The Danger Zone

Ahhhhh

That sound you can here is Seven and Nine breathing a sigh of relief.

The behometh has rolled away and finally their shows are seeing some sunlight!

Sea Patrol lifted nicely with a double installment sustaining over the million mark giving Nine the night.

With Masterchef gone the 7.30pm rerun of Two and a Half Men rose to 1.4million proving it aint over yet for the oversaturated sitcom.

Seven had a decent night but the 8pm rerun of Scrubs was a rare low point for them sliding into fourth place with comedy viewers opting for an all new Big Bang Theory - in one of the biggest outings yet for the sophomore skein.

So what about Ten.

Ten is now in that danger zone, the second half.

It's worth taking a look back to this time last year to see how ten was faring back then.

15. Neighbours 6.30pm - 954,000
19. Good News Week 8.30pm - 865,000
23. Friends (r) 7pm - 776,000
24. America's Next Top Model 7.30pm - 756,000
25. The Simpsons (r) 6pm - 752,000
29. Burn Notice 9.30pm - 641,000

All in all when Neighbours is your top rating show - you're in trouble and that's how ten was - 1 week after Big Brother wrapped for the final time, Ten had a game show (Taken Out) not ready for launch so filled the gap with reruns of Friends.

Whatever else you think about Taken Out, having that rerun break gave whatever remaining 7pm viewers ten had an opportunity to check out the competition, when Ten doesn't have a strong 7pm show - their whole schedule suffers - you only need to look back at the early posts on this very site to see just how bad they were going!

Which brings us to last night, the big question is, will the 7pm Project be a good lead-in for Ten's primetime or will it be Taken Out?

Well for the first night, so far so good, a live pastiche of news and panel style commentary with the odd live cross thrown in, it had a good debut averaging 1.2 million (with an increase in the second half - always a good sign) They also pulled a formidable 41.3% of the 18-49 age demographic.

Ten programmer David Mott has indicated to TV Tonight that the show would live or die by it's demos so that's a good start.

Following at 7.30 was the final episode of The Recruits - one of ten's best factual launches in recent years, next week they're replaced by a new season of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? That show did some real heavy lifting for Ten on Thursdays last year - as long at the 7pm project holds up as a lead-in they should post some good numbers.

Post 8.30 is a bit hard to judge - GNW had the night off with a rerun posting figures more akin to 2008 and Supernatural dropped drastically as a result. There are apparently only two eps of Supernatural left this season and it's a good bet that new ones won't return until summer (where they've got some clear air) so whatever Ten puts at 9.30 is going to be crucial for them in the weeks ahead - with their post 8.30 falling apart they dropped to 3rd place and a 21 share for the night, that's passable but there's no killer app at 9.30 like last year's Andrew Denton which is holding everything else back - so theres's no reason they can't fill this slot with something hot that brings in the crowds.

Something like a phenomenon

Monday 8 June 2009

It was good news for all networks last night thanks to that phenomenon known as the public holiday!

The same event which suppressed the audience on the Sunday night served to boost it to new heights on Monday.

Early evening shows got a huge boost with people indoors earlier due to the bad weather, the football and the day off work.

Ten recorded it’s biggest audience yet for Masterchef, an average of 1.8 million viewers over the hour representing a 22% increase week on week.

Remember last year when this project was being mooted and people just shook their heads thinking it would never work? Well you should all consider yourselves told! Masterchef is the surprise hit of 2009!

Also making an impact – Seven news, 555k clear of channel nine and almost 1 million viewers clear of channel ten!

It used to be that Seven was winning night to night but Nine News would win on public holidays – the theory being an improved turnout among working stiff who would normally be commuting at 6pm.

Well that situation has well and truly reversed – Seven is now the choice for the bulk of the workers too! They are, for lack of a better word, entrenched.

Finally the other big thing to happen last night was Millionaire Hot Seat venturing into prime time giving some 1.2 million viewers a chance to sample the show, Hot Seat won Melbourne and Brisbane but ten Recruits took the other cities.

I wonder if this is a push for yet another prime time game show or Nine’s way of promoting the show to a wider audience. Either way they could consider it a success, though here’s a sobering thought, Hot Seat recorded it’s best ever 5.30 audience with 812,000 viewers, in the same timeslot Ten News brought 1,167,000 while Deal or no Deal pulled in 1,075,000! Still some room to make up there.

Scoreboard

Going up
Hot Seat (5.30pm) up 23%
Masterchef up 22%
Scrubs up 18% (excluding Melb market)
Today Tonight up 15%
Deal or no Deal up 14%
A Current Affair up 14%
Seven News up 13%
Media Watch up 13%
Desperate Housewives up 12%
Recruits up 11%

Going Down
Jonathan Ross Show down 11%
Top Gear Australia down 8%
Supernatural down 8%
Good News Week down 4%

Masterchef paying dividends

Tuesday 5 May 2009

It may be too early to call it, but I think we can assume that Masterchef is starting to pay Ten dividends.

