Ten is a four letter word - Tuesday 20 January 2009

NCIS may roll over for the cricket, but not for Tennis, the long running Naval procedural was in fine form last night winning it’s two hour span with ease and lifting the rest of Ten tent along with it.

The day on day lift for the rest of Ten’s sked was extroadinary:

Neighbours up 40,000
Friends up 89,000
The Simpsons up 276,000
Rules of Engagement up 261,000

Seven can still be happy with a stellar performance all night long though only taking a 100,000 hit to Home & Away and the Night Session of the Tennis in the face of Ten’s resurgence.

Nine too was doing alright until their 8.30 movie – Paycheck. Not sure what it got but I know it’s under 640,000, they likely clawed back some share late in the night with the start of a marathon inauguration coverage after the movie.

Let’s get specific – Wednesday 10 December 2008

At this time of year the viewing figures are so low it’s difficult to read anything into the numbers, however Nine would be encouraged to stick with CSI Miami in this slot next year.

The reason it’s rating so well at the moment probably has a great deal to do with the amount of moving it’s done in the past two years. In 2007 and 2008 this show was all over the map, even having split broadcasts with Melbourne viewers getting the show in lieu of the banned Underbelly.

It was a solid performer in Melbourne at that time as well it should be noted, although it was being beaten by House which is now floundering even with less competition.

It’s a good bet that Ten will stick Rush at 8.30 Wednesdays at some point in the new year, whatever ratings it’s garnering in it’s quick turnaround are obviously too embarrassing or depressing for anyone to put in print at the moment, so it’s likely that unless Ten can find a way to sell the show to a bigger audience then it’s natural level would be approx 800,000 - 1 million folks.

How I Met Your Mother is starting to become the dominant commercial player at 7pm which some people will put down to the better lead in but I give viewers more credit than that – last night while watching Heroes I spied two separate promos for How I Met Your Mother, neither of them was generic, they were in fact episode based.

Seven is spending money and time putting together promos for a strip sitcom, something ten should seriously consider, all ten has to do is pick a 10 second moment out of that night’s episode of Friends and pump it at daytime and late night and viewers will eventually be drawn to the show – just showing the same generic promo over and over is useless – you may as well just go back to voice-overs over the end credits if you think it makes any difference.

Generic promos just let people know that shows are on, they are solely for the benefit of folks who would watch the show anyway – they do nothing whatsoever to attract new viewers to a show – that’s when episode-specific promos are needed.

Right now Seven is doing a better job of this than anyone, when you’re number 3, teetering on the edge of number 4 you should look at your market leaders and learn from their success.

Karma’s a Bitch - Tuesday 3 December 2008

So the bitches at Seven have swiped Thank God You’re Here from channel ten, well something happened last night that I expected, and a few things that I didn’t expect.

What I expected

‘The In-Laws’ wouldn’t impress, that’s a given – movies have very rarely ever worked on Tuesday nights, Nine is clearly surrendering this night to it’s competitors and will continue to do so in the new year.

The Chopping Block held it’s numbers from the regular season – indicating a core audience who were interested in the premise. If Nine wants a third shot they’re going to have to find a way to attract more casual viewers to the show without upsetting what is a decent base.

NCIS would wipe the floor with it’s competition, that was also a given – what I didn’t expect was an incredible 93.5% retention to the 9.30 hour.

What I didn’t Expect

The 7.30 Report NEVER outrates ABC News, let alone wins it’s timeslot, I’m impressed.

A special about Britney Spears outdid Ugly Betty – didn’t see that coming, especially given that Seven had the greater opportunity for promotion.

Dirty Sexy Money completely bombs, worse than The Ex-List (which is saying something) after a much better lead-in to boot, they lost 45% of Eli Stone’s audience, a sad sad result which explains the performance of the 10.30 shows across the networks.

