There's almost no point

Friday 29 May 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Live Friday Night Football
Nine 7.30pm (Sydney & Brisbane only), Down 172,000 viewers week on week

Biggest Improvement
Masterchef
Ten 7pm, up 157,000 viewers week on week

Indeed most of Ten's lineup was up from last week - but it's coming from such a low base there's almost no point. The Law & Order palooza is no match for wall to wall sport on the other networks, not to mention the ABC's forensic skein Silent Witness (now up over the million mark). Only Masterchef is giving ten any traction on the night.

As was pointed out today on MediaSpy today by TelevisionAU, Masterchef on Fridays is not a continuation of the competition proper but rather a 1 hour cooking class run by the judges, thereby turning the show into a psuedo lifestyle hour and probably causing some headaches for Better Homes in the process.

Life on Mars, a show which started promising and then evaporated once word had come from the US of imminent cancellation, had it's 17th and final episode last night with 356,000 people still tuning in. In two weeks time Ten will be re-booting their Fridays with the US edition of So You Think You Can Dance

With two cycles of the dance show due this year (one in June and another commencing September) that should see Ten out for the remainder of the year assuming it's a success.

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Thursday 30 April 2009

A fairly substandard night all around with only Seven's news hour pulling any significant amount of viewers.

A Double of Law & Order SVU was an immediate ratings improvement over the 9.30 edition of Life on Mars with an additional 238,000 viewers for Ten at 9.30.

Bondi Vet gained 127,000 viewers week on week assuring this slow startup of a second season, I wonder whether they'll wait to 2010 or try to pump out another bunch of eps this year?

Masterchef continues the Biggest Loser's Modus Operandi of struggling at 7pm and flourishing after 7.30, overall the show is holding steady but the 7pm figure is a worry, a few more weeks and we'll see whether that's tied to low viewership on a Thursday or some other more compelling reason.

Ten needs Masterchef to fire because in TV switch on is everything, Nine and Seven have big switch-ons at 6pm, whereas Ten's 6pm aud is typically half of Seven's making the 7pm show all the more important.

Over on Seven it's time to ask the question - is this what they going for? An entire primetime under 1 million, the once great Grey's Anatomy barely holding onto viable, the spinoff stuck in second gear unable to get out from under the lead in (a lot like the just concluded Life)

It's weird that less than 5 years after rescusitating their anaemic Thursday nights (remember they gave up and started screening first run movies on Thursdays in 2004 before striking it lucky with Lost in 2005) they've ended up right back where they started.

The Jig is Up! Thursday 9 April 2009

Thursday

Another Thursday Night AFL Match - this time on Seven helped them to a winning share on the night - viewership was down everywhere else with a thinning out of the sample size due to the holiday weekend.

Nine Held their ground early on with Getaway and Adults Only 20 to 01 but the pairing of The NSW Footy Show and a movie called The Big Bounce was a big disaster.

Meanwhile two other 9.30 skeins are struggling as well, Seven moved 9.30 Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice to 7.30 (when has that ever happened!) for a "special" episode - well the jig is up, only a core audience seems to like this show and no-one else is buying.

Still that's better than Life on Mars, repeated interruptions in the southern states and the news that the show was cancelled in America have caused the ass to fall out of the ratings for this show. It is a pity because even though the series will only have a limited run (17 episodes) it will have a definite ending with the showrunners warned ahead of time in order to give the show some closure, and having read the spoilers I can tell you - it's definitely an interesting resolution!

Good News, Bad News - Thursday 2 April 2009

A Week on Week comparison for channel Ten obviously sees ten down without the aid of AFL footy but away from that schedule upheaval Ten has some good news and some bad news...

The Good News
Law & Order SVU got the better of Nine's 20 to 01 with probably its biggest audience of the season, helped along by (of all things) Bondi Vet!

Dr Chris Brown is finally over the million mark and no doubt a second season confirmation is only a formality.

