Act of Contrition

It’s been one hell of a crazy week for TV with controversy never far from the prime time schedule

Over on Nine they managed to have their cake and eat it too with the caustic Gordon Ramsay in country abusing TV personalities both behind their backs and to their faces, somehow Nine managed to spin all the way from whipping the man at the start of the week to hosting his formal apology 3 days later thus “rehabilitating” his image (sufficient to spruik his future projects) and provide days of wonderful newstainment for the gawking onlookers (Myself included!)

After Ramsay’s mea culpa, Tracey Grimshaw gave a reply during which she stated regarding his apology:

"I didn't expect Gordon Ramsay to apologise. I didn't ask for it and I didn't think it would help -- but it has…”

It certainly has helped their ratings, and helped Nine smooth over an ugly scene between one of their top journalists and one of their major imports (well maybe not so much anymore)

If only the ABC could be so creative with their PR, seemingly asleep at the wheel when it came to Chaser airing a skit lampooning the Starlight foundation which gives dying children some moments of joy. Now here’s the thing, the idea behind the sketch itself was not that horrendous, “Make a realistic wish” seemed to be poking fun at the fact that some of the celebrity meetings or trips to Disneyland and other things organised by that group are very outlandish things, where they went completely wrong was somehow making it about the kids by tacking on a line at the end about how “they’re going to die anyway”

Rightly, a lot of people were outraged and unlike the usual shock jock crowd there were a lot of people with sick children who were genuinely offended by the sketch. The ABC waited until after midday on the Thursday to apologise and then took the step of removing the program from the air for two weeks

They were hit significantly in the ratings last night for their decision losing 40.41% on last week’s Chaser and 54.81% on two weeks ago (with no State of Origin in competition) with their hastily scheduled Tracy Ullman series.

Also with the Chaser out of the way ten reaped the benefit with an improved audience for Law & Order SVU up 36.26% on it’s debut 2 weeks ago

Amazing how both networks (ABC and Nine) have a had a major PR problem on their hands in the last week, Nine has dealt with it head on by actually adding content to their schedule with the net result being improved ratings and a sense that they can continue to show both ACA and Gordon Ramsay on the same network with a straight face, whereas ABC has chosen avoidance as their tactic and have paid a huge price in the ratings and there’s no guarantee that viewers will return in two weeks time.

Of course the ratings and commercial considerations don’t matter at the ABC, but when you’re forking out 1 million tax-payer dollars per episode for a show that now needs to be re-tooled, well it will matter to somebody.

The Scoreboard
Wednesday 10 June 2009
Against 2 weeks ago (State of Origin 1 was last week)

Going Down
Tracey Ullman's State of the Union down 54.81% on the Chaser
Spicks and Specks down 11.38%
SVU 9.30 rebroadcast down 10.99%
Prison Break down 9.96% on Lost

Going Up
Family Guy up 47.19% on Russell Brand, up 26.81% on last week
SVU 8.30 All New up 36.26% on debut
ACA up 24.29%
How I Met Your Mother up 12.77% on 10pm Family Guy
Masterchef up 12.7% on two weeks ago
The Simpsons up 10.13% on two weeks ago (previous all new ep)

Ramsay vs Grimshaw: Round III

Right now in Australia we have major issues like a budget deficit, swine flu, attacks on Indian students, the threat of a double dissolution election, and Therese Rein’s feet but Australian audiences aren’t interested in any of that – no they want more Ramsay.

It’s an incredible irony that the week before Kitchen Nightmares is due to slink away from it’s one remaining broadcast market (Melbourne) that foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay should be in the country, causing a storm in a tea-cup by slagging off at ACA host Tracy Grimshaw behind her back, in turn delivering a rare timeslot win to A Current Affair.

Here’s the story as I know it, Ramsay has an interview with Grimshaw on Friday nights ACA, the next day he’s at the Melbourne Good Food & Wine Show giving a presentation and cracking jokes about the current affairs host, he augments his jokes with a slide-show which includes images of Miss Piggy and a naked woman on all-fours photoshopped to look like she has six breasts (if you’ve been on the internet enough years you will have seen the photo, it’s one of those things that gets around, so I’m not going to reproduce it here!)

Now there is video of this incident, because on ACA last night Nine had snippets of it – but for the life of me I cannot locate any of it on the net.

Then on Sunday night Ramsay goes on Rove and by all accounts it was very uncomfortable viewing, I didn’t see it but the retelling delivered by my wife who did was pretty compelling stuff, unfortunately the one video that was posted to the net has been taken down and the user (well known in YouTube circles for posting clips of Rove for some years now) has been suspended.