Friends, improves both day on day, week on week (with Will & Grace) and on it’s lead-in. Seems like one of my shakier predictions might come to fruition – that How I Met Your Mother viewers might slowly realise they’re watching a rip-off of Friends and migrate back to the original. Last night’s 7pm timeslot belonged to the ABC (and probably will all summer) but between the commercial nets it was as close as could be.

The Timid & the Ugly - Monday 1 December 2008

The first Monday of summer played a lot like the last Monday of ratings season with The ABC’s one-two punch of Howard and Enough Rope knocking the other contenders around, with channel ten well and truly out for the count.

During summer I think it’s safe to consider 900,000 the standard barometer for success. With that in mind ABC, SEVEN and NINE all had great nights. Top Gear took a hit but still came out respectably.

Bones did at 8.30 what it was doing at 9.30 anyway, but The Rich List continues on resurgent. In fact the Rich List’s revival poses a weird dilemma for Seven – here they have a show which only seems to work on it’s Monday timeslot (it bombed on Saturdays) and yet they don’t really need this show as Border Security and The Force bring much higher ratings to this slot during the season – perhaps Seven should trial it on Thursdays (a weaker night for them) and see what happens?

Gratifyingly Scrubs is returned to a 10.30 slot and look, OMG it wins the timeslot (a very competitive one I might add) and brings 64,000 people who were not watching Out of the Question.

The Question for Seven is why have you idiots let this show languish at 11.30pm for 5 years? Last night as I watched this show, just to add to Seven’s stupidity they carried a commercial for the upcoming DVD release of Season 7 which is the season they are screening right now – how do I know this? Well simple on of the scenes they showed on the commercial was identical to what I had just viewed in the preceding segment.

There’s still two episodes for Seven to screen of this season before it hits the stores tomorrow, why they never tried to get this show back into primetime is beyond me, but hey we can get the DVDs I guess.

Fringe did better at 9.30 than on it’s last 8.30 show by 62,000 viewers so that’s something good. Watch to see if it improves week on week, it’s still an awful drop from it’s lead in but it’s still better than earlier in the year.

Ten had some OK news and some really bad news. In the OK file – the ratings for the first ep of Bold & the Beautiful didn’t suck – they didn’t bring down the house (a great rating would have been closer to 700,000 considering the competition) but they point to a solid start which is good. Even better is that Friends has shown some slight improvement at 7pm over Will & Grace (will Ten just TRY the Office here already) given it’s a rerun against a world of new (and news) it did OK and certainly cannot be blamed for the travesty at 7.30…

Like I said in an earlier blog – any show purporting to be about nudity in the 7.30 hour is clearly false advertising and thankfully people aren’t total fools so they gave this show (which bombed in the regular season) the flick. Expect to see an announcement of a third Simpsons/Rules of Engagement hour any moment now…

Army Wives did better, considering the lead-in and the competition from established hits but The Ex List got less viewers than Bold and the Beautiful and dragged Out of the Blue down with it. Ten needs a strong 7.30 show, I don’t expect them to be able to beat Charlie Sheen or Top Gear, but surely The Rich List is such a disposable show that their audience can be picked off with ease – it won’t be achieved with a failed reality import – that’s for sure.

Finally – Wednesday 26 November 2008

It took some yahoo at channel nine to schedule complete shit and ABC to pack up Spicks and Specks a week early but finally Dr House got back in the black – for his final new episode this year.

The medical drama roped in over 1 million viewers, a first for its current season – another beneficiary of Nine’s stupidity (Christmas with the Kranks?? I mean come on!) was Seven whose Criminal Minds enjoyed a boost of 179,000 viewers week on week.

Nine can be happy with the performance of The Big Bang Theory which has better audience retention from Two and a Half Men than previous tryout Til Death and is pulling respectable numbers. A timeslot change is in the offing with this pair of sitcoms now moving to Sundays and Mondays at 7.30pm where I expect they will continue to rate well.

