Steady as she goes

Pretty standard Thursday as far as Thursdays go, with the networks settling into a pattern for this night which remains one of Ten's weakest.

A few weeks back I was concerned at the performance of Criminal Intent which used to be the timeslot leader for 8.30 Thursdays last year and now seems to struggle against the competition.

The whole night will get a shake up in two weeks with sophomore drama Rush getting a try out on Thursday nights just as Grey's Anatomy concludes for the year

The Ascent of Anatomy

A quick one for Thursday night with Ten taking a major hit to both Rules of Engagement (with both half hours down on the previous week) and Criminal Intent which seemed to lose viewers whilst the ABC gained them with an admittedly good doco series - the Ascent of Money

That same hour recorded a timeslot win for Grey's Anatomy which seems to managed to turn a ludicrous storyline into a half decent one and revived it fortunes somewhat holding it's audience from last week fairly well.

After looking halfway promising last week, Rules of Engagement has severely fallen away which is a pity, we need sitcoms on the air right now - they are the most endangered species on television right now overrun by cheap and nasty factual shows and endless cop dramas but they are one of the big categories for the new 09-10 US season, Nine, Ten and Seven need to bed down some sitcoms now in order to prepare the ground for what's coming, otherwise they'll miss the wave.

Scoreboard
Thursday 11 June 2009

Going Up
The Ascent of Money up 18.8% week on week
The 7.30 Report up 11.7%
The Simpsons (6pm) up 11.02%
Sunrise up 10.95%
Getaway up 8.82%
Catalyst up 8.42%
Ten News at Five up 8.39%

Going Down
Criminal Intent down 19.38%
Heroes down 19.07%
Rules of Engagement (8pm) down 17.89%
Rules of Engagement (7.30pm) down 11.44%
Medium down 9.64%

A 20 to 01 shot

Thursday 4 June 2009

Biggest Disappointments
Mask & Memory
ABC 9.30pm down on Q&A by 38.58%

Sunrise
Seven Early Morning down Week on Week by 12.21%

Biggest Improvements
Rules of Engagement
Ten 8pm up 50.96% on Worst Week

Medium
Ten 9.30pm up 23.89% week on week

Well here something encouraging – another sitcom it starting to connect with the public and lo and behold it’s one them old timey laugh track shows!

Rules of Engagement, currently in it’s 3rd season (if it doesn’t feel that old that’s because all of it’s seasons have been shortened due to the dearth of available half hour timeslots on CBS and ten only debuted the show in 2008 anyway) is starting to take off achieving some of it’s highest ratings yet.

While still 3rd in the 7.30 hour the removal of the also-ran Worst Week has turned Rules into a viable competitor

Now that that’s’s sorted and Medium is lifting Thursday nights are starting to become a close-run affair, even Criminal Intent lifted its game with a 20.58% increase week on week.

It’s also the only night of the week right now where Nine has any sort of dominance, the Footy Show is on a hot streak in the southern markets right now with 687,000 tuning in to the AFL vs 375,000 rugby league tragics.

Meanwhile my hat is off to 20 to 01, back in 2006 (the show’s second season) people were wondering whether Nine could sustain the series beyond it’s initial 7 episodes but lo an behold there have been 87 episodes (yet 87) since then and the show is still going strong! Kudos!

Weight gained is viewers lost

Thursday 21 May 2009
Nine dominated prime-time last night with what is possibly the dullest, cheapest lineup in all of prime time, a travel show, a clip show and a football themed talk show – this is what attracts the viewers on a Thursday night folks.

Seven won the battle of the imports with Private Practice improving a healthy 67,000 week on week and giving Seven some hope that the show (which looked pretty screwed only a few weeks back) has a future.

No doubt they’re all being helped out by Criminal Intent, last night’s Vincent D’Onofrio episode lost 82,000 on the previous week’s Jeff Goldblum instalment, I have a theory, and it’s a crackpot theory, that the Goren episodes are actually turning viewers off because of the actor’s very noticeable weight gain. I don’t know, well see where this goes, but viewers seem to be cooling on this show, just a little!

Abusing the fans

Thursday 7 May 2009
Lots of big changes on the Ten sked last night and not the same level of success.

