Balls-Out Bogans and other observations

Sunday, 29 May 2011

Well it's easy to see that the winner of the night was Seven, with their new series "Downtown Abbey" a period drama which will run for seven weeks (and have another series later this year).

Clearly everyone loves to see some toffey period action because it netted one of the biggest Sunday audiences of the year so far!


Monday, 30 May 2011

Virtually identical to last week, except No Ordinary Family actually added 70,000 viewers and Offspring and Masterchef went up as well. Winter is kicking in.

Over two hours Rescue: Special Ops actually did worse than last week's CSI double.


Tuesday, 31 May 2011

While a snarky part of me is happy to see a Lisa McCune drama fail (why couldn't it have been the sleep inducing Blue Heelers?) another, more reasonable part of me is baffled as to why Nine would pit this against Seven's top rating Tuesday slot. Seven has owned this night with Australian drama for years now.

There's no Aussie dramas on Wednesday or Thursday nights, why not try it there rather than unsuccessfully trying to divide (and supposedly conquer) your potential audience.

Oh BTW - Australia's Got Talent - biggest aud of the week at a shade under 2 million viewers - incredible.


Wednesday, 1 June 2011

I have to just put it out there. Mike & Molly is a flop, it pains me slightly cuz out of all the choices at 8pm on a Wednesday - it's what I watch, and its quite a decent show, but for whatever reason it is driving people away from Nine.

Big Bang Theory at 7.30 almost nets 1 million viewers and then the numbers fall off precipitously - recovering slightly for RPA, but not much.

Also what is the go with 9.30pm

Viewers at 8.30pm = 3,676,000
Viewers at 9.30pm = 2,604,000

That's a hell of a drop off and yet the digital netlets didn't feel it, all their 9.30 shows more or less maintained their lead in audiences, those viewers going to bed were all watching the analogue channels. Maybe the government is right to be putting set top boxes into pensioner's homes. Back to bed people!


Thursday, 2 June 2011.

Easily the biggest night for Digital TV, if you're wondering what it means when I've shaded a program green, it means their PEAK AUDIENCE was over 300,000 viewers, so you can be sure its a popular show.

GO! continues to prosper with its superior movie line-up, Charlie's Angels almost doubling last week's Miss Congeniality 2 (now you know why their hasn't been a #3).

Maybe Nine should think about putting RBT on Tuesdays and sending the less popular AFP onto Thursday night shopping duty. RBT shouldn't be good, its a show about the most boring minutae of police work - getting drivers to blow into a machine to test their blood alcohol. It should be boring, but for some reason the mix of balls-out bogans a... how funny is this - AS I AM WRITING THIS - a cop car has pulled someone over up the street from here and my street was flickering blue and red for a good 5 minutes. Naturally I hung out my window to see what was going on, and thus you can see the appeal of RBT.

The Shape of things to come

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Interesting that Thursday nights in the US are also a fight between Grey's Anatomy and CSI, also interesting that just as in the states both show are hurtling towards irrelevance at a breakneck speed.



Still they're doing better than The Good Wife which the space of a year in looks like its on the way out or at least to a later time.

At the moment with Ten if it's not NCIS its not attracting viewers to 8.30. In fact across the networks' extensive roster of US dramas only the long established shows are doing the business. Bones, NCIS, Criminal Minds - all these shows are old and replacements like Blue Bloods, Parenthood and Hawaii Five-O are struggling in comparison.

This does not bode well for the future when these aging hits finally shuffle off to cable reruns.

Over on Digital personal favourite Star Trek - The Next Generation is struggling inder the weight of its woeful early episodes, best for 11 is again The Simpsons, 7 can be happy with The Next Karate Kid which almost doubled the audience of last week's Karate Kid III and The Big Bang Theory continues to shine on GO!

6 of one, half a dozen of the other

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Now that we have so many new channels to choose from, counter-programming has never been more important. You need something to make your shows stand out from the pack. Its no good any more putting two sitcoms up against one another, you're diluting your potential audience.



Look at the public affairs shows, Sunday Night and 60 Minutes, they air in different timeslots and get roughly the same number of viewers - could you imagine if they were up against one another?

With that in mind, (and excuse my language) why on earth do we have this procedural cluster-fuck in the post 8.30 period. Bones, The Mentalist, NCIS, Castle, CSI, Hawaii Five-O, for all I care you could be describing the same damn show!

