Slo-Mo Comedy Train Wreck

Wow - a bit of a turnaround for Ten last night with sophomore drama Rush lifting to it's best audience yet and yet another timeslot win but the lift for Rush also spelt the best result all week for Idol.

Looking past these results this blogger is gratified that Burn Notice seems to be catching on, a nice 80's style action drama there really is nothing else like it currently on TV, so it's good to see it getting traction.

More worrying is the numbers for Seven's TV Burp and Double Take now in no-mans land with both under 700,000 viewers, oddly despite the urging of several in the blogosphere that Burp was the superior show, swapping the two around has actually hurt both in the ratings, this looks like being the most painful slo-mo local comedy train wreck since David Tench/Ronnie Johns and those shows had their fans as well so it's sad to see.

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.

QandA - the last to arrive

A quick one for Thursday night.

Seven virtually refreshed their whole lineup with decent results.

Amazing Race at 7.30 did quite well (incredibly bettered by the undead Getaway) and the two new comedies both tagged over 1 million viewers, although third in the slot with Rush maintaining it's first week figures without any problems.

Also good for Ten was that Criminal Intent improved week on week by 16.62% for a timeslot win.

If only it was that good for Ten across the night. The 7pm project claims to be waving not drowning - but I'm starting to wonder - it still posts a timeslot win in 16-39 but that's not what Ten is aiming for and as a result the 7.30 ep of Rules of Engagement was way down only climbing back up for the second ep at 8pm - both half hours are mediocre raters even by Ten's standards.

Finally - what's the deal with Q&A - It's back - I didn't even realise it - and neither did most of it's audience by the look of it - the show was well down on it's average - outrated by the ABC's 6pm program (among others). The ABC didn't put much promotional energy into the series return - hopefully the word will filter through in the coming weeks that the show is back - one of the more lively current affairs programs in recent times.

Walk don't Rush

Masterchef had a 90 minute edition and walked over everything else, pulling a season high 2.3 million viewers, definitely one of the largest audiences all year and certainly the largest haul for a Thursday night.

Not one of it's direct competitors made it to 1 million viewers, that is now the sheer power of this show.

Seven had two season finale's - Ghost Whisperer and Grey's Anatomy, while Ghost Whisperer floundered against it's competition, Grey's Anatomy lifted handsomely to post it's highest numbers for the season. Not a bad way to end the year for them, you only have to know a women in their 30s to know this show still has a large fan base, but the Thursday timeslot tends to work against it, meaning if OzTam ever take to measuring PVR or VCR timeshifting they'll find this will be one of the shows that gains big time.

Grey's Anatomy delivered a smackdown of sorts to Rush, the action drama, which struggled on Tuesday nights in it's freshman year and embarrassed itself in summer reruns, couldn't have asked for better exposure coming right after one of the top rating hours of the year.

It's therefore a little dissappointing to see it lose 50.5% of its lead-in, but still 1.1 million was better than anything Rush was doing last year and better than most of the 8.30 ratings ten has had this year so there's hope for it - but Nine's upcoming rescue show (the name of which currently escapes me) could act as a spoiler dragging down Rush by oversaturating the sub-genre.

Speaking of Nine, were they even on last night, that has to be one of their worst Thursday showings ever, I know they mostly have Masterchef to thank, but at least Seven was acle to work around that - Nine seems to have given up the fight.

Dead Rubber

The final installment of this year's State of Origin Rugby League competish was, of course, a dead rubber with Qld having swept the series in two games, it was still wildly popular though for Nine sealing the night for them post 8.30.

There's only one problem for the net - their week has turned into a dead rubber.

Even with the power of State of Origin, Nine has very little prospect of taking out the week, this is a staggering development

4 days in (despite winning prime time last night with a 30% share) Nine is in overall third place with a 24.7% share to Ten's 26.5% and Seven's 25.4%.

In the past no matter what state Nine was in overall - they could always be assured of taking out an origin week, and this is even going back to the days where the game was only shown north of the Murray.

This time around the final State of Origin has collided with the final week of Masterchef, surely the phenomenon of the year.

Ten has aired another 90 minutes of the show tonight (Thursday) as well as the second season premiere of Rush (a show which had everything going for it last year bar the timeslot) they should pull off a win for the night (though with Grey's Anatomy it will be close fought).

Even though Seven will win Friday and possibly take out the week - I cannot see Nine's Saturday being enough to get them out of third place - this is a disaster for a network that is just lurching from one to the next without a break.

This week it was the axing of "This Afternoon" a 4.30 skein designed to muscle in on Seven News. Like a lot of Nine's failures, it was trying to imitate a formula successful on it's rival (in this case Sunrise), it was shot in the foot one week in with the shock defection of newsreader Mark Ferguson and the ratings never took off.

