City Homicide is D.O.A.

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

If there's a story on Wednesdays its the slow agonising death of City Homicide over on Seven, that this once 8.30 show is now drawing less than half the audience of its first two seasons is a crying shame. I suspect its already been confirmed as the last season for the show - but even so that's kind of depressing.

Still its not as bad as Ten, holy mackeral all their shows sucked last night, Biggest Loser posted one of its lowest auds yet, Blue Bloods is surely on the way out and Lie to Me would probably be doing a lot better were it not for Blue Bloods.

I do notice that Eleven has dropped Bob's Burgers, but closer examination shows that the show took a week off in the US so maybe it'll be back, at any rate a second episode of Cleveland did better in its place!

It begins...

Wednesday 23, February 2011

A pretty depressed night all around I think. My Kitchen Rules, Criminal Minds and The Biggest Loser were the only things that went well last night. Channel Nine's Mike & Molly won't last much longer in this timeslot - especially given the show's either side are doing relatively well.

City Homicide is demonstrating why it was axed with less than half a million viewers, still that's better than Blue Bloods which has haemorraghed viewers weekly since its debut. Perhaps a Friday slot (like in the US) would be a better play for this drama.



Of course yesterday all the real action in TV wasn't on the screen or behind the camera but actually in the board room with the long running Grant Blackley being ousted as Channel Ten CEO, replaced by Lachlan Murdoch as acting CEO.

Its worth noting that although the catalyst for this move is undoubtably the faltering 6pm newshour, the bigger problem for Ten has been the miss-step that is One HD which is trying to attract an audience for sport which just isn't there - the sports audience has been a vocal minority for quite some time.

Also, whilst their strategy with 11 has actually been quite sound, they don't have the mainstream following on the main channel to actually back it up. What I'm trying to say it with 7 and 9 their main audience is adults 25-54 who like middle of the road fare, both GO! and 7mate perfectly complement their main channels by offering targeted 16-39 shows and GEM and 7TWO catch the older viewers uncatered to by the mainstream channels with their heady mix of reruns and Old Brittania.

11 meanwhile is going after mostly the same audience as Ten, Ten (to its credit) has tried to skew older, entrenching US procedurals at 8.30 on every night but there's only so many mainstream viewers to go around and they're increasingly going for first run Australian shows over and above imported hits.

Essentially Ten needs to figure out who it's main channel is aimed at and then somehow come up with a compelling offering for those folks.

One thing is for certain, it will be very interesting to see what happens with both Ten and One over the next year - I've heard many incredible suggestions from dedicated music and movie channels to turning one of the channels over to Packer/Murdoch owned Sky News Australia, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

My Kitchen Pwns

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

I had no idea that My Kitchen Rules was supposed to be on 3 nights a week - but why not with ratings like this - the reality skein just goes from strength to strength taking out not only the Biggest Loser - knocking it under a million but also (incredibly) a new episode of The Big Bang Theory.



Big Bang's lead-out, Mike & Molly held up well considering the depressed lead-in and Farmer Wants a Wife actually improved on the figure slightly but Nine won't be happy with its performance.

Indeed given the amount of advanced promotion (an admittedly stupid promo though) that Farmer has received compared to Criminal Minds - they really got shafted.

Almost tying Farmer Wants a Wife for second in the slot was the new Adam Hill's show which posted a really good (for the ABC) 889K.

City Homicide will soon be drawing a chalk outline around itself with a woeful 663K but then again nothing at 9.30 did that well even the usually reliable RPA faltered with only 744,000.

On digital Neighbours was again the top show with 7TWO's British dramas and All New Simpsons rounding out the top five - look at how an all new Simpsons ep reduces the audience for Family Guy by 50,000 viewers!

Finally it's worth noting that Two and a Half Men lost 140,000 from ACA and came fourth in its slot behind the 7PM Project, Nine might have to start looking for a 7PM alternative which is not going to be easy.

Sunday Bloody Sunday!

A return to Monday nights is just what City Homicide needed after being put under the pump on Sundays earlier this year.

Seven's cavalier attitude to scheduling sometimes does more harm than good, Homicide at one time owned Monday nights before Seven decided to move it to Sundays out of the way of Underbelly, probably a shrewd move but given that Homicide's core audience is over 50 that sort of timeslot juggling doesn't go down well with that crowd.

