Go with what you know - Tuesday 6 January 2009

Reruns and factuals are the order of the day, Tuesday night once again belonged to NCIS with reruns of the veteran drama pulling the best audience post 7.30. Next Week Ten ditches In Plain Sight (which has shown some growth but not enough) in favour of a second hour of NCIS.

For Seven the start of Tennis cannot come soon enough - Eli Stone has been a flop - perhaps if they played it back when they promoted it last year.

Seven's move of more factuals at 7.30 has turned that hour from Nine dominated into a level pegging contest, that this many people in summer, are interested in this sort of television either says a lot about the tastes of the viewing public - or a lot about the lack of any viewing alternatives.

The Arnie flick Collateral Damage did alright for Nine with their Tuesday movie keeping them in the game, perhaps with the take no prisoners opposition of Packed to the Rafters and NCIS, Nine will stick movies on this night as a defensive position, which is frankly - not a bad way to go.

Late night suprise - Tuesday 9 December 2008

Nine pulled a swifty last night and for one hour became channel seven. A new show, Sudden Impact, which is another one of these car crash doco-soaps and the return of NZ sitcom Police 10-7 did the business in the opening hour.

What’s more astonishing is that ‘tis the season for surprise hit rerun movies with Mr & Mrs Smith not too shabby for the next 2 and a half hours, the icing on the cake was Survivor which was bumped back to 11pm but still commanded a huge aud for that time period, generally after 11 shows are lucky to exceed 300,000 (unless they started earlier or are live sport) so that’s an outstanding figure.

Surely Nine will be emboldened to try out Survivor again in Prime Time especially with an extra season up their sleeves meaning they could potentially show it year round without a break.

Seven seem stuck in 3rd gear in the early evening, Ghost Whisperer did better than Dirty Sexy Money which was hurtled back to 11.30 for it’s long limp off the screen, but Nine’s movie, In Plain Sight and the incompatibility of Ghost Whisperer all combined to give Prison Break a headache down 63,000 week on week.

NCIS was again the best Prime Time series on the night but this audience didn’t carry over for the 2 hour premiere of In Plain Sight with the audience almost halving – even taking into account the drop as the night wears on that’s still a bad result.

Almost as bad was the shocking performance of Rules of Engagement, losing to a show in it’s death throes (Ugly Betty) is a bad thing on any occasion, but losing 135,000 from a compatible lead in is just tragic. Having said that The Big Bang Theory experienced a similar drop from it’s lead-in on Monday (816,000 vs 1,018,000 for Mr Sheen) but still – nobody needs under 700,000 viewers at 7.30, even at this time of year.

Finally – Wednesday 26 November 2008

It took some yahoo at channel nine to schedule complete shit and ABC to pack up Spicks and Specks a week early but finally Dr House got back in the black – for his final new episode this year.

The medical drama roped in over 1 million viewers, a first for its current season – another beneficiary of Nine’s stupidity (Christmas with the Kranks?? I mean come on!) was Seven whose Criminal Minds enjoyed a boost of 179,000 viewers week on week.

Nine can be happy with the performance of The Big Bang Theory which has better audience retention from Two and a Half Men than previous tryout Til Death and is pulling respectable numbers. A timeslot change is in the offing with this pair of sitcoms now moving to Sundays and Mondays at 7.30pm where I expect they will continue to rate well.

Seven held their nerve (much like Ten has with House I suppose) with The Unit and it paid off with the military drama coming a close second to surprise timeslot winner Life – see what happens when you ease the glut of dramas in the same timeslot. No such luck next week as Life makes way for Rush and Nine enters the fray with ER.

Futurama continues to be a puzzle – the show single-handedly kept ten’s 2005/06 summer afloat (along with short-run hit Surface) yet now with new episodes it seems to be floundering, I’m putting the blame squarely on lead-in Will & Grace which in four weeks has failed to fire. When your main 7pm comedic rival is doubling your audience and then continuing into the 7.30 timeslot then Futurama has zero chance of building a lead. Honestly though will Friends do any better over summer.

Here my advice ten – if you want your nights to succeed – then PROMOTE Friends – not just with some one size fits all ad, but with a new commercial for EACH EPISODE run it all through your news and then start the promos for the next nights show all through primetime – the only way your gonna make people want to watch a show they’ve watched before is by reminding them how good it was – and the only way you’re going to do that is by promoting the S H 1 T out of it.

As a last note the return of Prison Break did really well and bodes well for Seven to dominate late night over the summer.

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.

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.

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!