Rules of Engagement, a sitcom which has had two curtailed seasons (it was a midseason launch then ran head on into the WGA Writer’s Strike) returned to less than spectacular numbers allowing Nine and Seven to divide the hour amongst themselves with Bondi Vet falling away on the back of a poor lead-in.

Criminal Intent returned to SVU like ratings, but beaten handsomely by a 20 to 01 rerun, the 8.30pm hour was hotly contested last night with 4,322,000 people tuned in across the hour, the ABC benefiting from a retrospective special on Media Watch, a 15 minutes a week that tabloid journalists dread and a show whose attention from the news media is inversely proportional to its miniscule running time! The special pulled 911,000 viewers, one of Aunty’s best performances in this slot all year.

Medium moved nights to Thursdays, dropping from last week’s occupant (an SVU rerun) by 154,000 viewers but improving on Life on Mars’ sliding ratings and improving on its own ratings which were stuck under 700,000 on a low viewing Friday night. After last night there are 7 episodes left in the current season, after which they could virtually rerun the show in this slot for the rest of the year and it would probably produce a similar, if not better, number.

Medium’s debut adversely affected Private Practice. Last night I actually sat through an episode of Grey’s Anatomy to see whether I was missing anything (and no I wasn’t) but a new disturbing trick I noticed was that Grey’s Anatomy faded to black (no logo, or EP credit or anything) and then bang, right onto Private Practice, there was no promo for next week’s episode just a jarring jump to the next show.

To whoever is in charge of playout at the Seven network – this is abuse of the fans of this show – and I hasten to add, I am not one of them, but if my favourite show ended on a dramatic note and I didn’t get that space of the credits, or a promo to decompress and reflect on what I just saw, well that’s just low.

I get accelerated flow, In fact I’m a big fan of the kind of accelerated flow that American Networks practiced in the 90’s, back then the credits were all uniform (and yes off to one side, but legible) a promo for a related show would play and then you’d get a quick bumper to flag the next program, none of this jumping straight onto the next show – that is just arse.

So faceless Seven executive, just think about what you’re doing, by denying Grey’s Anatomy fans their show as a whole, you’re not only turning them away but you’re also hurting the prospects of the show you’re trying to promote, just look at the ratings (especially for Private Practice) it isn’t working!

Finally congrats to the AFL Footy Show had a big victory at 9.30 mostly thanks to some sort of heavily publicised stunt where Sam Newman got tarred and feathered! Meanwhile one of the stars of the NRL version seems to had serious allegations made against them to be aired at a future date on Four Corners – would somebody just can the Rugby League version already!

2009 - Week 2 - The Shows

Here's a breakdown off everything scripted for the 6th week of summer, as usual NCIS and a handful of sitcoms are dominant across the cities

Crime Pays - Thursday 8 January 2009

Even through summer – the audience for crime drama continues to be strong – witness the figures for the Law & Order reruns and Cold Case, hell even SBS’s Carla Cametti PD pulled an impressive (for them) 457,000 viewers.

Nine, however, has made a terrible misstep this summer with their handling of Cold Case, the show won it’s timeslot against Ten in the first few airings – then someone at Nine had the bright idea to use the timeslot to promote The Secret Millionaire, one of their many lukewarm ideas which they’re trying to push in these “troubled times”

I wonder whether it was worth displacing one of the few shows actually firing for them this summer, since it’s return it has struggled against the more regularly scheduled SVU. Last night was the show’s 6th season premiere and yet it only managed 859,000 – pretty woeful for a new ep of an established rater – thing is though – if you keep moving a show all around the map people will give up and watch something else.

Another case in point was Heroes – I didn’t even know it was on last night, it hasn’t been on for weeks and now it comes back to a 9.30 timeslot after months at 10.30, with next to no promotion, and they wonder why they’re in last. No doubt next week I’ll tune in at 9.30 looking for another episode and instead find “Out of the Question” or some other rubbish.

Grrrrrr.

Blame Big Brother - Monday 15 December 2008

You know sometimes networks make weird decisions, the last few weeks channel ten has been in a state of panic worse than a Wall Street broker with all his money tied up with Lehman Bros.

Whatever they try on Mondays it isn’t working.

