It must be fucking bad!

Well - not to be outdone by Wednesdays - Thursday night has seen only one show after 7pm attract the magic million, Cougar Town, which was the subject of a bizarre non-sequiter rant from Seven CEO David Leckie during the week, delivered the good despite the abuse! Looks like Seven has another sitcom hit on their hands.

SVU must have suffered from being pushed back to 9pm (although it's not like people were watching anything else - so maybe they went to bed!) Similarly Medium took a hit for following so late - Ten might do better to start their news at 10pm rather than try to kick off a drama from that point.

Meanwhile the only thing continuing to make the creaking old Getaway look good is the shoddy performance of The White Room, Lets face facts here - if over 250,000 Home and Away watchers are compelled to avoid it - it must be fucking bad!

Fresh funny skeins not stale old laughs

Well this is something new - we're in ratings on a Thursday night and not one show cracks the million mark! In fact not one cracked the 900,000 mark. There were viewers aplenty at 8.30 to watch Seven's sitcoms and SVU on Ten, so what's the go at 7.30.

I can see that the bad press and unsettled timeslot are working against Biggest Loser, I can also see that The White Room (for which I have not seen any promotion) might tank on the basis of being an unknown quantity, but what is going on with Getaway!?

I dare not get my hopes up that this mouldy cheap old Saturday Afternoon snorefest which has been keeping good alternative off Nine's Thursday sked for 18 years now might actually be ready to shuffle off, if only.

Overall channel Nine was very weak last night, the performance of 20 to 1 was remarkably weak last night - it's clear that given the choice of some guaranteed fresh laughs, people will chose that over the stale old clip show.

Even more encouraging was that the value of Thank God You're Here reruns has plummeted with the onetime megahit pulling a pretty average 700,000 in repeat. That show was overrated even when it was a hit.

A 20 to 01 shot

Thursday 4 June 2009

Biggest Disappointments
Mask & Memory
ABC 9.30pm down on Q&A by 38.58%

Sunrise
Seven Early Morning down Week on Week by 12.21%

Biggest Improvements
Rules of Engagement
Ten 8pm up 50.96% on Worst Week

Medium
Ten 9.30pm up 23.89% week on week

Well here something encouraging – another sitcom it starting to connect with the public and lo and behold it’s one them old timey laugh track shows!

Rules of Engagement, currently in it’s 3rd season (if it doesn’t feel that old that’s because all of it’s seasons have been shortened due to the dearth of available half hour timeslots on CBS and ten only debuted the show in 2008 anyway) is starting to take off achieving some of it’s highest ratings yet.

While still 3rd in the 7.30 hour the removal of the also-ran Worst Week has turned Rules into a viable competitor

Now that that’s’s sorted and Medium is lifting Thursday nights are starting to become a close-run affair, even Criminal Intent lifted its game with a 20.58% increase week on week.

It’s also the only night of the week right now where Nine has any sort of dominance, the Footy Show is on a hot streak in the southern markets right now with 687,000 tuning in to the AFL vs 375,000 rugby league tragics.

Meanwhile my hat is off to 20 to 01, back in 2006 (the show’s second season) people were wondering whether Nine could sustain the series beyond it’s initial 7 episodes but lo an behold there have been 87 episodes (yet 87) since then and the show is still going strong! Kudos!

Abusing the fans

Thursday 7 May 2009
Lots of big changes on the Ten sked last night and not the same level of success.

Rules of Engagement, a sitcom which has had two curtailed seasons (it was a midseason launch then ran head on into the WGA Writer’s Strike) returned to less than spectacular numbers allowing Nine and Seven to divide the hour amongst themselves with Bondi Vet falling away on the back of a poor lead-in.

Criminal Intent returned to SVU like ratings, but beaten handsomely by a 20 to 01 rerun, the 8.30pm hour was hotly contested last night with 4,322,000 people tuned in across the hour, the ABC benefiting from a retrospective special on Media Watch, a 15 minutes a week that tabloid journalists dread and a show whose attention from the news media is inversely proportional to its miniscule running time! The special pulled 911,000 viewers, one of Aunty’s best performances in this slot all year.

Medium moved nights to Thursdays, dropping from last week’s occupant (an SVU rerun) by 154,000 viewers but improving on Life on Mars’ sliding ratings and improving on its own ratings which were stuck under 700,000 on a low viewing Friday night. After last night there are 7 episodes left in the current season, after which they could virtually rerun the show in this slot for the rest of the year and it would probably produce a similar, if not better, number.

