Fourth & Down

Thursday 23 April 2009

The Footy Show really did well last night in Melbourne netting an average of 413,000 viewers over an almost 2 hour span becoming Melbourne’s second most watched show of the night behind Today Tonight.

As The Biggest Loser races toward the finish line Home & Away continued to flounder, it has placed third or lower on every night this week aside from Tuesday (a night which Seven dominates) that’s a poor showing for the long running soap.

Home & Away has proven itself durable, but also vulnerable, especially to Ten 7pm flights of fancy. In the early part of this decade it was Big Brother which gave Home & Away very real problems at 7pm, with only Nine’s lacklustre 7pm performance for comfort.

These days Nine is resurgent with reruns of a sitcom which still has 2 more years guaranteed (and could conceivably run for another 4 years on it’s current form) and Ten is about to launch Masterchef, how Home & Away winds up for the year will depend a lot on how audiences take to Ten’s new reality play.

Seven continues to swing for the fences on Thursdays making it their 3rd night playing for 16-39 year olds behind Monday and now Wednesday, the return of Heroes did alright but I wonder how long it will last before getting the Lost & 24 treatment?

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.

WTF Is Wrong with Heroes?

Everyone is bitching about Heroes

The show’s ratings are in the sink, it’s been pushed back to 10.30 here in Australia and in America the behind the scenes dramas with writers being fired and Tim Kring calling the fans dipshits are attracting more attention than the show itself.

So what’s the problem, well in my view Heroes has reached that frustrating point that Lost came to early in it's third season where there are just way more questions than answers

Here's a few I can think of right now...

What is Arthur Petrelli’s actual ability that he is able to transfer others’ powers to himself?

If Lindeman could heal, why did he never heal Petrelli

When will any of these people do something heroic? So far the only ones have been Parkman (when he rescued the little girl in the first episode) and Nathan when he flew away with Peter in tow in the first season finale.

Nobody has sufficiently explained the Tracy/Nikki thing to my satisfaction – now we have a third sister – the ice queen?

Why did Seven schedule season 2 behind Bionic Woman?

Is Mohinder suddenly cured from being spiderman?

I’ve lost track of all these viruses, pathogens, antigens, now it’s adrenaline, oh no wait there’s a catalyst – it’s just getting silly.

Why bring Adam Munroe out of his coffin only to kill him one episode later?

Why did we spend several weeks driving from Mexico to the US with Sylar and the super-fun-happy siblings only to see those characters amount to nothing?

What happened to the girl who copies things from the TV?

Remember the boy who could fly? That was a great film!

If an eclipse somehow affects everyone’s powers, then what is the effect of the smiley-face moon from last night?

What is the point of all this?

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.

Seven's Schedule - Now Twice as Ugly!

So what's Seven up to this summer? Lets check it out...

SUNDAYS
Looks like a very old skewing mix to me, continuing The Outdoor Room and then Hot Property - Hot Property seems to do well every summer that they wheel it out - but who is going to want to watch this orgy of auctions and house renovations whilst house prices across the nation are falling. As a social indicator - the ratings for this program will be very interesting.

At 7.30 Seven brings on a limited run BBC doco about various industrial marvels, followed at 8.30 by Holby Blue, the now cancelled spin-off of Holby City, itself a spin-off from the long running Britsh hospital drama Casualty.

I remember back in 1994 Ten attempted to foist the cheapness that is Casualty on unsuspecting Australian audiences - you know it's a bad sign when the set looks like cardboard and you're in the year nineteen hundred and ninety three. Who knows their may have been a decent story in there somewhere but I couldn't get past the Doctor Who production values.

A Touch of Frost rounds out Brit night on Seven, all of these shows should seal a comfortable lead in total people and over 55s (almost one and the same these days!)

MONDAY
With Home & Away taking the summer off, 3rd year sitcom How I Met Your Mother steps into the slot in an effort to give the show more exposure and expand the fan base - all useful causes. It's main genre competition is the remarkably similar Friends over on Ten.

The Rich List continues at 7.30 and Bones takes it's second hour away from Thursdays and over to Mondays, I'll be curious to see how this CSI-lite goes against the real thing, it is in vogue this year so anything's possible.

Late Night Monday we can see Scrubs followed by the US Kath & Kim, damn it to hell it should've been Scrubs in the 7pm timeslot many years ago, one of the most finely crafted sitcoms on television probably has more followers from DVD than actually on the television.

TUESDAY & THURSDAY
Yep twice a week Seven is throwing a lifeline to Ugly Betty - a first season hit whose second season return was horribly botched (by the network, not the show itself) joining it at 8.30 is Weirdo Lawyer Dramedy Eli Stone which was first promoted by Seven all the way back at the end of 2007. Has it taken them this to find the tapes they dropped down the back of the sofa in the green room? Sloppy Seven.

TUESDAY
Dirty Sexy Money is back, perhaps fast-tracked (not sure), itself followed by Prison Break which will also be pulling double duty on Wednesdays. This is surely Prison Break's last gasp - a show whose premise justified exactly ONE SEASON has stretched onto it's fourth!