In the 90s US network CBS had a great slogan “If its Mondays – It must be CBS” well it certainly isn’t Ten. Big Brother has effectively their Monday Nights in 2008.

If we look at the early part of the year Ten were riding high on Mondays with So You Think You Can Dance and Good News Week, this pair of shows were posting healthy figures throughout.

When Dance came to an end in stepped 7 year veteran Big Brother. Big Brother has always been a force on Mondays – the show killed Nine’s Monday comedy hour after Friends departed with the pithy and often exciting Nomination shows both entertaining fans and frustrating others with their constant overruns screwing with their TV viewing.

In 2008 Ten changed the game and came unstuck. In an effort to revamp BB they ditched the traditional Nomination-Elimination structure of the show – for this season viewers would ring to protect their favourites and the three with the lowest votes were up for eviction with the housemates having the final say.

On paper it looks like a refreshing change to the old formula which often proved frustrating for followers of the show when nomination was in the hands of the housemates.

But in practice it removed that vital Monday Nominations a great opportunity to get into the housemates heads and see how they tick, there was also some real suspense involved to see who would be up that week and the previous night’s evictee was invited along for special comments.

In 2008 this was dropped and instead the Daily Show at 7pm was extended to an hour with a new import ‘How to look good naked’ filling out the hour.

It was a ratings disaster and the absence of Nominations was, I believe, one of the factors behind Big Brother’s rapid decline in 2008.

While BB and Carson Kressley were driving viewers away from the resilient Good News Week, the 9.30 show, Big Brother Big Mouth with proven showkiller Tony Squires gave whoever was left at that time a good excuse to try another network.

Thanks to this awful show a lot of people developed new TV habits on a Monday night. One of those habits was Bones over on Seven which was last night the top prime time show!

With Big Brother out of the way Idol came back and after a brief surge of interest for the auditions wrestled with a new hourlong verdict show that dragged on and on bleeding viewers along the way, Good News Week did well enough to keep it’s head above water at 8.30 especially in the face of competing real news over on the ABC with a resurgent 4 Corners.

At 9.30 Ten started playing dangerous games with a low-rated (US Cable) actioner with a very vocal fan base – Burn Notice couldn’t resuscitate Ten’s woeful 9.30 hour, nor could Supernatural a onetime megahit for ten scrounging for 1/3 of its original fanbase despite being fast tracked.

The year ended with Ten trialling the spin-off of 90210 (CW) first at 8.30 then eventually at 7.30. When an 8.30 debuts with less than 700,000 viewers you know the jig is up, Ten had managed to destroy Monday nights.

Now it’s summer and already there’s been 2 schedule changes (one that never made it to air!), first was pulling the planned screening of failed US drama Swingtown replacing it with another failed US drama The Ex List – after two weeks at 9.30 The Ex List was pulled new drama Army Wives moved to it’s slot and a second hour of Law & Order CI added, all the while ignoring the elephant in the room…

Carson Kressley is watchable and after the success of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (well for about a year anyway) Ten could certainly expect a turnout for his new show. Indeed in it’s debut the show did fire pulling 1,227,000 viewers but the numbers quickly fell away after the initial look.

Ten left their line up in place for two weeks, in week one it was clear that the Naked show was struggling against formidable competition at 7.30 but Army Wives lifted at 8.30

The Second week was worse – although Naked grew, Wives dropped from it’s lead in, a disastrous result, although it was the final night for The Howard Years which was significant summer competition. The Ex list fell into no-mans land under 500k – once that happens the plug is pulled.

Which leaves us with last night – Law & Order was brought in to shore up 8.30 – it didn’t do much of a job, perhaps the promotion was insufficient, perhaps people feel they’ve had enough law and enough order without adding a third night, perhaps it’s the third cop show in the timeslot creating a drain on the audience. Whatever the case it didn’t help much and Army Wives moving to 9.30 was a failure itself falling into the under 500k dead zone – will we see it next week?

My advice to Ten, Give Carson the flick and put a nice long movie on, or show a test pattern – can’t do much worse!

Law & Order: Interchange Bench - Thursday 11 December 2008

A very good Thursday for all networks with the numbers very even across primetime. After 7.30 Nine seemed to fare the best with older skewing original programming.