At any rate after the ill fated Sunday experiment the show is back and returning to prominence on Monday nights, more importantly it is reviving the fortunes of Seven's Crime Investigation Australia ripoff - Beyond the Darklands, itself a victim of a catastophic Sunday sojourn earlier in the year!

Ten, riding low at the moment thanks to the slow-burning 7pm slot (yes I'm being generous here) almost, almost had a good night with Idol and Good News Week both doing nice numbers.

I say almost because the whole thing was brought undone with Dexter. This show has an admittedly clever premise (the hero is a serial killer who only kills bad guys - yay!) but it has three strikes against it:

a) It comes on after 2 hours of family friendly light entertainment, the endless pile of carcasses of high-brow shows after Rove on a Sunday night should be an indicator of what happens to this kind of show on Ten
b) It's already aired on (Premium) cable
c) It's already out on DVD - you only have to witness the buzz about True Blood, a violent, sexy vampire epic from HBO which was unleashed on DVD barely a month ago to realise that people who want to see these shows are seeking them out and not waiting for the networks to get around to it.

Even more baffling is that Ten decided to schedule it 9.30 Mondays after it failed earlier this year also at 9.30 Mondays!!! There's just no excuse!

Nine was engaging in some state to state weirdness last night - the show Drop Dead Diva has been dropped in some (read WIN) markets in favour of The Mentalist (like that hasn't been repeated enough!) while Adelaide inexplicably dropped The Big Bang Theory for a reality show called Animal Emergency - what on Earth were they hoping to gain from that?

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)

The Twilight Phenomenon - Sunday 29 March 2009

Ten made off like a bandit yesterday recording only second nightly win of the season, again thanks to sport.

The network’s coverage of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix ran into prime time in Melbourne and Sydney resulting in a later start time for the Biggest Loser and a boosted audience to boot!

TBL was up 131,000 week on week hitting a season high 1.4 million viewers, So You Think You Can Dance also found favour with 1.3 million watching over the two hours.

Nine’s best was 60 Minutes which has settled at the 1.2 million mark so far this season – while City Homicide matched the Dance audience and pushed CSI into third place.

Border Security was the night’s top show (screening at 8.30 in Perth) with 1.5 million viewers. Sunday Night, seven’s newsmagazine went head to head with 60 Minutes in Perth (due to an AFL twilight match), it came third in that market with 60 minutes first in the slot for Western Viewers.

Overall it was a very close night with no discernable turkeys, there was barely 100,000 viewers between first and third place all night, a testament to sound programming from all quarters.

To Catch a Killer (in a later timeslot) Sunday 15 March 2009

Uh wow, I never thought I could declare Dexter a timeslot winner, but I guess moving to 11pm does wonders for a show, what’s more bizarre is its against the show which consigned it to late night to begin with!! Most of its followers having followed it to Sunday Night

Rove too had an impressive night for a late start. Starting after 9.30 doesn’t tend to favour that show but somehow he pulled off a nice win, perhaps an increase in younger viewers confined to the house in light of bad weather in the nation’s two largest cities is to blame.

City Homicide sunk beneath CSI both of which are far away from their series’ peaks, meanwhile Border Security continues to go from strength to strength and in a surprise result Domestic Blitz had a revival after looking very poor the previous Sunday.

With so many shows inexplicably up or down on the previous week the only trend that seems to be emerging on Sunday nights is a very close contest from all networks, Programs are winning timeslots with barely a hair’s breadth between them.

I've gotta follow an act like that? Sunday 1 March 2009

Second Sunday with all shows on deck and Seven shows a big week on week improvement, with City Homicide recording a half hour win and an increase of 165,000 viewers, Border Security scared an additional 122,000 people, Triple Zero Heores was up 92,000 and won its timeslot, Sunday night added 103,000 people from last week and even Bones clocked an extra 116,000 living persons to its tally.

Over on Ten both Loser (-11,000) and Dance (-18,000) had negligible losses while Rove, half an hour earlier this week rakes in an extra 103,000 folks – I have no doubt Rove’s figure spikes for Petespace and the fake news segments they do at the start so the early start time is a clear benefit.

