Balls-Out Bogans and other observations

Sunday, 29 May 2011

Well it's easy to see that the winner of the night was Seven, with their new series "Downtown Abbey" a period drama which will run for seven weeks (and have another series later this year).

Clearly everyone loves to see some toffey period action because it netted one of the biggest Sunday audiences of the year so far!


Monday, 30 May 2011

Virtually identical to last week, except No Ordinary Family actually added 70,000 viewers and Offspring and Masterchef went up as well. Winter is kicking in.

Over two hours Rescue: Special Ops actually did worse than last week's CSI double.


Tuesday, 31 May 2011

While a snarky part of me is happy to see a Lisa McCune drama fail (why couldn't it have been the sleep inducing Blue Heelers?) another, more reasonable part of me is baffled as to why Nine would pit this against Seven's top rating Tuesday slot. Seven has owned this night with Australian drama for years now.

There's no Aussie dramas on Wednesday or Thursday nights, why not try it there rather than unsuccessfully trying to divide (and supposedly conquer) your potential audience.

Oh BTW - Australia's Got Talent - biggest aud of the week at a shade under 2 million viewers - incredible.


Wednesday, 1 June 2011

I have to just put it out there. Mike & Molly is a flop, it pains me slightly cuz out of all the choices at 8pm on a Wednesday - it's what I watch, and its quite a decent show, but for whatever reason it is driving people away from Nine.

Big Bang Theory at 7.30 almost nets 1 million viewers and then the numbers fall off precipitously - recovering slightly for RPA, but not much.

Also what is the go with 9.30pm

Viewers at 8.30pm = 3,676,000
Viewers at 9.30pm = 2,604,000

That's a hell of a drop off and yet the digital netlets didn't feel it, all their 9.30 shows more or less maintained their lead in audiences, those viewers going to bed were all watching the analogue channels. Maybe the government is right to be putting set top boxes into pensioner's homes. Back to bed people!


Thursday, 2 June 2011.

Easily the biggest night for Digital TV, if you're wondering what it means when I've shaded a program green, it means their PEAK AUDIENCE was over 300,000 viewers, so you can be sure its a popular show.

GO! continues to prosper with its superior movie line-up, Charlie's Angels almost doubling last week's Miss Congeniality 2 (now you know why their hasn't been a #3).

Maybe Nine should think about putting RBT on Tuesdays and sending the less popular AFP onto Thursday night shopping duty. RBT shouldn't be good, its a show about the most boring minutae of police work - getting drivers to blow into a machine to test their blood alcohol. It should be boring, but for some reason the mix of balls-out bogans a... how funny is this - AS I AM WRITING THIS - a cop car has pulled someone over up the street from here and my street was flickering blue and red for a good 5 minutes. Naturally I hung out my window to see what was going on, and thus you can see the appeal of RBT.

Midsomer Massacre

Earlier this year the ABC had some great Friday night success with the British Mystery series Midsomer Murders, the show pulled a consistent million each Friday against Football codes, chick flicks and Ten’s Law & Order so it makes sense that they have returned the show to a better timeslot – Sunday’s no less, with outstanding results.

Midsomer really put the cat among the pidgeons after causing consternation for Nine’s Rescue Special Ops diping below 900,000. Whilst Rush experienced similar humiliating figures last season, that was on Ten in a 9.30 slot, this is Nine in an 8.30 slot, not to mention the beating 60 minutes is copping lately.

The Ashes seemed to also impact the commercial nets after 8.30 last night with only Bones putting in a respectable number.

Rove had a minor relaunch without Hughsie and Carrie (on other duties at 7pm) after several weeks away and it landed with a thud taking in only 832,000 viewers, worse was the performance of follow-on Rules of Engagement - if Ten is trying to turn this show into Two and a Half Men by running it everywhere - it ain't catching on!

Last night also gives us the first ever figures for GO! Nine’s new foray into multichannelling and a largely successful one at that with flagship show The Big Bang Theory netting 207,000 – impressive given that this channel is only cleared in approximately 45% of homes (households with digital receivers independent of Foxtel)

The chart is right here...

Secret Sunday Scheduling

Launch last night for Rescue: Special Ops - a show which not only apes the look of Rush - but also the audience size with 1.13 million sampling - that's not too bad really - more worrying is the turnout for CSI Miami at 9.30! Did anybody even know that it was on? I don't recall any promos, how the hell does Nine expect folks to follow this kind of ridiculous mystery scheduling!

Of course the story of the day is Australian Idol, due to return next Sunday in direct competition with Seven's Dancing, dumping judge Kyle Sandilands after the now infamous incident on his radio show last week.

It's not constructive for me to add anything to this in the context of a ratings blog - except to say that the fact that Sandilands will be on Idol for at least the first 3 weeks (during Auditions and the workshops) will make for some interesting results ahead...

The Last to Arrive

Last night was a typical Thursday where everyone got a turn to shine (save for the ABC I guess) 7 Dominated the news hour, Getaway and the Footy Show gave Nine the night and Rush pulled off another timeslot win holding its audience week to week and justifying Ten's faith in renewing the show.

The test for Rush may be after this week when Nine brings on their own Rescue: Special Ops - which, being about paramedics, is different - but to the casual observer looks like a clone. Will they be oversaturating the market with this type of show - stay tuned.

Seven absolutely collapsed after the Amazing Race. Double Take dropped 13.19% week on week but still held a decent 941k in tow - but TV Burp dropped 16.09% down to a worrying 845k.

Whilst Rules of Engagement has been subsisting on those kind of numbers for weeks now, Rules is a cheap (very cheap considering how often it's rerun) import on channel Ten, TV Burp is a cheap (read: replaceable) show on channel Seven - they're gonna need to lift in the coming weeks to keep Seven's support.