Cold Case continues to be the most popular series on Thursday nights. Having said that it’s also the series that lost the most viewers week on week with 100,000 deserters, The Closer had 60,000 folks bail. This kind of precipitation can be expected in December, but the other network’s shows stayed pretty even week on week.

Now onto one of the more baffling network moves, what is channel Ten doing? They got scared that CI took a beating from Cold Case so they did they swap-a-roo with SVU.

Last week Criminal Intent at 8.30 got 742,000 viewers, this week SVU at 9.30 got 745,000 viewers – a 3K gain.

Last week SVU at 9.30 got 829,000 viewers versus CI this week getting 821,000 so they lost 8K, that’s a net loss week on week of 5,000 viewers for their trouble.

Law & Order is so interchangeable it doesn’t seem to matter to viewers which show is where – they’ll tune in if nothing better is on, hence why the 9.30 hour with less competition (Reality and a US Cable Drama) is stronger than an 8.30 hour against two first run US Dramas.

Meh - Thursday 4 December 2008

A mostly unremarkable night except that the re-entry of Cold Case to Wednesday nights has upset the apple cart being the only prime time show to score over 1 million and knocking Law & Order Criminal Intent into third place in the slot, the Law & Order franchise regained it’s equilibrium with SVU however, although I’m much more interested to see how the original fares tonight in it’s new timeslot.

The Bold & the Beautiful held steady but Neighbours has dropped an awful lot over the course of the week. People will be quick to finger B&B as the cause of this decline but I think we can thank the warmer weather for keeping younger audiences (Neighbours main aud) away from the box in the early evening.

Nine’s factuals did alright and their place is most likely safe unlike Wednesday’s Deadly Surf which ended up drowning on it’s way across the Tasman Sea.

Both Ugly Betty and Eli Stone took a hit from their Tuesday airings – but that could be a reflection of Thursday’s older skew and smaller crowd.

TV After People – Thursday 27 November 2008

For a real demonstration of what happens when all the people desert television then check back on Friday night’s ratings, last night there were still a few folks around though – with a fair few of them watching what would happen to the earth if we all died (Yehaah!)

Of course with a choice between one of the fairy floss E! specials on teenage celebrities vs a decrepit travel infomercial you can see how people made their choice. Because the Seven special (originally from the US History Channel) went for 90 minutes every other slot looks out of whack on this chart!

Nine went to cable for their 8.30 hour with a “new” (for FTA only viewers) Crime Investigation Australia, this series is the flagship of CI: The Crime & Investigation Network, which has been one of Pay TV’s most successful channels climbing up the ranks to become one of the most watched despite being offered on a discretionary tier by most providers.

The strong performance by CI put the hurt on Criminal Intent’s season finale – slightly dampening an otherwise stellar season, the show will continue in reruns over summer along with stable mate SVU.

Heroes did the best of the late night shows despite not starting until 11pm, although all shows were down on last weeks numbers.

Learning the hard way – Thursday 13 November 2008

Nine had a much healthier night last night than the previous Thursday thanks to This is Your Life a show which just will not go away and with 1.2 million viewers you can see why. Nine night of unscripted baby-boomer television (they had the exact same schedule as this in the 1990s) paid off for them handsomely – the only fly in their ointment was the move of The Strip to 10.30 where is more than halved it’s audience.

The Strip is the second locally made drama that Nine has benched this year after the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ Canal Road sunk on Wednesdays. Although The Strip premiered to a large audience on a largely uncontested night it has been outclassed on subsequent occasions by the long running Criminal Intent on Ten and even more recently, by The Amazing Race on Seven.

Although channel Ten’s Rush (which premiered in the same week as The Strip) has generally bowed to lower numbers, it is in a tougher timeslot on a network with virtually no hits so it has been renewed for a second season, after moving The Strip to 10.30 I don’t expect a renewal from Nine.

Ten’s early evening is in the doldrums, at first you might wonder why 5th Grader was renewed for a third season in the face of low ratings, but look at the lead in. 5th Grader lifts a hefty 300,000 viewers from it’s paltry starting point – the only other regular show on TV that does more heavy lifting from the lead in would be the news, so the renewal is justified. If Ten gets a decent 7pm show next year then 5th Grader will outperform it’s competition in this slot, the question is – what does Ten have planned for the final third of 2009?