Last year viewers were actively tuning out from Ten with the bloated corpse of Big Brother stinking up the place, once all the viewers had gone, even burying Big Brother wasn’t enough to entice viewers back, people needed a reason.

Of course, that reason was The Biggest Loser, a reality contest that still has life left in it and gave viewers a reason to switch on Ten and stick around, but these reality shows only last a certain number of weeks so whatever was coming to replace Loser had to not suck.

So far Masterchef is doing the job, holding its ground in a competitive 7pm timeslot and even getting a bit of watercooler buzz (someone yesterday told me they watched, and this morning I got a text from someone else asking me to identify the theme song, the joke’s on them cuz I haven’t watched a complete episode!)

The payoff for ten is not so much the 7pm performance but the stability of their Prime Time schedule, witness a good launch for Recruits on Monday and a great launch last night for the new quiz/game/panel show thing Talkin ‘Bout Your Generation. It has to be one of the best starts ever for a Shaun Micallef project, the lawyer turned comedian was always the most original and funny in the Full Frontal cast and his shows The Micallef Pogram and Newstopia are among the funniest Australian Television of the last ten years, it’s nice to see the man have some success.

This success was all the more extraordinary given the performance of a doco on Seven about a Lion (???!?) there was about 5.1 million viewers watching free to air at 7.30 last night – an excellent result for the industry.

Then again, what the hell happened at 9.30, putting aside that the universally panned Kitchen Nightmares did better in Melbourne than an Underbelly (season 1) rerun did in Sydney (surely Gordon Ramsay’s Full Throttle F***fest would be a better fit with the mind in the gutter antics of Sheen and Cryer, but I digress.

The bigger problem at 9.30 was the spectacular fall of Ten Years Younger in Ten Days! The metaphorical arse has fallen out of this makeover show. Debut attracted 1,348,000. Second Week 1,226,000. This Week down to 990,000 that’s 358,000 viewers (26%) gone in the space of two weeks, has to be the most rapid haemorrhage since Aussie Ladette to Lady.

Monsters before bedtime

Monday 4 May 2009

The final episode of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities last night and a massive turnout for the event, let down however by the performance of everything else around it, although Eleventh Hour won its timeslot it still lost over half the audience from the Underbelly lead in.

This raises a question – why on earth did Nine screen a double episode of Underbelly 3 weeks ago, when they could of used that first week back to debut Eleventh Hour (clear of Biggest Loser) and have an extra week next week to cement an aud for the show? Just a nonsensical decision really – and that first week back they really took a bath on the audience, only recovering to it’s median level this week.

Next Year if there is indeed, another story, I’d advise the geniuses at Nine to hold off screening it until after the Easter break to make the most of the available Audience and have an unbroken run. Also I’d advise against double-eps – you get the most bang for your buck in the 8.30 hour, which with a 2 mill aud is enough to win you the night, there’s every reason to stretch those shares out to 13 weeks rather than compress them into eleven.

Also for f***’s sake next year figure out what you want to do with the 9.30 hour before you bow – this year was a dog’s breakfast, Ladette to Lady (a completely unrelated reality skein), Crime Investigation Australia (a Cable repurposing) and now Eleventh Hour (should have put it here from the start)

The new Nine 7.30 hour reality skeins are not as popular as that Custom Mash-Up that preceded them with Ten actually winning the 7.30 hour with a great debut aud for The Recruits, which along with Masterchef was their bright spot for the night.

The return of Supernatural, though, was less lively, managing only a paltry 633,000. The problem for Supernatural is pretty simple really in my estimation – it’s aimed squarely at teenagers most of whom probably have to be at school the next day and therefore can’t stay up to watch it.

The other point is it’s a genre show, mixing sci-fi and horror. We’ve seen year after year high-concept shows thriving at 8.30 (think Lost, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, yes Supernatural, Charmed) and the second they’re moved to 9.30 the audience dwindles, Supernatural is the only one here holding onto a 9.30 slot by the skin of its teeth!

So what kind of shows are suitable for 9.30? Well lets look at what works, procedurals – Lie to Me, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, Bones, CSI Miami, light entertainment – The Footy Show, Enough Rope, 20 to 01, and soaps like All Saints, even Brothers and Sisters looks respectable this week!

Essentially I don’t think these kinds of shows work at 9.30 – Ten has the perfect out, they can swap GNW with Supernatural, that will give more people the chance to catch GNW (getting it out of the way of Desperate Housewives and Four Corners) and give the kids a chance to watch Monsters before bedtime!