For a show which is not a typical Ten format (and has therefore struggled for attention) it has grown consistently each week. Last year it seemed like the whole "Bondi" franchise would be dead on the tarmac with the abject failure of Bondi Rescue Bali, but the success here must surely be encouraging someone to hunt for the next Bondi reality skein, Crime & Investigation channel looked like they were getting in on the act last Thursday with The Bondi Gay Murders, but that was just a one-off CIA ep!

The Bad News
Oh Yeah - the disruption (two pre-emptions for AFL matches so far this season) has not been a good thing for Life on Mars which this week finished its run in the US, not sure if this show will see the other side of easter at 9.30 - we may be looking at a 10.30 move.

Some are even suggesting a Friday night swap with Medium (Personally I would swap out the male-skewing Law & Order to take it away from male-skewing sports), other have reasonably pointed out that Ten has not been so quick on the trigger this year - and that is true - but remember they still moved Dexter out of prime time and in a few weeks Guerilla Gardeners (which has been treading water at 700k) is moving to 6pm Sundays (replacing a low-rating Simpsons rerun) so even though Ten is more patient this year, I still think Life on Mars may see out its run in a different slot.

Thursday 19 March 2009

Just a quick post - Life on Mars continues to slip down 28 grand while it's lead in SVU was up 44 grand and pulled off a timeslot win against a much weaker 20 to 01 (down a massive 176,000 viewers)

The other thing to note is Bondi Vet, up into safe territory with 962,000 viewers (up 56,000 week on week) and not at the expense of other shows either with all 7.30 skeins up on last week. Perhaps there is a place at ten for dull factual shows after all!

The Truth about Vets and Plants - Thursday 12 March 2009

Nine stormed in with a huge audience for their Adults Only 20 to 01 which seems to be a better fit with The Footy Show than with cop shows. The Return of the Footy Show also garnered a healthy aud as it always does but look for it to fall away in the coming weeks as the season settles in.

Thursdays seem to be one of The Biggest Loser’s better nights, improving by 50,000 viewers week on week as did Bondi Vet though its still a long way from being considered a success.

The truth is with the Vet show and the Gardening show these are not the kind of programs that people expect to find on Ten, this is mainstream channel Seven and Nine stuff through and through, mostly watched by people who haven’t retuned their set since 1961, they just aren’t watching Ten to begin with.

Speaking of old, Ten’s trip to the 70s is really starting to fall away, although it added 20,000 viewers week on week it’s still lagging behind Private Practice which itself must be waiting for one of those 10.30 slots to become available.

News Travels Fast - Thursday 5 March 2009

I Don't know how else to explain the sudden drop in Life on Mars' numbers, either the general public has been clued on that it was canned in the US and have decided to ditch, or they just like CSI Miami waaaay too much.

If its the latter and viewers are hanging on for the pithy one liners from Horatio Caine then Ten can rest easy because H checks out in a few weeks to make way for an assortment of dickheads and boofheads on the Footy Show, but if its the former and viewers have decided not to commit to a show only destined to run 17 episodes then Ten has a problem.

No problems from Nine who seem to have managed to wring yet more juice from the dessicated 20 to 01 and Getaway seems to have settled nicely also.

The one puzzle on the night is Bondi Vet, why the audience dips after The Biggest Loser but recouperates for SVU, I have a theory - channel surfers, OzTAM's systems measure the number of viewers watching at any minute and then average that over the hour - I'm guessing that there's a lot of channel surfing during this show - folks are waiting around for SVU but they aren't just leaving it on Ten. Its a decent show, but its not really a Ten show and the figures bear that out.

I’ll see you when you get there – Thursday 26 February 2009

As a guy who goes through the ratings on a daily basis nothing is more infuriating than sorting through the mess when networks decided to program city by city and now that Football season is starting up the game of shows being pre-empted in some markets or bumped in others begins. Usually this sort of nonsense is confined to weekends where nobody cares because only movies are scheduled anyway – but on a few occassions the practice spills over to weeknights, and last night was one of those nights.