The real standout of the night though is the continuing success of Criminal Intent, on a network which people are avoiding like the plague what lessons can be gleaned from the standout performance of this procedural when so many of Ten’s other hits are faltering?

Lesson 1: Schedule your show straight through
In the old days in Australia TV series (of 22 episodes or more) would be played from beginning to end without interruption, if the show was popular it would be then rerun in the same timeslot for the remainder of the 42 week season, or programmers would schedule another show to take it’s place.

This used to be a viable way to run the Australian industry because movie’s were popular and most networks scheduled movies on up 5 nights a week, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays were reserved for adult dramas post 8.30. After 1995 this started to change with Pay TV adding yet another layer to movie distribution most networks quickly expanded their schedules to keep movies to the weekend.

Also in the late 90’s Australian Networks started treating the two week Easter Break as a chance to take a holiday, pre-empt series and schedule repeats once they did this for a while they got the idea to stretch out their seasons in much the same way that US networks do for their viewers.

In the US this practice is necessitated by the physical time it takes to actually make these shows, When their season starts most TV shows may only have 5 or 6 episodes in the can, with a 10 day schedule for drama filming and a 3 weeks on, one week off schedule for sitcom tapings these shows would quickly run out of episodes for their American audience if it weren’t for midseason reruns.

Here in Australia this was being done when networks already had entire seasons at their disposal (due to the February start time) so it just became insulting. Of course now in the age of Fast Tracking we are going to be subject to these on/off schedules whether we like it or not!

At any rate Law & Order Criminal Intent is rating better than most Fast Tracked shows and these episodes are at least 6 months behind their original stateside broadcast, but they are being shown at a regular time every single week, no reruns, no mucking around.

Lesson 2: Pick your night well
First thing that strikes you about Thursday night is than unlike Ten’s previous attempts to schedule Criminal Intent on Sundays – on Thursdays there are no other procedurals, there is no CSI and no Criminal Minds, in fact last night there was no other drama in the slot. Contrast this to House, floundering on Wednesdays against 2 other dramas or Rush fighting off a very popular Australian drama in the same slot – in these days of spare audiences you cannot afford to outgun the opposition at every turn – sometimes you need to program smartly.

Lesson 3: Stick to your timeslot
Ten is better at this than most (I’m looking right at you Seven) but it has helped Criminal Intent that it is regularly scheduled so that people intuitively know when it is on – barely anyone looks at a TV guide any more so you need to keep shows in their place if you any chance of the audience finding them.

Lesson 4: No Frills Necessary
Criminal Intent is the first Ten show in a while that doesn’t seem to be promoted as some sort of Event TV™ in fact the promos are decidedly low key – this is something that always struck me about channel Nine during it’s 1990’s hegemony – their promos were never, never flashy or bold, they just told you what was going on enough to whet your appetite, no tiresome hype.

Lesson 5: Don’t Kill the Golden Goose
I’m a little surprised at this actually that we haven’t seen multiple nights of Criminal Intent given it’s the only thing rating on Ten at the moment. Earlier this year Nine hit paydirt with Gordon Ramsay – they scheduled him once a week, then twice, then on three nights, finally four until the viewers got sick of it and the fad flamed out. They’re doing the same thing with Two and a Half Men but people are still lapping it up – partially because the overall audience for the Charlie Sheen sitcom would be a lot bigger than even it’s highest rating night – people are watching it at a time that suits them.

Ten has already killed the longevity of The Simpsons, they’ve buggered up Thank God You’re Here with the same action, and trying their best to mame NCIS in the same fashion, but they haven’t touched CI.

When you start scheduling a hit show at multiple points per week two things happen, first of all viewers binge on the show, who wouldn’t – you’re favourite show on multiple times a week - but like any good binge it’s that much easier to get sick and never want to partake again. After you’re conditioned to expect multiple airings it becomes OK to miss an episode because ‘they’re bound to repeat it later’ this is when the law of diminishing returns kicks in – it has hit almost every major success story that has ever been flogged to death and it’s a practice that programmers should avoid if their thinking long term.