The ensuing shitstorm ramped up a few gears on Monday with Grimshaw deciding (rightly I might add) to publicly rebuke the chef. Yesterday we had a wide assortment of people weighing from freelance social commentator Kevin Rudd (he really is the new John Howard!) to Victoria’s arbiters of good taste Neil Mitchell and Andrew Bolt. All of this was capped last night with spectacle of reporters chasing Ramsay all around Melbourne to Crown Casino where they were stopped by six all powerful words…

“No filming on the gaming floor”

ACA this year has managed to make itself the headline more often than not, first the Matthew Johns interview, then the Ben Iken controversy, now this, a public stoush with one of Nine’s international (former) hits. ACA’s biggest stories this year have involved controversies within Channel Nine itself – one can only wonder what or who is next!

For all this noise, ACA did very little to the audience for Today Tonight, with that program only down by 42,000 viewers, most of ACA’s increase came from people who normally wouldn’t watch either show.

Furthermore, the effect on Ramsay’s shows was neglible, neither show managed a convincing number in Melbourne (the only market they were screened) though viewers of Kitchen Nightmares were treated to the spectacle of Ramsay teaching a restauranter how to yell obscenities at the top of your lungs from the edge of a cliff!

I guess they chose the location because nobody would be watching and really when you think about it, nobody was.

Scoreboard
Tuesday 9 June 2009

Going Up
ACA up 20% week on week
Millionaire Hot Seat up 18%
HomeMADE up 11%
Nine News up 10%
M*A*S*H up 10%
Two and a Half Men (9pm) up 6%
Masterchef up 6%

Going Down
Jennifer Byrne Presents down 10% on First Tuesday Book Club
10 Years Younger in Ten Days down 8%
Time Team down 8%
ABC News down 7%

Just keep digging...

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Biggest Week on Week Disappointment
Ten Years Younger in Ten Days
Seven 9.30pm
124,000 viewers lost

Biggest Week on Week Improvement
Two and a Half Men ®
Nine 9pm
187,000 viewers gained

Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation and NCIS continue to dominate Tuesday nights giving Ten its second All-People win of the week!

The test for Ten, which has streaked ahead on Sundays and Tuesdays and has kept a good number on Mondays is to stabilise the rest of their week.

Wednesday should improve with two episodes of Law & Order SVU breaking in on what is already a crowded night of crime, but Thursday nights remain a problem for the net with the poor performance of their sitcom hour. Friday is likely to come good for them in a few weeks when they replace Law & Order with the US edition of So You Think You Can Dance.

Dance has already sparked controversy thanks to judge Nigel Lythgoe’s reaction to the spectacle of an all-male dancing couple – sounds like something that ten can promote!

Meanwhile – what the hell are Nine doing at 9.30? So they’ve dropped the Underbelly reruns – right-o, that’s cool, they were tanking anyway, but why continue to split Melbourne off from the rest of the crowd? Why not instead pick something that you can promote across the network rather than on a city by city basis? Either run Ramsay everywhere (in Melbourne he came a respectable third at 9.30 and a close second at 10.30) or pick something new and run it everywhere.

Just keep digging that hole Nine…

Still the one for programming disasters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NCIS Spin-off discovered - Tuesday 7 April 2009

Tuesday


Geez, Seven not only rested their big series for the Easter break but now they've handed over the running of their programming division to their local stations as evidenced by some fairly unknown (read: cheap) romantic movies.

They were no match for NCIS which is king of the network over at ten, similarly in the US the show is the star of the 2008-09 season for CBS so much so that the network is developing a spin-off series for next season.

Ten has already beaten them to the punch and has discovered the perfect spin-off from NCIS - more NCIS. At 1.3 million viewers those reruns are money in the bank!

Disturbingly over on Nine (where Gordon Ramsay gave it the old college try and failed spectacularly) two hastily cobbled together gonzo shows managed to outrate the preceeding seven weeks of Wipeout!

Primetime Preview: Thursdays

7.30 - 8.30
Ghost Whisperer vs The Celebrity Singing Bee (later Getaway) vs The Biggest Loser/Bondi Vet

Hmmm, a lot of new in this hour - its been years since Ghost Whisperer occupied a 7.30 slot, the show has a solid following that seems to follow it all over the dialso it should do well.

The Singing Bee has appeal and has been primed by Ten's summer skein Don't Forget the Lyrics laying the ground for some success - but rumour suggests that Getaway will make a quick return to this timeslot which will equal disaster for Nine, the show is on its way out.

The wild card is Bondi Vet, for two years running Ten has extended their Thursday Biggest Loser which has always done well, but invariably the show following it (Jamie Oliver in the second season, Saving Kids in the third) has washed out, that could change though with Ten's Bondi Fetish growing another factual, plus rescuing animals seems to be all the rage over on Seven - so it could work.

The Hot Tip...
The Biggest Loser will win it's slot - then the rest depends on the appeal of a vet, expect both Ghost Whisperer and Singing Bee to do well, but once Getaway returns Nine will sink.


