The game they don't watch in heaven

Saturday 6 June 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections
SBS 7.30pm Down 33.86% week on week

Biggest Improvement
Bruce Almighty
Seven (Southern Markets) after Vicar of Dibley
Up 29.09% over Phenomemon

All 3 commercial nets turned their schedules into swiss cheese last night to accomodate various sporting events.

Seven had the classic North/South split for their coverage of Rugby Union, the Union was a ratings disappointment polling only 219,000 in Sydney and 155,000 in Brisbane - middling figures at best. Worse than this was the decision to rerun Christian the Lion, a wildlife doco they ran only 5 weeks ago on a Tuesday night! And topping that level of bad was the fact that it rated well! More people watched this rerun doco in Melbourne, than tuned in for the Rugby Union in Sydney! If you actually compare it week on week in the three markets with the first run Cheetah Man it comes out on top with a 4% improvement!

Nine and Ten adjusted their schedules for local time differences, with Ten starting their Saturday AFL match at 5 different times and Nine playing around post-7.30 in order to line up with start times for the Twenty/20 Cricket.

Consistency Pays

Saturday 30 May 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Saturday Night AFL
Ten down 68,000 week on week

Biggest Improvement
New Tricks
ABC1 7.30pm - up 182,000 week on week


Nothing big happening last night and a whole lot of missing figures making the picture even cloudier. Suffice it to say Nine was the winner on overall percentage with the ABC second for the night.

Nothing else that interesting happened, Nine's movies were both down on last week, but both were still good performers, Seven's southern broadcast of Phenomenon was down on last week's Meet the Fockers, but again not by too much.

Interestingly most regular series were up, aside from New Tricks, Gardening Australia, Foyles War, Vicar of Dibley, Rockwiz, Kath & Kim, The Bill and Funniest Vids were all up from last week. I guess on a night where almost anything goes schedule-wise, consistency pays!