So that five things Ten is doing right with Law & Order maybe they can take this model and expand on it in 2009 by treating the viewer and their assets with respect.

Seven Bones Nine - Thursday 6 November 2008

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this Thursday struggle was not how Seven has gotten it’s game back, or the fact that Criminal Intent (Ten’s quiet achiever) performs much better when Det. Goren is featured, but that Nine has completely fallen apart.

Obviously on a night with such low viewer turnout, large variations can be caused by small groups of survey homes but some of the falls are shocking, RPA fell by over 200,000 viewers week on week, Getaway by 81,000, The Strip by 146,000.

The 9.30 hour proves Seven’s dominance more than anything this year, moving in the middle of the road Bones, Seven has seen their 9.30 audience spike by 318,000, where did those people come from? Well at least 140,000 of them switched from SVU on Ten and another 178,000 let say from RPA on Nine. Diabolical.

Even more worrying for Nine is the performance of A Current Affair less than 100,000 viewers away from third place.

Seven moving Heroes to 10.30 has resulted in a week on week rise of 50,000 viewers from Prison Break (427,000) and a timeslot win, but at what price? Last night’s episode was the best the series has pulled out since season one and represents a bit of a turning point (for me personally) story wise with the ‘big picture’ starting to make more sense.

Just as with Lost, Prison Break, Scrubs et al we might be forever left to wonder whether the show ratings demise was a function of the show, or Seven’s erratic scheduling.

Finally lets briefly look at Ten, Criminal Intent has been a solid achiever for then in the second half, well promoted, regularly scheduled it’s fan base has reconnected with the show after at least 2 seasons in the wilderness which is good news for Ten, expect this night to remain in the hands of the Law & Order franchise next year.

However, the 7.30 timeslot is totally up for grabs, the low ratings for all shows suggest that at 7.30 Thursday: what networks are offering, the viewers ain’t buying.

You have a cookie-cutter reality comp vs an ageing travelougue vs Rove McManus hosting a game show. Where is the fucking entertainment here people??? No wonder Kerry O’Brien draws even with this mob, first one to put something scripted in this slot should win it hands down.

Finally Will & Grace, now this is a story with two sides, first of all, Week on Week the show is up by 134,000 viewers, that’s good, it demonstrates that people are discovering the show, and none of the other 7pm shows are down on last weeks figures by any great margin so it suggests new viewers coming to the TV, now we have to wait before we can declare a trend but it’s a positive step.

Now, lets look at the other side of the coin, The Simpsons last night attracted 638,000 viewers at 6pm – that’s it’s highest audience in forever, Then the Neighbours crowd came along swelling this number by a further 148,000 people, then 7pm comes and whoosh they lose 210,000 viewers just like that – Ten’s 7pm show does worse than their 6pm show (at least last night)

So what should ten do? Well for now – sit tight, it’s almost summer, clearly someone has already made the decision not to schedule Out of the Blue at 7pm so they’ll stick with Will & Grace, nine will switch to Temptation and Ten’s sitcom may get a good run, maybe, but they’re fast running out of options for this slot.

Frankie J Holden is Missing - Thursday 23 October 2008

Leaving aside News Programs the number one show last night was ABC1’s The Prime Minister is Missing – a doco/dramatisation of the disappearance of Harold Holt and the bizarre Mexican standoff between the Liberal and National parties that ensued thereafter. A bit of national history is always a good rater for the ABC on a Thursday night, and last night was no different.

Happily for Seven and Ten their imports, Criminal Intent and The Amazing Race held up well against the doco but The Strip took a hit with 198,000 viewers fleeing the Gold Coast. They all came back, mind you, to see RPA which finally broached the million after several weeks in the doldrums.

Ten went 5 for the week (that is 5 shows over 1 million) and 5th Grader had a mild improvement of 100,000 viewers – note though that they had a “celebrity” contestant. This show always seems to pull better numbers when the contestant is known rather than a regular person.

The variable next week will be the 7pm slot. Friends has been languishing at 7pm (ever since it replaced Taken out) with half a million viewers, if Will & Grace doesn’t lift their 7pm to at least 800,000 or higher than Ten can write the rest of the year off.