Medium’s debut adversely affected Private Practice. Last night I actually sat through an episode of Grey’s Anatomy to see whether I was missing anything (and no I wasn’t) but a new disturbing trick I noticed was that Grey’s Anatomy faded to black (no logo, or EP credit or anything) and then bang, right onto Private Practice, there was no promo for next week’s episode just a jarring jump to the next show.

To whoever is in charge of playout at the Seven network – this is abuse of the fans of this show – and I hasten to add, I am not one of them, but if my favourite show ended on a dramatic note and I didn’t get that space of the credits, or a promo to decompress and reflect on what I just saw, well that’s just low.

I get accelerated flow, In fact I’m a big fan of the kind of accelerated flow that American Networks practiced in the 90’s, back then the credits were all uniform (and yes off to one side, but legible) a promo for a related show would play and then you’d get a quick bumper to flag the next program, none of this jumping straight onto the next show – that is just arse.

So faceless Seven executive, just think about what you’re doing, by denying Grey’s Anatomy fans their show as a whole, you’re not only turning them away but you’re also hurting the prospects of the show you’re trying to promote, just look at the ratings (especially for Private Practice) it isn’t working!

Finally congrats to the AFL Footy Show had a big victory at 9.30 mostly thanks to some sort of heavily publicised stunt where Sam Newman got tarred and feathered! Meanwhile one of the stars of the NRL version seems to had serious allegations made against them to be aired at a future date on Four Corners – would somebody just can the Rugby League version already!

Endless Midsomer

Friday 1 May 2009

A fairly unimpressive night for everything bar the grey double of Better Homes and Gardens and Midsomer Murders.

Ten, with no sport to fall back on fared the worst of the commercial nets with only a 19% audience share and low audiences all around.

Medium, a show which deserves better, will this week be moving to 9.30 Thursdays with Law & Order doing double duty on the night.

It's a tough ask for the 19 year old procedural which is far more highbrow than its character driven offspring, an evening of Law & Order is often a trip down the complex and labyrinth playbook of the US legal system, played for realism it can often be very dry stuff and at this point it's clear that viewers prefer the abnormally murderous antics of various eccentrics in the English countryside to the gritty 'ripped from the headlines' New York experience.

You'd think Ten might be hanging hoping that ABC will run out of episodes - well don't hold your breath - last night's ep (originally shown on Nine) was episode 10 (or 3.2) that's 10 eps out of 65!!! This show ain't going anywhere soon!

Perhaps Ten should reach into the old vault for some Murder She Wrote, or maybe they still have the rights to Ruth Rendell!

Out of the Frying Pan...

Friday 24 April 2009
Ahhh if only we could all agree on a code of Football! Last night if you combined the audiences for AFL and NRL you would end up with 1.3 million viewers (717k watching Rugby League and 676k watching AFL in Prime Time) alas we are fractured nation - forever doomed to squabble over whose sport is best.

If you don't like sport there's always Midsomer Murders on ABC, Old fashioned murder mystery preferred by almost double the audience watching the more high concept kind on Channel Ten, Medium will be off to Thursdays very shortly to take advantage of the younger audiences on that night while Law & Order will air double eps in its place.

But Law & Order could be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire, Law & Order skews heavily male in its demographics putting it squarely in competition with... you guessed it - Football and that's a fight it can't win.

Friday 10 April 2009

Friday


Very very low rating night all around - which is to be expected for a Good Friday. Medium and Law & Order continue to struggle in the face of pretty lacklustre competition - meanwhile there's no available figures so we can't see the result of the great southern experiment by Nine to stick Sitcoms in opposition to the Simpsons on Friday night.

Meanwhile Better Homes and Gardens continues to dominate the 7.30 hour - tripped up only slightly this week by the absence of Melbourne from the network for the annual Good Friday Telethon.

Friday 4 and Saturday 5 April 2009

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.

Slight Reprieve - Friday 20 March 2009

Well we had a Friday with no AFL (save for an AFL documentary on channel seven entitled Essence of the Game), Rugby League broadcast in Melbourne and a resurgent Medium/Law & Order double certain to be kept alive on this night for another week at least.

In fact Medium's performance is most interesting - it increased its viewership by 229,000 people week on week with almost all of that surge coming from Melbourne where non-sport viewers given a choice between sports doco on seven or sport on nine flooded over to Ten making it the sixth most watched show in Melbourne last night with 327,000 viewers.

Channel Nine continue to splinter their schedule beyond recognition with Postcards in Perth, Motorway Patrol in Melbourne and Big Momma's House 2 in Adelaide all doing single city duty last night, tonight they'll be dropping Brisbane out of the network to celebrate QTQ's 50th Anniversary.