WEDNESDAY
Air Crash Investigations has gotten a headstart last week, as has The Unit, Las Vegas takes the 8.30 slot to play out their final season (or at least some of it) there was a point (When Vegas aired 7.30 Thursdays) when it was a timeslot winner and a solid rater - but like so many imports on Channel Seven they had trouble sticking to ONE TIMESLOT and the viewers quickly found other things to do.

THURSDAY
The Amazing Race moves back an hour with Heroes staying on through the summer - that's one lesson it would've paid Seven to learn last year when it counted, now Heroes (like so many others) has faded away.

FRIDAY
Apart from Better Homes & Gardens reruns (oh sorry "Summer Series") nothing else is locked in - first week back though we get the 24 movie, which is handy, after a sixth season which started out ludicrously and got worse ('I held my mud') I'm not holding out much hope for a return to the greatness of season 5, but I guess we'll see what happens...

SATURDAY
Two unknowns here - a British drama called Brittania High followed by a short lived US game show called Dance Machine, not sure what the purpose of either is and perhaps Ten should've kept MacGyver on and run a marathon from 6.30 to 10.30 - if this is all Seven have got for competition on this night - it's not looking good.

If Ten is loading up on reruns to lock in a schedule for 2009 and Nine is just regurgitating failed series, then Seven's sked feels the most like summer, a whole bunch of shows we wouldn't see otherwise, nights and lineups completely remade and almost all of it imported. There is also still a very good question mark over the non appearance of Reaper another show which was heavily advertised LAST summer.

Praying for Summer - Thursday 20 November 2008

Nine had another great trip down memory lane back to the 90s with This is Your Life their top show for the night, all prime time shows* fell under the early evening strips as is increasingly the trend with Seven news again pulling in the most people at 6pm.

The finale of Make Me a Supermodel did the business at 7.30, personally 7.30 has become a TV dead zone where you start praying for the onset of summer programming for some sweet relief – luckily for me relief came with Comedy (113) screening two episodes of Scrubs against all this dross. I did manage to see the tail end of Oprah’s schmooze-fest where she was talking to Baz Luhrmann via Skype (hey at least it wasn’t via hologram) only two minutes of this and I felt physically ill. Ten has only been the latest to get on board a week long news and current affairs bandwagon hyping the f*ck out of this film.

Back on Tuesday Nine jettisoned any semblance of news content on A Current Affair for a half hour tie in for this movie, on Wednesday night I caught the tail end of ABC News and noticed it had morphed into Entertainment Tonight whilst I wasn’t looking, canvassing audiences at the film’s Darwin premiere, this in a week where Australia’s third largest city is being torn apart by the weather, car companies start heading for the exit door and yet another child care monolith goes down and yet the most important thing on any television news agenda is Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman – give me a break!

The 10.30 contenders (Heroes and The Strip) both got a boost with Ten News making way for Out of the Blue, which got it’s regular audience, but the surplus people up at 10.30 split between Seven and Nine (mostly to Nine).

Also that’s seven shows over the million mark for Ten, not too shabby this week, Tonight is a contest between movies Ten has You, Me and Dupree which is first run, Seven has I, Robot which is a rerun but has the stronger lead in, Nine will probably beat them all with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

*Although official Prime Time is 6pm - 12.30, I consider it to be 7.30 - 10.30 on weeknights and 6.30 - 10.30 on Saturdays and Sundays

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.

900,000 is the new million – Thursday 30 October 2008

Very very low rating night last night. The night belonged to Nine but there was nothing to crow about. Compare the barnstorming performance of Seven on a Tuesday which is a very competitive night, to Nine’s Thursday which is a night where virtually no-one is competing and you start to get a picture of the uphill battle that Nine faces in the year ahead.

In fact it’s a conundrum that must have the network programmers scratching their heads – what happened to Thursdays??

Throughout much of the 90s Thursdays were a one channel night – and that channel was Nine, the predictability and broad appeal of Getaway, The Footy Show, ER and This is your Life carried the night for the better part of a decade.

Eventually though ER aged and lost most of it’s original cast and Ten struck with Law & Order SVU quickly overtaking the aging hospital soap. In 2005 Seven found their game by Scheduling an “Amazing Thursday” with Lost and the Amazing Race holding back all comers and causing serious headaches for Nine and Ten, but as with a lot of younger skewing shows the fad didn’t last and the night again fell back to the oldies with Nine’s doco-soaps of RPA and Missing Persons Unit tussling with Ten’s Law & Order spinoffs.

Since this year we’ve had ABC enter as the third force on Thursday nights with the experimental panel political QandA in the first half of the year taking the shine of commercial contenders at 9.30 and in the last few week a series of well presented docos/dramatisations of Australian history.

Last week we were treated to the plight of vanishing PM Harold Holt, this week we got an account of Robert Menzies and Winston Churchill’s ongoing conflict in the early years of WWII, it was certainly an eye opener to see another Australian Prime Minister who spent more time overseas than Kevin Rudd!

What was more incredible was the colour film footage that Menzies himself shot – especially of London after one of Germany’s Air Raids. Full marks to the ABC for taking on these interesting historical subjects and talking points which quite frankly – you don’t learn about in school.

Apart from the dwindling Heroes and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? Everything else on the schedule was fairly even with most shows achieving over 900,000 viewers. It used to be that if you scored over 1 million viewers in prime time your show was considered safe – I think that goalpost has well and truly moved.

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.