It produced a good result for Ten with the combo of crime show and football allowing them to dominate the post 8.30 timeslots. But in the last few weeks they’ve tended to dominate them anyway – which is the ral rub for Ten – I’m sure if they could chose to pre-empt a weeknight it would be Monday or Wednesday – not Thursday which is generally successful. Southern viewers of Life on Mars will get a double episode next week so they can catch up but there’s no word on when Ten will air the pre-empted SVU episode skipping it for the time being in the southern states, this is the annoying factor with state based programming.

The absence of Life on Mars in some markets handed almost 100,000 extra viewers to CSI Miami – ordinarily that sort of shift would be something to worry about, but in a few weeks CSI Miami makes way for The Footy Show which will make the choice easier for viewers in this slot.

Meanwhile over at Seven their Thursday night tentpole Grey’s Anatomy seems to be on the decline – relegated to third place on a low viewing night. To Seven’s credit they are trying to bring a new audience to Thursdays but it doesn’t look like anyone’s biting.

It’s worse news for Private Practice which lost 72,000 viewers week on week, no doubt those were the few remaining men watching before they checked out altogether, Seven will probably tolerate this show in this slot for a while longer – but I’m starting to wonder how they would go if they swapped this with the far superior Scrubs which follows it.

Where did everybody go? Thursday 19 February 2009

Oh man – WTF? Only 3 prime time shows over 1 million, only two weeks into the season – maybe OzTAM needs to examine what households it has on its ledger because these figures are appalling.

Last week was an odd week due to Nine’s telethon – so instead I’m gonna compare with premiere week two weeks ago – lets see the numbers

Nine
Getaway up 3,000 viewers on Celebrity Singing Bee!
Yay Team – that was really worth it, well done.

Adults Only 20 to 01 down 45,000 viewers from two weeks ago
Looks like this show has found its number at least

CSI Miami up at least 200,000 on Kitchen Nightmares/CSI NY
Not sure what CSI NY got in Brisbane that night but this was a definite improvement over their previous performance in the slot – and a timeslot win (barely) however, for a CSI show – this ilow number s just plain unacceptable.


Seven
Ghost Whisperer down 76,000 viewers on two weeks ago

Grey’s Anatomy also down 76,000 viewers
From that I gather that the same people meter people are watching but a few of them opted out or forgot to press the button

Private Practice wasn’t on two weeks ago but comparing to last week debut it has gained 50,000 viewers so its not all bad!

Ten
The Biggest Loser is down 39,000 viewers from two weeks ago

Bondi Vet is down 27,000 viewers

SVU is down 73,000 viewers

Life on Mars is down 282,000 viewers

Most of those figures indicate just less people watching television – except for Life on Mars – those 282,000 viewers have all migrated to channel Nine to watch some CSI Miami, Horatio Caine will cease to be problem for the freshman drama when football season begins again and the crime watches aren’t forced to make a choice between a sci-fi cop show and one set in the 70s!

No extra viewers but there's still life on mars - Thursday 12 February 2009

For the first week of a ratings season, this one hasn’t exactly gone to plan with the Bushfire Crisis dominating news coverage and throwing primetime schedules right out of whack.

Last night both Seven and Nine made major sked changes, Seven dumped Ghost Whisperer in order to catch up on Wednesday’s pre-empted Home and Away, while Nine threw their whole Thursday lineup (which wasn’t exactly working for them anyway) for an all night telethon.

As you might expect it was a success, but oddly it didn’t seem to bring any new viewers to what is Television’s most puzzling night, indeed it just seemed to soak up existing viewers from the other channels.

So we have to consider the question – what has driven TV viewers away from Thursday night? When I have some answers to that question I’ll post it here!

Meanwhile Grey’s Anatomy, SVU and Life on Mars weathered the telethon better than I would’ve expected, Private Practice however, not so much – but it’s an odd night and to soon to make any judgement on the various programming moves, however early trends suggest 7 and 10 tying for this night on a regular basis (with Seven winning overall due to their news) and Nine being the wildcard – depending on what moves in once the footy show starts next month.