US drama relating to law enforcement, Self contained episodes, centering on Murder or serious criminal activity.

Individually any of these shows could clean up, but together they're fighting a pointless battle. While Bones keeps its head above a million, the performance of The Mentalist is kind of startling, and just when you think CSI Miami's 531,000 represents a new low point for 9.30 drama, along comes the much younger NCIS: LA to undercut it by 100,000 viewers.

Surely LA cannot last in this timeslot much longer and I suspect ten will swap it for something completely different (ie: a different genre) before Easter.

Also how much longer can Smallville last 8.30 Sundays on Channel 11 while drawing under 100K. That seemed to be the benchmark that got 90210 pulled on a Friday night. As a fan of Smallville it doesn't fill me with confidence for the show's future on Australian TV.

3 night weekend

Thursday, 10 February 2011

Well that's just appalling, Thursday is clearly STILL the day where the younger audience deserts the TV in favour of the box office and (in some states) late night shopping.

It has been like this for years, but multichannelling and audience erosion from Foxtel, PVRs, Consoles and the Internet have made it look even worse in recent times.

Nothing after 6.30 even scraped a million viewers.



Looking at the shows themselves, Seven seems to be pitching for younger viewers with How I Met Your Mother and Grey's Anatomy and by an large they're succeeding with those two shows taking the top slots for 18-49 and 16-39. Nine and Ten appear to be tussling over the older viewers with their crime procedurals but there's a bigger similarity between the nets

Save for The Good Wife and RBT, all of these shows are incredibly long in the tooth

Lets look at the stats

The Biggest Loser: 6th Season
How I Met Your Mother: 6th Season
Desperate Housewives: 7th Season
Grey's Anatomy: 7th Season
CSI: 11th Season
Law & Order SVU: 12th Season
Getaway: 20th Season

See a pattern - Thursday's are the TV God's Waiting Room. Shows that for whatever reason are profitible enough to keep going yet no longer the kind of water cooler cool that sustains shows that typically air Sunday - Wednesday

Even digital checks out on a Thursday - and though I'm personally happy to see TNG and The Golden Girls back in prime time, it does point to a night that Free to Air television has largely given up on.

I've been saying for years that Thursday is the new Friday night, but this schedule confirms it. Welcome to the weekend!

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.

The day Miss Marple kicked Laurence Fishburne's arse!

Sundays are becoming like a see-saw with Seven on one end, Nine on the other and Ten in the middle, at least that's the case with the 6.30 timeslot where Random Acts of Kindness and Sunday Night swapped places for 1st and 3rd in the slot with Merlin happily in the middle.

At 7.30 there's no contest, Masterchef is again posting such a gargantuan audience that it alone lifted Ten to a first place win for the night!

Bones at 8.30 shows no sign of slowing down but CSI, a show that one-time commanded two million plus audiences and was used by Nine to pulverise Ten's sunday night crime double of Criminal Intent and NCIS, was severly embarrased by the ancient Miss Marple on the ABC.

I personally haven't seen Miss Marple on TV since the early 90's but seemingly it keeps plugging on presumably only stopping every so often to change the lead actress (given the character is quite old) Miss Marple took CSI (the Baywatch of crime shows) to the cleaners with her old school sleuthing and made a meal out of all the 9.30 contenders also!

Nine was slightly redeemed in the 10.30 timeslot posting a magnificent 746,000 for a CSI Miami rerun!

A Double-Barrell shot of WTF

That’s right not one but two shocks as the cold weather sets in and the nation gathers around the electronic fireplace.

The first surprise is the behometh average for Ten’s Masterchef pulling an outrageous figure representing a massive 37.56% increase in audience week on week, that huge figure pretty much gave ten the night, with them recording their biggest audience for Rove in quite a while with 1,271,000 tuning in, Ten was only let down by the dissappointing US Biggest Loser which only managed an average of 443,000 viewers for the night.

Seven can be happy with their timeslot winning Bones/Castle duo with Bones recording one of it’s biggest audiences ever (1,349,000) this one time also-ran is now one of Seven’s star performers while former hits either struggle (Grey’s Anatomy) or have dissappeared without a trace (Lost, Prison Break, Heroes).