More troubling is what to do after Rove, cops shows don’t work (see NCIS), esoteric comedy flops (Californication), right now Ten is trying out movies with very poor results, after two years of Rove ten continues to have these woes in the 9.30/10pm slot, what is worse this year is than in two months they face an additional hour long hole in their Sunday night when Dance and Loser wrap up, Masterchef will only be filling one of those hours (place your bets now on whether it will be 6.30 or 7.30!)

Over on Nine they had one thing to smile about and a lot of things to worry about, first of all they can smile about CSI Miami up 158,000 viewers week on week and looking quite respectable for a 9.30 show, but their early evening lineup is floundering – Domestic Blitz has never faced the Biggest Loser before and it would seem that weight-loss comp is taking the shine off those renovators, meanwhile as the oldest thing on television 60 minutes is being hit by fresher competition – although still keeping its head above water it took a hit of 128,000 viewers the night’s biggest decline.

It’s on now!! Sunday 22 February 2009

What a night last night, very close between all nets with some unexpected results.

Firstly, viewership was well down on comparable Sunday nights with the 7pm timeslot barely breaking 4 million viewers.

Seven had a terrible night, after two solid weeks of domination over Sunday nights Nine moved in on their turf and did some real damage to their shows, Sunday Night down 264k, Border Security – a timeslot win but down 142k week on week, Triple Zero Heroes down 241k, City Homicide down 115k and third in its timeslot behind CSI, which last year it managed to hold a bay, Bones (although a rerun) was down 245k week on week.

Now in one sense they can be pleased because they are up against strong competion and Border Security managed to beat 60 minutes (or is that 90 minutes), but Border Security is a half hour show and 60 minutes can be dipped in and out of easily.

The City Homicide result is a much bigger problem – here they have a show which was pulling 1.8 million viewers a week in it’s Monday night timeslot last year – until Nine got smart and moved perrenial spoiler CSI up against it, draining the show’s audience, Seven does have an advantage in that they have more Homicide up their sleeves than Nine does fresh CSI eps, but even so without CSI as competition, interest seems to have waned over the summer.

Sunday Night is another problem, just as a casual TV viewer last week (and I watched a bit of Seven on Wednesday and Thursday nights) I couldn’t tell what their stories would be on Sunday Night this week, whereas generally Nine loudly trumpets what their doing on 60 minutes from week to week – perhaps Seven need to promote it more, because of all the shows in that 6.30 timeslot the most promoted (and most memorable promo) was The Biggest Loser and the results (a massive 607,000 switch-on) speaks for itself, especially after a week of lackluster ratings for the reality comp.

60 minutes also is going to have problems – only 1.2 million for a 30th anniversary special?? That’s not an encouraging sign at all! What’s worse is that this television milestone was beaten by So You Think You Can Dance!!! I won’t be holding my breath for the Nine press release on that one!

Find that show!
I know you all love this game, and channel Nine loves you to play it – this is where we follow that show, this time CSI Miami, from a 9.30 Thursday timeslot where it won with 884k, they only lost 3,000 people with the move to Sunday nights – so all in all not a bad result for them but unfortunately for viewers – this will only encourage them to keep playing the game!

A Rising Tide - Sunday 15 February 2009

Another Sunday, another cricket match for Nine and a boost in viewers all around with all commercial nets averaging over 1 million viewers for the four hour prime time last night.

Seven can consider their Sunday night a success with Border Security and Triple Zero Heroes looking like Sunday hits, and Sunday Night losing Sydney but winning Melbourne in it’s first stoush with Domestic Blitz.

Not so lucky was City Homicide whose older Audience spent the second week in a row glued to the cricket – we’ll no more once its regular competition (CSI) moves in from next week.

So You Think You Can Dance had a great night last night with the first live performance and The Biggest Loser Weigh In improved Week on Week.

Also smart on Ten’s part was the decision to return The Simpsons to 6pm Sunday, although keeping Out of the Blue at 5.30 at the expense of Sport Tonight is still hurting their ratings in that slot.

Rove, too is hurting, unable to hurdle a rerun of Bones, one of the most boring procedurals this side of Crossing Jordan!!

Primetime Preview: Sundays

You may have noticed I haven't posted any updates for a few days, I decided a few days back that the info coming through this week (the second week of the tennis) was pretty sparse and would be distorted due to the sports, whereas next week (the first week of February and the last week of non ratings) would be the first major test for a lot of new and returning shows.

So lets go through what we know about returning shows in the new season - what's coming and when it'll be and most Importantly what the match-ups are...