Seven held their nerve (much like Ten has with House I suppose) with The Unit and it paid off with the military drama coming a close second to surprise timeslot winner Life – see what happens when you ease the glut of dramas in the same timeslot. No such luck next week as Life makes way for Rush and Nine enters the fray with ER.

Futurama continues to be a puzzle – the show single-handedly kept ten’s 2005/06 summer afloat (along with short-run hit Surface) yet now with new episodes it seems to be floundering, I’m putting the blame squarely on lead-in Will & Grace which in four weeks has failed to fire. When your main 7pm comedic rival is doubling your audience and then continuing into the 7.30 timeslot then Futurama has zero chance of building a lead. Honestly though will Friends do any better over summer.

Here my advice ten – if you want your nights to succeed – then PROMOTE Friends – not just with some one size fits all ad, but with a new commercial for EACH EPISODE run it all through your news and then start the promos for the next nights show all through primetime – the only way your gonna make people want to watch a show they’ve watched before is by reminding them how good it was – and the only way you’re going to do that is by promoting the S H 1 T out of it.

As a last note the return of Prison Break did really well and bodes well for Seven to dominate late night over the summer.

Bait & Switch

Uh Oh – Ten’s getting jittery again, hot on the heels of Nine’s Schedule Announcement – Ten has made some changes to their sked, mostly for the better, no doubt there will be even more changes once Seven publish full details of their Summer line up – but for now let’s have a look at what’s changed

SUNDAY
The big change is removal of perpetual rerun Thank God You’re Here, replacing it with the new 90210 on Sunday nights. This is a good thing – first of all we know that Nine has placed Two and a Half Men on Sunday nights – that would spell an embarrassing death for Working Dog’s precious project. By moving the 90210 sequel to it’s spiritual home (the original ran in this slot from 93-96 - Seasons 3-6) it might actually catch on with the viewers!

The little change late on Sunday night involves The Daily Show and The Office in the late night slots, why Ten does not give The Office a decent try in an early evening slot remains one of life’s great mysteries but on the other hand at least Ten is starting to recognise that the station is still running after 10.30 at night so it’s not all bad!

MONDAY
With 90210 only making a fleeting appearance on Mondays that opens up the night for Rules of Engagement to be given another go at 8pm, Swingtown gets the boot at 9.30 instead we get to see The Ex List which has already been axed by CBS after what was apparently an excellent pilot but a lot of creative difficulties between the network and producers since.

The other thing you’ll notice from Mondays is the weeknight lineup. First of all – although I didn’t include it on the chart – The Bold and the Beautiful, forever the lead-in to Ten’s 5pm news and the highest rating daytime show is promoted to 6pm – it’s an audacious move (see I didn’t say bold!) that should encourage a fair percentage of older women to ignore the 6pm news on the rival nets – whether it will do better than the Simpsons (currently around the 600,000 mark) we don’t know, but it’s a strong indication that ten realises it needs and older aud to sustain it’s operation. Judge Judy moves into 4.30 lead-in duty for the summer.

At 7pm Will & Grace makes way for Friends (yes again!) given that Seven will likely position reruns of How I Met Your Mother in this slot, Friends seems like a shrewd move – if only because How I Met Your Mother is a virtual clone of Friends and after a while viewers might prefer to watch the original.

TUESDAYS
No idea what will sit here on a regular basis (so far we have a Britney Spears special in the first week) I imagine it will possibly be more Rules of Engagement, once the summer sets in. After 8.30 Ten has snubbed Burn Notice and instead cranked up a second hour of NCIS. Given that show’s recent performance I say why not? But it would be good (without the heat of All Saints) to retry Burn Notice or another middling show in their lineup. With Nine putting movies on this night – Tuesdays is up for grabs this summer so any promotion ten can do on the back of their naval hit will be worth it.