But the real story of Sunday Night was channel Nine, while CSI is still in the doldrums, a pitiful 771,000 tuned in to a new ep of CSI Miami, the scheduling here is completely baffling – in the past three weeks all three CSI’s have been in this 9.30 slot and none have performed well.

But I digress, the real story was Nine’s strategy to move the anaemic HomeMADE away from their premier night, they replaced it with a new reality skein – Random Act of Kindness. First of all I did not see it – but the haphazard scheduling combined with the cookie cutter concept and Seven & Ten’s dominance of 6.30 in the past few months made me think that we could expect another dissappointing failure.

Not so, Nine’s Random Acts randomly boosted their performance in the slot by a staggering 45.87%, that will probably hold up as the biggest increase of the week. What’s good about it is while Sunday Night dropped in total audience, it’s other competitors Merlin and ABC News both grew week on week meaning Nine’s show succeeded in (as Joe Hockey likes to say) Growing the Pie!

Sunday 14 June 2009
Scoreboard

Going Up
Random Acts of Kindness up 45.87% over HomeMADE
Masterchef up 37.56% week on week
Nine’s Sunday Rugby League up 29.98% week on week
60 Minutes up 27.52%
Nature’s Great Events up 22.53% over Bear Man of Kamchatka
The Simpsons (6pm rebroadcast) up 21.78%
Bones up 20.12%
Rove up 19.45%
3 Act of Murder up 18.59% over Ballet Shoes
Ten News at Five up 18.41%
CSI up 17.65%
Castle up 16.3%
Nine News Sunday up 15.78%
Merlin up 13.32%
CSI: Miami (10.30 episode) up 12.66% over CSI:NY
ABC News up 10.72%
Compass up 10.12%

Going Down
Today on Sunday down 57.79%
Serious Crash Unit down 11.16%
The Biggest Loser (USA) down 10.32%
Weekend Sunrise down 9.64%
Sunday Night down 9.25%

CSI: Time of Death

Sunday 7 June 2009



First of all, Monday is a public holiday - which automatically means that Sunday audiences will be down as people go out to fireworks or nightclubs or whatever. So even though the bulk of shows lost weight over last week it was to be expected, well mostly anyway.

Just like last week Ten did well with Merlin, Masterchef and Rove (and their decision to run Rove long won them the night) and Seven had great success with Sunday Night, Bones and Castle.

But Nine, Nine was having some trouble. Already they chosen to correctly single out HomeMADE a show which was a bit too late to the housing boom, that show is getting banished to Tuesdays, Nine's worst performing night.

But Nine's best minds need to now focus on what the fuck has happened with CSI!


This was once their flagship program, they have a rare commercial advantage with this show in that unlike NCIS, the Law & Orders, Bones, Desperate Housewives and half a dozen other current dramas, Nine is the only place on TV where you can see it. CSI does not show on cable, so it's audience can't be diluted by conventional means.

So what's going on? 810,000 viewers for two new episodes is a disaster! Plain & Simple. 4th place is a major disaster! I'm gonna call it...

Time of death 29 March 2009: that was the airdate of the first episode without Gil Grissom, which seems to be the moment a lot of viewers decided to say goodbye to the show.

Scoreboard

Biggest Drop
The Bear Man Of Kamchatka
ABC1 - 7.30pm
Fell 27% week on week on last week's Doctor Who Special

Biggest Lift
The Biggest Loser USA
Ten - 9.50pm
Rose 3% week on week

A doctorate in high ratings

Sunday 31 May 2009

Biggest Week on Week Disappointment
Weekend Sunrise
Seven Early Morning, down 194,000 viewers

Biggest Week on Week Disappointment (Prime Time)
Merlin
Ten 6.30pm, down 164,000 viewers

Biggest Week on Week Improvement
Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story
ABC1 8.30pm, up 224,000 viewers over the previous week’s episode of Dirt Game

Well there you go! A lot going on last night. Not only the return of Doctor Who, which unlike Star Trek, Stargate, Lost, Heroes or any other sci fi in this country, seems to have a large (probably older and more patient) following pushing the ABC over a million in that slot and doing some damage to Masterchef which was down by 107,000 viewers.

The other major story is the ascendance of Seven’s Sunday Night. Their current affairs flagship leaping 99,000 viewers week on week for a timeslot win and a comparison win against 60 minutes.