Let's start with Sunday Nights

6.30-7.30
Sunday Night vs Domestic Blitz vs The Biggest Loser

The Unknown quantity on this night is Sunday Night a new newsmagazine from Seven. To be co-hosted from Nine defector (or is that retiree) Mike Munro, the show has an impressive roster of reporters and a one hour jump on 60 minutes foreshadowing a possible upset on this night, which has long been Nine's to lose.

Nine are slotting in Domestic Blitz, a 'feel good' renovation program (an offshoot of onetime hit Backyard Blitz) which had a successful run in this slot last year and an even bigger Monday night special late last year.

Ten, for it's part returns with the mega successful Biggest Loser with a new innovation, the contestants are all in couples which is sure to pack even more emotional punch for a show which is equal parts reality contest and maudlin tearjerker.

The hot tip...
Every show has an equal chance here - there will be a curiosity factor about Sunday Night, but ultimately that show will succeed or fail on the choice and presentation of it's stories. Without another gardening show to dampen it's aud, Backyard Blitz could run away with the slot and yet I still feel that The Biggest Loser has another big season in the tank, it will be the first show out of the blocks (this Sunday) and has a habit of building over the course of the season - however Sundays are typically it's weakest night.

On balance though - I'm going to say Backyard Blitz

7.30 - 8.30
Border Security/Triple Zero Heroes vs 60 Minutes vs So You Think You Can Dance

Again it's seven taking a leap into the unknown moving one of their proven hits (Border Security) into the path of ongoing freight train that is 60 minutes.

Put aside the dancers for a minute - that show has it's own young audience which will probably eclipse the other shows on the night - the actual timeslot battle will be between 60 minutes and Border Security - each fighting tooth and nail for the old curmudgeon audience, joined in the battle no doubt by the ABC and their endless reams of old skewing Sunday fare.

Seven has taken Border Security out of the frying pan and thrown it into the fire and I'm not sure which viewers are going to choose - my instinct says BS, which frankly could mean either show!

After the customs thing Seven goes to reality playbook and looks up rescue 911 to produce Triple Zero Heroes - I expect this to be huge - there has been a lot of pre-show buzz and this may even pick up viewers that Border Security does not have as this kind of ordinary folks in every day jeopardy stuff will skew a lot more female than people getting cavity searches.

The hot tip...
I think So You Think You Can Dance will dominate but even it could be shaded by Triple Zero Heroes which will probably exploit an untapped vein of this reality programming. The more interesting test will be whether Border Security can be a stayer against the ultimate marathon runner: 60 minutes. Me thinks that ticking clock is going to have to sing for it's supper this year...

8.30 - 9.30
City Homicide vs CSI Miami vs So You Think You Can Dance

This is weird Nine and Seven have just moved their Monday night fight to Sundays - Nine will come a close second to Seven on this one (although Seven will get a scare on William Peterson's last ep) This paves the way for Dance to cut through as the alternative but something tells me it'll be City Homicide with the other two fighting over second place.

The hot tip...
Yep City Homicide in a rerun of late last year's 8.30 monday battle.

9.30 - 10.30
Bones vs TBA vs Rove

Bones will follow its previous lead in all the way to Sundays pitting it against Rove on Ten and whatever Nine pulls out of the cupboard. Smart money is on Nine debuting Eleventh Hour in this slot (given the Bruckheimer pedigree a CSI lead in is on the cards) but Bones has been a dominant force wherever it goes in the last few months and with the City Homicide lead in I expect it to continue pulling a crowd.

The hot tip
Bones - mediocrity always wins!

Cross Promotional Blitz - Monday 10 November 2008

Ah the joys of cross promotion, take Backyard Blitz a program which specialises in taking hard luck cases and transforming their backyard (cuz what you really need when your life is shit is a bird fountain and a patio right?).

As if this winning formula wasn’t enough to bring in the hordes, Channel Nine decided to combine the power of their shows by locating one such unfortunate family whose daughter was profiled on a 60 minutes story about Tourette’s syndrome, and give their house the makeover.

It is actually very clever programming and combined with zero competition it did the business for Nine last night.

Not doing the business however was just about everything else scheduled. CSI lost almost 70% of that golden lead in getting beaten into a baffling second place by Enough Rope. In America CSI still attracts 18 million people per new episode – these episodes are FAST TRACKED virtually days after the US broadcast and yet Nine can’t seem to muster up much interest.