Mars Attacks - Thursday 5 February 2009

If there is one trend emerging from this week it is the slow disintegration of channel Nine. Back in the 1990s the once market leader had the strongest early evening lineup (Nine News and A Current Affair used to dominate the 6 o’clock hour) and the strongest late night (awash with young male skewing fare like the Star Trek skeins, Walker Texas Ranger and Renegade), this early and late night superiority meant that whatever Seven threw at them in prime time didn’t matter - they would still prevail in the 6pm – 12pm ratings battle.

So much of Nine’s strength at the edges has been diminished by costs cuts and poor programming decisions, their news lead in is pitiful and their news service is on the skids, their post 10.30 programming is no better, now confined to doco series better suited to cable and haphazard scheduling, Nightline is gone – a victim of cost cutting and erratic scheduling.

Contrast this to Seven. Since the start of this decade Seven have focussed on using their 10.30 timeslot to bring younger skewing shows to the fore – making late night television also appointment television, their early evenings are now a dominant force, bolstered by Deal or no Deal – a game show whose appeal escapes me but the numbers speak for themselves. Home & Away – their 7pm skein – continually reinvents itself year after year, picking up new viewers almost as fast as it loses old ones.

Over on Ten they are a mixed bag – their early evening schedule is targeted to young people (much like seven’s late night) in order to avoid direct competition with the news, but moves Ten has made in the past two decades have affected both Seven and Nine for better and worse.

Ten moving their news from 6 to 5pm was an immediate benefit to 9 and 10, giving Nine a dominating control over the slot and Ten breathing space to transform their news brand, at the same time their 10.30 news bulletin established a new paradigm as a late night news war erupted in the mid 90s – with Ten the only network able to guarantee a consistent starting time they saw off their competitors, first Seven, who turned to underrated series at 10.30pm (undercutting Nine’s 11pm series start time), Eventually Nine succumbed as well, first shunting Nightline to later (at 11.30 or even Midnight) and eventually axing it altogether – weakening their news brand.

Ten’s moves at 7pm have also been the catalyst for problems at Nine – the old setup in the 90s used to be Soap on Seven, Game Show on Nine and Sitcom Reruns on Ten – as a consequence Ten would rarely win – their innovative move in 2001 with nightly reality series Big Brother threw the game wide open – taking viewers from both their rivals and forcing Nine into Sitcoms at 7, now this year Nine will try a stripped reality show at 7pm, something which I never could’ve seen them doing in years!

This week it is Nine’s lack of early evening strength which seems to be hurting them the most in the ratings – for the fourth night in a row they came third behind Seven and Ten, their only successes last night were Celebrity Singing Bee, a limited run placeholder for aging travelogue Getaway and Adult Only 20 to 01, which many commentators view as a desperate attempt to lure an audience. Their scheduling of Kitchen Nightmares was a disaster – you can officially put anything with Gordon Ramsay in a file market ‘Late Night and Cable ONLY’ don’t expect it to remain there next week.

Seven on the other hand did well, even if it’s prime time shows tanked – they still could have won the night on the basis of their early evening and late night (a resurgent Scrubs) alone. Lucky for them their primetime also performed with Ghost Whisperer winning in total people and Grey’s Anatomy winning in 18-49s.

Ten also had a good night – it Biggest Loser ratings were up on Wednesday’s numbers and will probably fluctuate given the night, Bondi Vet however had a poor start posting an underwhelming total. Nothing Ten sticks in this post-loser slot seems to work all that well, factual series are not a natural fit for Ten, somehow they’ve gotten away with Bondi Rescue – but a show about a vet? Last year Seven screened no less that 3 factual shows devoted to Animals, they have that market cornered – I’ll be interested to see whether this experiment rises or falls in the coming weeks.

On the other hand – Law & Order SVU and Life on Mars performed excellently taking the shine off Seven’s night and adding some colour to a line up usually controlled by Wolf Films. Expect Life on Mars to rise next week when its main competition is the Lifetime reject series Private Practice.

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.