Nine’s post 8.30 fortunes took a beating with Bones a full 379,000 viewers clear of CSI (it was even beaten by Rove), Nine only managed to save face at 10.30 with CSI NY proving even more popular than The Evidence (a 152,000 week on week lift)

Big Week

Sunday 26 April 2009
Every April for the past several years Ten has a really big week, and this is the one, that’s when the finale of the Biggest Loser meets the premiere of Big Brother.

This year of course the scenario is a little different, Big Brother is no more, the show a victim of a myriad of bad decisions in the final season coupled with the standard viewer decline.

The Biggest Loser has surged in recent weeks and pulled in a very good result up 293,000 viewers week on week and 313,000 ahead of its nearest competition.

So You Think You Can Dance, by contrast, has limped along at times this year and although week on week it improved 281,000 viewers it struggled to hold sway against 60 Minutes and Seven’s The Force which has slotted into Sunday nights nicely.

Last Year the finale of Dance scored 1.8 million viewers, this year there were 416,000 less watching with an almost uniform decline in every capital.

What the show seemed to lack this season was buzz, if anything Biggest Loser had more press going in thanks to the behind the scenes antics of Ajay Rochester and Shannan Ponton whereas the dancing comp has been buzz-free since its return.

I’m not sure how ten can liven things up next year – some are suggesting a later start to the season, others are suggesting a new night.

Season three seems to be the point where ten starts mucking around with the format of these shows, for Big Brother season 3 saw the two-houses gimmick, Idol had change thrust upon it thanks to a Dicko defection, so the precedent is there, but also in both those cases a change in the format was followed by an audience decline.

A quick note that The Evidence seems to be doing well for Nine in the 10.30 hour and Bones actually beat CSI last night!! Perhaps people really were tuning in to see Grissom!

Remember to watch this space tomorrow, it’s gonna be a big night, the premiere of Masterchef, the finale of The Biggest Loser – up against, of all things, Underbelly, also the premiere of Eleventh Hour and Four Corners has a special on the recent Vic Bushfires which should see a good result for them.

Special

Sunday 19 April 2009
Well first night back after a two week break in television land (I had a one week break myself due mostly to a busy schedule and a temperamental internet connection, so my apologies if you were checking in here to no avail!)

After two weeks of phoning it in Nine and Seven roared in to split up the night amongst themselves, well check that – it mostly went to Nine, not sure what they were showing on 60 Minutes last night but the show had a big boost with 1.5 million tuning in, more surprising was the performance of Backyard Blitz, this show, rumoured to be already on the shelf, pulled of a timeslot win in what is one of the most volatile slots of the week.

It’s amazing how much the press is speculating on the fate of both blitz and Sunday Night when in reality there isn’t much difference in audience between the two, expect to see Sunday Night continue and Blitz to be back in some way, shape or form later in the year – it’s one of Nine’s more reliable shows.

Neither Bones, nor CSI set the world on fire at 8.30 but at least they can hold their head up high and feel good that they’re not Beyond the Darklands, anyone truly interested in the examination of serial killers on a Sunday night can tune into CI over on Foxtel and see some much higher profile subjects been tackled, a figure of 684,000 for channel seven at 9.30pm would be sending alarm bells to the programs makers – why they switched timeslots so early in the show’s run is one of those bone-brained decision which a certain “special” programmer seems to specialise in!

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.

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!

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.

Tenth Hour a shadow of it's former self - Thursday 6 November 2008 (US)

Thursday night is no longer the must see TV stonghold of days past. Survivor is the undisputed 8pm champion with 12 million tuning in, 5 million of those being under 40s. Incredibly watch how the total viewers rise for CSI whilst the 18-49 segment decreases! The reverse happens for ABC and NBC in the 9pm hour with Grey's Anatomy posting the biggest share of young adults for the night, followed by The Office.

The 10pm hour is just pitiful with nothing breaking through - in days gone by all the hottest shows with the most viewers were at 10pm, ER, NYPD Blue, Northern Exposure, LA Law, Law & Order, in fact 10pm was the drama hour - with shows registering audiences of 15 million up and sometimes up to 30 million, now the hour has more scripted dramas than ever before but nothing is standing out, to the point where even the faded ER is reaching more 18-49s than any of it's competition.

