggest aud yet.

Rove even lifted 177,000 week on week. And Biggest Loser (spread over 90 minutes) improved on Harper’s Island which was shifted this week to a post-midnight timeslot.

Seven too found a rising tide with Seven News, Bones and Castle all up by 100 grand week on week. While Nine continues to suffer in silence, with HomeMADE losing a further 28,000 in the face of an improved news lead-in and a lift in the overall available audience. (Remember yesterday’s blog – last Sunday viewers watching broadcast = 4.8 million, last night it went up to 5 million)

Nine will soldier on with HomeMADE because it has to but the Sunday show dropping under a million is a worrying development. I can’t help but feel sorry for them, in 2003 they struck reality gold with The Block, a show perfectly timed to capture the insane orgy of home renovations taking place under a rapidly escalating property market.

The creators of this show were hailed as heroes and the concept talked up by the media as if it were the television equivalent of the second coming, to tell you truth I never watched it, but I know it was popular, that first season managed to net a whopping 2.2 million viewers average to the exploits of those apartment renovators.

Nine tried to emulate what Ten does quite successfully parlaying a reality hit into a long running series, but unlike Ten whose shows are build with profitability in mind, Nine was still huge in the ratings and in the habit of spending $4 to make $5, when the second season didn’t meet up to high expectations (the finally still netted 2.2 million viewers!) they were quick to swing the axe.

Ever since then Nine has been trying to recapture the phenomenal success of The Block, not a season goes by without Nine trotting out the line ‘This is the new “Block”’ or ‘From the creators of “The Block”’, like Al Bundy, fixated on his six touchdown streak in a high school football game, Nine can’t get past the success of this show and it’s holding them back from better things!

Still the one for programming disasters

Tuesday 19 May 2009
Well Ten won Tuesday night with ease on the back of a killer quadruple of Masterchef (up 39k week on week), Talkin’ Bout Your Generation (up 12k), NCIS (up 191k!) and Lie to Me (up 186k).

Seven too made gains on last week with The Zoo (up 45k), Find My Family (up 76k), All Saints (up 38k) and 10 Years Younger *up 76k) all putting in a solid night.

These gains by Seven and Ten were at the direct expense of Nine and the ABC, last week ABC had the Federal Budget which lifted their night considerably, with that out of the way the audience deserted Around the World in 80 Gardens (down 41k) and Mumbai Calling (down 111k).

But the real disaster of the night was Nine, the 7pm rerun of Two and a Half Men was the last time they saw a million, HomeMADE incredibly sunk a further 27,000 viewers week on week, the Tuesday edition a sad 140,000 viewers behind the Sunday show, suggestion that maybe it’s not the show, it’s the timeslot, although really it is the show also!

Two and a Half Men was back in reruns in the 8.30 slot giving 292,000 people an excuse to find other entertainment at 8.30. Meanwhile the continuation of Underbelly reruns at 9.30 is still the most baffling programming choice of the entire week, why are they persisting with two hours of this when they could…

a) Run Ramsay everywhere
Kitchen Nightmares might be played out but a fresh reality skein has got to do better than reruns of a drama that most people have seen – Nine would have been better holding off from rerunning the original until they could clear a broadcast in Melbourne, they risk instead tiring out the other markets, the Sydney audience of Underbelly is shocking, even for a rerun a drop of 42% from Two and a Half Men is just terrible.

b) Run Survivor
Hey remember Survivor, that reality comp on an island that still packs em in over in the states, a more natural fit with Nine’s reality night and a fresher alternative to Ramsay – plus there’s about a gazillion episodes in the can still waiting for an airing.

c) Run E.R.
Oh remember ER? Onetime anchor of Nine’s Thursday night, it finished last month in the US after 15 seasons, again, there’s a tonne of episodes, the chance of catching some of that All Saints crowd and still legions of fans that would probably like the chance to see the once great show at a decent time.