Unlucky - Friday 13, Saturday 14 March 2009

Just some quick notes for the weekend just gone. Seven and Nine were the main beneficiaries on Friday night with the AFL preseason ending and the NRL season starting - in fact Nine's NRL absolutely blitzed the opposition in its home markets, if only I could get hold of figures for Suddenly 30, or Perth's Postcards which continues to occupy the 7.30 slot in the west.

Ten's alternative lineup was squeezed out by the sport but also, worryingly, by the alternative movies as well coming third in most markets, I doubt they'll let too many more weeks go by with these sorts of poor results, then again they could stand to promote these shows which are way under the radar.


On Saturday I have no doubt that we'll find out Pay TV was the dominant player, yours truly's obsession with Battlestar Galactica notwithstanding, I'm sure the Sound Relief concerts on [V] and Max would have drawn a decent crowd.

Over on FTA Seven's idea of splitting movies by markets may work but only when they're good movies. Meanwhile Nine puts on a Robin Williams film nobody had heard of with zero promotion and look at the brilliant results! You know its bad when you're beaten by 'The Core'

Friday 6 March 2009

Just a quick one for Friday's Ratings (Saturday's are not even worth discussing - only two shows over 1 million, the two big news bulletins).

Seven's decision to screen a movie up against Ten's Football broadcast paid off with the 3 hour movie winning it's timeslot giving Seven a clean sweep for the night with the top 5 programs and first in every timeslot.

Ten was forced into further fragmenting their audience with new eps of Medium and Law & Order skipped altogether in the southern markets, splitting your sked for AFL/Rugby League commitments makes sense when you can maximise your results - but when the end result is a washout like this - why even bother?

Friday 27 February 2009

Well, the overall picture for Friday is still somewhat unclear with no figures available for Seven's northern movie The Guardian, however looking at it - its just awfulm I can't even blame the programmers because looking at the lineup there was a fair spread of genres covered last night, but nobody was biting.

Ten's programs took a big hit week on week with The Simpsons down 131,000 viewers and Medium down 101,000. Nine got some absolutely deplorable figures for its movies as well, shocking given they're both recent hit films - which says to me that the people meter people were all out for the night!

Rinse and Repeat - Friday 13 February 2009

Both Nine and Seven had sporting events on Friday night which managed to fracture the schedule across the country.

Seven was split down state lines with Sydney/Bris showing encore episodes and the southern states carrying AFL.

Nine was split by time zone due to their live cricket coverage - viewers in Bris, Perth and Adelaide were treated to an encore screening of Underbelly

I'm not even going to attempt to spot a trend in all that mess - except to say that a national sport (Cricket) easily outperformed a regional sport (AFL). The irony is that I'll bet you the rights to the AFL costed Seven way more than the cricket rights costed Nine.

Ten at least ran a consistent sked - and although they were again up against a mountain of sport - they seemed to do a good job of anyone not tuned into the cricket.

Finally! A Friday we can watch - 6 February 2009

Ten did something special last night - they came third, well what's special about that? look closer kimosabe - because that's the best third place they've managed in quite a while and the reason should be abundantly clear to anyone with even a passing familiarity with Australian TV schedules.

Look at Ten's line up - no haphazard movies, no sport, no gardening, no documentaries, no reality series, no MTV reruns, nope.

Instead two of Ten's most established series (in fact two of the network's, and television's, longest running) are pinning down the night and the results are better than expected.

Sure The Simpsons has rated better in the past - but not particularly last season in a Tuesday timeslot swamped with fresh competition from all sides, retreating to Fridays (which is a wasteland for the typical Simpsons viewer) makes sense, expect the show to build as the weather cools down and people who have neglected the show discover it on a free night.

Law & Order posted some great ratings and a 2nd place for the two hours, although it will constantly be under attack from sporting options on the other channels the fact that it provides a regular reliable entertainment makes it a better proposition for advertisers than gambling on movies which can be a hit and miss affair.

Next week Law & Order is joined by Medium, a creepy crime thriller/family drama which has always been heavily underrated in this and its home country but deserves a chance to shine - every time I have watched it the show has pulled off some amazing high concept stuff and managed to keep its storylines different to other crime procedurals.

Also 2008 flameout Women's Murder Club is in the 10.30 for the next few weeks - given the good reception here expect to see other short runs in the 10.30 timeslot over the season, finally Free to Air gives us some thing decent on a friday.

Some commentators are calling the sked "risky" - I call it the most sensible programming move in decades - what's next someone turns on the lights on a Saturday???

Don't hold your breath...