Seven would be pleased with their 7.30 – 9.30 block, The Amazing Race is scoring for them on a night which they lost control of back in 2007 and Make Me a Supermodel is defying all expectations by keeping a respectable audience.

The disappointment is Heroes, it only shed 10,000 people week on week so that could be statistically insignificant but the current storyline, although featuring some kick ass moments and stunning twist, is confusing – even to the seasoned viewer – I found myself watching last night wondering whether particular scenes were set 4 years hence, present day, 1979, two weeks from now – I had no fucking idea – If I find it that hard to follow what are more casual viewers doing? Oh that’s right – they’re deserting it in droves.

Not exactly Seven’s fault this one, Kring and Co need to start unravelling some of the tightly wound plot, but more on that in a special review in the next day or so…

Thank God it's Thursday! - 16 October 2008

Or at least that's what the head honchos at Nine and Ten (especially Ten) would be saying after last night.

In fact Ten would be particularly pleased, one of the lowest rating nights of the week is also one of their strongest, with the Law & Order Franchise delivering the goods as people drop serialised dramas (like Heroes) and retreat to episodic crime procedurals.

Also significant is this marks the first time in weeks that Ten has had 5 shows over 1 million in the same week the other three being NCIS, Idol and Rove.

Less pleasing would be the performance of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? Which went from decent ratings in it's earlier 'celebrity focussed' outings to middling figures now, pulling what is now a 7.30 average for ten on a weeknight.

They would be none to pleased to be beaten by Make Me a Supermodel a concept which could best be described as Next Top Model with sms voting - which kind of defeats the whole purpose I think.

Shading them all was Getaway, from Getaway to RPA Nine only shedded 45,000 viewers which is not too shabby, Seven on the other hand kept a good chunk of viewers around for The Amazing Race - which has been given the 8.30 timeslot - something which should have been established years ago.

On the other hand Heroes seems to be quickly becoming a cult show, only problem for the fanboys is the only other outlet showing it at the moment is SciFi channel which is frustratingly broadcast in unglorious 4:3.

This is a sad outcome for a show which burst onto the scene in a competitive slot (8.30 Wednesday) with 2 million viewers but quickly lost steam, especially as Seven began to mess with the show, sticking it on Thursdays in two states and then on it's second season shunting it to 9.30 behind the incredibly boring Bionic Woman remake and then insulting loyal fans by withholding the final two episodes of the season for 8 months after fastracking the rest of the season.

Now that it's back people have been demotivated to watch. Serialised dramas need constant promotion and care by the network to keep up fan interest, if you start missing episodes then you're more inclined to give up the habit, and the best way to miss an episode is for a network (I'm looking right at you Seven) to screw with the scheduling.

Oh well - you reap what you sow I guess.

As for Prison Break, seven's one time golden child now laguishes at 10.30pm on a decent audience - but nowhere near it's first season hey day - for that however I don't blame seven, the show is a perfect 1 year concept dragged out too long, now it's so convoluted that most people couldn't care less anymore.

So for that one - blame the writers, and the greedy people who couldn't resist stringing it out for as long as possible in order to wring every last dollar from the idea!

Only the elderly – Thursday 9 October 2008

Only the elderly seem to be sticking around for a Thursday night, the evidence is that after 7.30 only one show broke 1 million viewers, Criminal Intent, once a ratings powerhouse, can still pull in the older generation enough to put it over the line.

By contrast Seven gave us a night aimed at younger viewers and came off worse for wear, Heroes seems to be suffering from the ennui which has hit almost all “fast-tracked” shows this spring – either that or a lot of people bailed out after the boring season 2.

Nine would have to disappointed with the numbers pulled by RPA – the show used to be able to draw a crowd at 9.30 like nobody’s business but now it’s either being hurt by The Strip, a local drama which is trying to be CSI Gold Coast but comes off more like Paradise Beach ’08, or it’s potential audience is satiated with Seven’s Medical Emergency a day earlier.

Just looking outside Prime Time for a moment – 4 shows aside from Criminal Intent pulled over 1 million, Sevens News & Today Tonight, Home & Away and Nine News. Given that Nine’s 6.30-7.30 hour skews younger than Seven’s we can assume that the under 40’s audience on a Thursday is drying up.