Lowering the Bar - Monday 3 November 2008

Wow, what a difference Australian Customs makes! These guys pack up and a whopping 600,000 viewers leave with them. Seven's replacement The Rich List (a last ditch attempt to save a one season wonder from the scrapheap) saw more than 700,000 viewers lost week on week.

The loss at 7.30 didn't help their 8.30 tentpole City Homicide (albeit a rerun) which recorded a timeslot loss against a first run fast tracked CSI.

By removing their factuals - Seven has essentially lowered the bar, allowing Nine to walk right over them.

Two and a Half Men pulled in it's usual good audience but the suprise was a timeslot win for Til Death finally over 1 million viewers, Nine can chalk up a win for sticking with this sitcom, unfortunately Til Death just got taken out of Fox's schedule for November sweeps - a move like that is NEVER a good sign - cancellation almost certainly follows so the Brad Garret sitcom is suddenly on the boil on it's home turf.

One of the weirder things to happen was the 9.30 timeslot. While Cold Case only retained 63% of it's CSI lead in, Bones retained a whopping 85% coming first in the slot with Andrew Denton's Enough Rope a close second.

While Nine jumped over the bar this week, Ten continued to limbo right on under it with nothing acheiving. Australian Idol had their best result on the night, but still copped a third place in the slot. Good News Week is struggling to get noticed at 8.30 - it doesn't help that runs against 4 Corners in what is a resurgent year for the ABC Public Affairs program, last night profiling the American state of Ohio in the lead up to tomorrow's presidential election.

A bright spot for Ten though was Will & Grace improving week on week by 12%, is it just a fluke or will Ten's health in the slot start to improve. Keep watching this space...

Across the Pacific - Thursday 30 October 2008

Well here's something different - I've decided to take a look at US Ratings and how shows are doing in their home market, and because it's the most recently available data, we'll start with Thursday night.

It's obviously been more than a year since I looked at US ratings because last time I noticed Grey's Anatomy and CSI were neck and neck, and My Name is Earl was a lot more popular.

Grey's Anatomy seemed to take a big hit in 2007-08, this was the writers strike season but it's numbers dropped from 19 million to 16 million and it doesn't look to have recovered, buy contrast CSI held steady through the strike and still to this day.

Even more disturbing is My Name is Earl - the arse (ass) has well and truly fallen out of that show, it's not like the competition is that intense, but when The CW is chasing you down you know you've got problems.

The show has had a steady slide after a great first year in a 9pm timeslot, moving to 8pm certainly hasn't agreed with the show shedding over 30% of it's audience since the move.

The night's lowest rated show was Supernatural, which does however record good numbers of 18-49 year old viewers, similarly the younger set have ensured a full season pickup for Kath & Kim less than a fortnight after Seven unceremoniously dumped the show here in Australia

You'll have a gay old time – Monday 27 October 2008

Well blow me down – three Mondays into this blog and still the same pattern persists, Seven first, Nine Second, Ten far away in the distance.

First up, Australian Idol improved, no thanks to it’s “new” lead in Will & Grace, the ex-Seven sitcom and current Arena time waster pulled about the same as Friends managed the week before.

It’s funny to think (and I may have only gotten this suggestion from watching PayTV) that the same people who like Friends also like Will & Grace. But does anybody else? Well frankly it’s too early to tell.

Ten was never going to bolt out of the gate with this show because a) it’s a rerun and b) viewers are by and large committed to other 7pm entertainment, their real opportunity is in six weeks time when Two and a Half Men makes way for Temptation and Home & Away shuffles off presumably to be replaced by one of Seven’s many factual half hours, that will leave an awfully huge 18-49 crowd looking for some laughs at 7pm – it’s a good bet that then Will & Grace’s ratings will spike, especially given the show wasn’t well watched in it’s initial broadcast, meaning it should repeat well it just might take a while for people to notice it.

Good News Week took a hit this week dropping 113,000, Til Death also dropped week on week (46,000) as did CSI (64,000) a rerun of CSI wiped 136,000 off the previous week’s figure for a fast tracked Cold Case, however at least Nine is willing to support it’s former hits rather than throw them to the wolves.

In fact nothing on the commercial nets impressed post 9.30 thanks to Andrew Denton interviewing Michael Parkinson on the soon to be retired Enough Rope hitting a very nice 1.2 million viewers.

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.