8.30 - 9.30
Grey's Anatomy vs Adults Only 20 to 01 vs Law & Order Special Victims Unit

Seven move Grey's Anatomy to it's US equivalent slot in order to build up a night which has faltered for them in recent years, it will easily retain 100% of its ghostly lead in, the test will be whether it brings any absent viewers back to Thursday night, which has increasingly been eroded in a cycle of low viewers and old skewing programs.

Ten has the ever strong Law & Order which has a mortgage on this slot. For those wondering why Ten has chosen to run with SVU rather than last year's suprise revival Criminal Intent, the answer lies in behind the scenes problems with Criminal Intent which has delayed production of half of the 16 episodes which may not premiere in the US until their summer, so SVU it is.

Nine meanwhile has zagged while the others zigged with Adults Only 20 to 01 - no word on how permanent that will be - perhaps its only a special but we just don't know. There's something to be said for a revival of the bawdy tits n' ass channel Nine I knew back in the early 90's, back when every movie promo had a minimum amount of female nudity and their idea of compelling drama was Chances!

The Hot Tip...
I expect Grey's Anatomy to post some big numbers upon its return but these will eventually decline to level off with the stable SVU, I'm only basing this on declining US ratings and suggestions of a preposterous 'ghost sex' storyline which will probably succeed in driving away non sci-fi viewers.


9.30 - 10.30
Private Practice vs Kitchen Nightmares vs Life on Mars

If you've been within 300 metres of a television this summer you no doubt will have seen promotion of Life on Mars, a US version of a british show about a time travelling cop, Ten have even wheeled out their old 70s logo for the promo which suggests they see a future with this one

Seven meanwhile is following logic by skedding the Grey's Anatomy spinoff after the parent show - that sounds like a good idea because in stray viewing last year I couldn't see much to distinguish Private Practice from any other estrogen-fest on TV, be it Strong Medicine, Judging Amy or whatever, the logo in the corner says Seven but my head screams W.

Nine has decided to retry Gordon Ramsay - after completely botching his re-entry late last year with scant promotion they look set to do it again this year. When you pour over the ratings figures for 2008 the top Ramsay show was consistently the US Kitchen Nightmares, when they came back with new eps of same show they failed to promote it - instead running weeks of Hell Kitchen promos before fronting up with Kitchen Nightmares and not alerting anybody - just bizzare.

The 9.30 timeslot is a no-brainer - Nine got a rap over the knucles from ACMA for excessive uncensored broadcasting of the f-word (that's "fuck" for those keeping score at home) in an M rated hour so moving it back lets them classify it MA but it also creates a weird problem - what if its a success and in four or so weeks The Footy Show comes back?

Kind of summarises Nine's entire Thursday sked - no long term thinking here...

The Hot Tip...
Ramsay could always surprise but I'll be darned if Life on Mars doesn't storm all over the slot.

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.

Fast Track to Oblivion - Wednesday 8 October 2008

Woah, the first thing you notice about today’s ratings is not the outstanding performance of Two and a Half Men which after a pretty ordinary Tuesday has found viewers more agreeable to a Wednesday broadcast.

No the first thing you notice is House for the third week under 1 million viewers.

Ten is officially in dire straits.

Just last year an episode of House could attract close to 2 million people – ten decided to keep the buzz going by fast tracking the series so that episodes aired barely one week after their US broadcast – the show seemed to lose a bit of steam but still chugged along with respectable figures.

It even pulled good numbers amid the Writers Strike which saw it’s ratings depressed but still afloat.

But obviously a lot of people took the writers strike as their ticket to kick the habit and start a new one with the Serial Killer hunters on Criminal Minds.

To be fair to Criminal Minds – it is a great show, a lot more realistic than a lot of US cop procedurals (read the book Mindhunter ) and repeats very well.

But the precipitous drop in viewers for House is just amazing – are all those people watching Criminal Minds or Spick and Specks? Have viewers tired of the weird medical mysteries, given that it’s on Ten – do people even know that it’s on???

Another fall from grace is Jamie Oliver who at one point was Ten’s golden boy with his rough language and extensive cooking show repertoire – but watching Jamie Oliver after witnessing the force of nature that is Gordon Ramsey is akin to binging on X Rated videos and then trying to get exited at Maxim!

I’ll seriously doubt if Fringe is still here after next week which is a pity because it’s starting to fire but Nine generally aren’t in the business of sticking with a show so I predict that’ll be the first show to blink – who knows what they’ll try in it’s place – maybe 4 eps of Two and a Half Men in a row! Nothing succeeds like excess.

Seven’s 7.30 doco-drama hour (how many of these must we endure per week and why is it that they rate so well???) brought a close second – clearly this fly on the wall reality is working for Seven.

The Mentalist did about as well as you could hope for from an encore screening the test will be on Sunday do it’s number increase?

Finally Life, arguably one of the most interesting shows in Ten’s line-up is suffering behind House and I can see it getting the chop before the good doctor but neither show is really the problem.

The problem with Ten on certain nights has progressed from worrying trend to a full blown catastrophe but more on that later.