Even worse is the result for Cold Case, not so bad given the 10pm start but really, they can do better than this. Did they even let people know it was on? The promotional departments at Nine and Ten seem to have packed up for the year.

Proving that not all television viewers are lobotomy survivors the 7.30 report beat The Rich List into third place (in the slot) which itself beat Idol back to fourth.

What is remarkable is that just like water – a lot of Monday shows seem to have found their own level, The Rich List seems frozen under 1 million, Aus Idol results always garners around 200,000 less than the Sunday show, Supernatural always loses 150 – 200,000 people from Good News Week. Even Will & Grace has hit a ceiling stagnating week to week. If Ten could get a show together at 7pm that attracts 1 million viewers then they might have a decent shot but right now they’re relying solely on the core audience for their prime time shows and as we can see here – that isn’t enough.

Seriously F*cked – Monday 13 October 2008

Ten Execs could have been forgiven for having some optimism going into Monday night – their Sunday night performed nicely and Good News Week was coming back to take back some audience share.

The only thing Ten didn’t count on was Channel Nine…

Nine Launched a bold assault to take on Seven’s dominant Monday lineup with the return of CSI and Cold Case. It wasn’t a win but it really did some considerable damage leeching away all of City Homicide’s younger viewers blasting the show into third place for the all important 18-49 Demographic and propelling CSI into first place for 18-49 and a very close second overall. This is the first time in a long time where someone has fought fire with fire and it has paid off so Nine can be pleased.

Nine, or anyone else for that matter cannot be pleased with what happened next – perhaps everyone is just exhausted after a big Monday but the post 9.30 audience just evaporated with nothing over 1 million

Look at the comparison at 8.30 (excluding SBS) there were 4,444,000 viewers watching FTA TV, at 9.30 that figure dropped dramatically to 3,434,000 – that’s over a million people switching off, to add insult to injury ABC beat the imported dramas with Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope which pulled 979,000 viewers. The 9.30 switch off is a worry these days – especially after a high yielding 8.30 hour.

Finally what to do about ten, a day ago David Leckie (he of Ch 7) boasted that Ch 9 was f&*$%d and Ch 10 was the Pocket Money network. Given that Cold Case, a well established favourite with higher peaks than Bones has ever achieved was wiped by the low rent Fox procedural and given that two Channel Ten former hits Australian Idol and Good News Week are being pushed into Pay TV territory – he may be onto something.

For the record – Channel Ten had decent 18-49 results but that doesn’t excuse a night that never even got off the ground. Shameful.

What Went Wrong - Monday 6 October 2008

Hello and welcome to the first of many pointless rants about the state of television in Australia. As good a place to start as any is with the nightly ratings so lets have a look...



Clearly this is going to be the trend for the remainder of the year, Seven is entrenched as the number one network thanks to it's command of the elderly with their doco-dramas in the 7.30 hour leading into the very popular City Homicide.

At the other end of the spectrum channel ten is failing to fire with of all things, Australian Idol. The Monday night results show (apart from being a bloated spectacle) is really only holding onto the core of supporters for this program, much like Big Brother earlier in the year. The question now becomes with the law of diminishing return well and truly in force for Australian Idol, will Ten pull the plug this year or will we see yet another "retooling" (ie: Adding more tools) in 2009?

Supernatural returned and it too has experienced an Audience decline, in fact if you look at audiences across the board the biggest declines seem to be hitting fast-tracked shows (ie: US programs broadcast very soon after their original air-date) surely this does not bode well for this practice continuing into the future.

Bones continues on it's ride to mediocrity - here is a show that has been moved all over the place, shelved and retried in half a dozen different timeslots and yet it still maintains a decent audience. It's probably not ideal for Seven (it loses a lot of it's City Homicide lead in - yet a lot of those people are probably off to bed) but it's strongest show in 9.30 at the moment.

Another bright spot is the performance of Til Death which has improved week on week. Nine is desperately trying to get it to work because it can see (through the logic defying ratings of Two and a Half Men) that people are trending towards sitcoms and light entertainment rather than drama, if they stick with Til Death and promote it - it should start to bat above a million viewers and re-establish a comedy night on Monday for Nine. Expect it to pick up even more when new CSI shows up next Monday night.