WEDNESDAYS
Gone: Law & Order SVU, Back: House MD. Maybe someone at Ten read my blog last Friday (OK I doubt it) but it seems like they’ve opted for some consistency in their schedule rather than moving things willy nilly. That’s commendable, will reruns of House outmatch reruns of CSI? And will Seven keep Criminal Minds on Wednesdays? Will Wednesday night become a Mexican standoff with reruns?

THURSDAYS
The only change here is that SVU is back in its current 9.30 slot and the original Law & Order is off to…

FRIDAYS
Ahh Friday night – remember Fridays – that night at the end of the week that TV programmers didn’t know existed – well eureka Ten has discovered it! The Ice Road Truckers have been despatched back to cable TV and The Simpsons (always a reliable Friday night entrant) are back to fill another hole which frankly needs filling.

Now remember – there are two types of audiences on Friday nights – kids and old people, the kids are well catered to with The Simpsons – that’s a sound move and the old people just might discover the math related antics of Don and Charlie Epps on Numb3rs (one of the most interesting and underrated procedurals in recent times) and then go for some legal wrangling on the original (and best IMO) Law & Order.

SATURDAYS
They were going so well, outstanding in fact and then oooo – epic fail! Where the f&%# is MacGyver??? Why get people’s hopes up like that!! Instead we get BBC dross Big Cat Diary and I get to watch channel Nine which has the best Saturday lineup yet again!

Lead in – Lead out - Wednesday 15 October 2008

Wednesday was a story of poor lead ins on channel Ten and horrible lead outs on channel Nine

Channel Seven continued to dominate although they ceded 7pm – 8.30 to Nine by a whisker with Wednesdays being the preferred viewing night for Two and a Half Men, what happened next was simply beyond belief, like one of it’s bizarre mysteries the audience for Fringe vanished the latter only retaining 47% of the sitcom’s audience. This is an unmitigated disaster and by virtue of this they have flushed the returning CSI NY down the toilet.

In previous years an audience like this would have had Nine reaching for the late-night button, no scratch that – in previous years this sort of audience never even would have been a consideration, back in 2006 everyone was shocked with the low performance of Yasmin’s Getting Married with figures that were just unheard of – now we’re hearing about these kinds of figures all the time.

Back in 1996 Nine sent Star Trek Voyager packing from it’s 8.30 Tuesday slot all the way to 11pm when it was attracting 300,000 Sydney viewers each airing (extrapolated out you can assume that 300K in Sydney means comfortably over the million mark in the 5 cities – indeed 9 Perth (then run by Sunraysia) kept the show in Prime Time.) So Voyager with an Audience of 1 million gets canned and now barely 12 years later half the audience gets an indefinite prime time run.

I like Fringe, I think it’s a great show, perhaps the successor to the X Files – but I’m in a small minority here and I’m amazed Nine is sticking with it as long as they are!

The other side of the coin is channel Ten, Friends is at 500,000 viewers and sinking – these kind of figures meant the end of Taken Out several weeks ago – hell they meant the end of Wheel of Fortune a few months back on Nine, but Ten is trapped like a deer in the headlights – it doesn’t want to make to many scheduling moves and alienate viewers – but it’s not like there’s that many people to piss off in the first place.

Friends is a good show – I was pleased in summer to see the first few seasons which are actual television classics, yet Friends was a monster hit in it’s day – sometimes commanding upwards of 3 million viewers per episode, with that in mind – it’s a good bet that everyone’s already seen it whereas with Two and a Half Men – a lot of people are only just now discovering it – hence it’s high numbers.

Despite the low nadir of Friends, Jamie Oliver incredibly manages to attract 200,000 more people to his earnest cooking escapades, from here House builds to catch third spot behind Criminal Minds and Spick & Specks.

The ABC has, for almost 4 years now, been causing headaches for the commercial nets on a Wednesday night with their ever changing line-up of local comedies anchored by the Adam Hills hosted game show, I had thought that without The Chaser – the viewers would desert ABC on a Wednesday, but although they’re not there in the same heady numbers, Aunty puts in a solid performance for the night.