Nine axed the long running (at least 15 years and probably more) Brisbane Extra to make way for the program, which lasted less than 3 weeks - well played!

Steady as she goes

Pretty standard Thursday as far as Thursdays go, with the networks settling into a pattern for this night which remains one of Ten's weakest.

A few weeks back I was concerned at the performance of Criminal Intent which used to be the timeslot leader for 8.30 Thursdays last year and now seems to struggle against the competition.

The whole night will get a shake up in two weeks with sophomore drama Rush getting a try out on Thursday nights just as Grey's Anatomy concludes for the year

Do you laugh or cry? Tuesday 3 March 2009

I’m sure Ten’s programmers wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry – laugh because a rerun of a five year old drama takes down All Saints, or cry because their acclaimed local drama Rush couldn’t do the same.

At any rate it’s wonderful that two dramas can bring over 1.2 million each to the screen at 9.30, in fact viewing across the 5 capitals was up week on week with an average of 147,000 additional people tuning in between 7.30 and 10.30.

Seven’s early evening benefited immensely with Seven News recording a whopping 238,000 gain week on week. Nine’s news also gained an extra 134,000 viewers.

Kudos goes to Wipeout which built on its audience by 75,000 viewers and the new ep of Two and a Half Men increased it’s aud by 109,000. Although Ladette to Lady continues to disappoint in total people terms, at least its not going down, and I can’t see it doing much better given that the Tuesday night game is really between Seven and Ten.

Ten News won the battle at 10.30 – in fact the surge for news across the board indicates intense interest in this unexpected attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan.

Let’s get specific – Wednesday 10 December 2008

At this time of year the viewing figures are so low it’s difficult to read anything into the numbers, however Nine would be encouraged to stick with CSI Miami in this slot next year.

The reason it’s rating so well at the moment probably has a great deal to do with the amount of moving it’s done in the past two years. In 2007 and 2008 this show was all over the map, even having split broadcasts with Melbourne viewers getting the show in lieu of the banned Underbelly.

It was a solid performer in Melbourne at that time as well it should be noted, although it was being beaten by House which is now floundering even with less competition.

It’s a good bet that Ten will stick Rush at 8.30 Wednesdays at some point in the new year, whatever ratings it’s garnering in it’s quick turnaround are obviously too embarrassing or depressing for anyone to put in print at the moment, so it’s likely that unless Ten can find a way to sell the show to a bigger audience then it’s natural level would be approx 800,000 - 1 million folks.

How I Met Your Mother is starting to become the dominant commercial player at 7pm which some people will put down to the better lead in but I give viewers more credit than that – last night while watching Heroes I spied two separate promos for How I Met Your Mother, neither of them was generic, they were in fact episode based.

Seven is spending money and time putting together promos for a strip sitcom, something ten should seriously consider, all ten has to do is pick a 10 second moment out of that night’s episode of Friends and pump it at daytime and late night and viewers will eventually be drawn to the show – just showing the same generic promo over and over is useless – you may as well just go back to voice-overs over the end credits if you think it makes any difference.

Generic promos just let people know that shows are on, they are solely for the benefit of folks who would watch the show anyway – they do nothing whatsoever to attract new viewers to a show – that’s when episode-specific promos are needed.

Right now Seven is doing a better job of this than anyone, when you’re number 3, teetering on the edge of number 4 you should look at your market leaders and learn from their success.

Fast turnaround turns bad - Wednesday 3 December 2008

Wednesday was not a good night for anyone. Summer ratings kicked in with a vengeance with the final chart resembling a Saturday more than a Wednesday, in spite of all the goodies on offer.

The Best
On Seven, aside from their News/CAf hour their best result was the ever-reliable Air Crash Investigations, for Nine it was a rerun of CSI Miami in it’s old Wednesday night stomping ground. Ten’s best was barely above Seven’s worst with a rerun of The Simpsons at 7.30 posting their best score and a dismal fourth place in the slot

Good Signs
Seven can be pleased that The Unit held almost all of it’s lead in. As can 10 with Rules of Engagement holding a large chunk of Simpsons devotees. This will be good for Rules in the new year but a lot depends on how it plays out in the US. It’s on CBS – a network with too many hits and not enough spaces – hence it’s had to wait for midseason for a slot to open up. It will need to do something pretty spectacular to make it to a fourth season otherwise Ten can look forward to even more disappointment

Bad Signs
Nine has two decent tentpoles on this Night with 10 to 01 (a shortened 20 to 01) and CSI Miami, but duh! Deadly Surf, a weak, sunless NZ import (sort of a Bondi Rescue on Lithium) does not appeal to anyone who may be watching 10 to 01.

Similarly people who enjoy the antics of David Caruso and Co on CSI Miami may find the goings on at ER a little too taxing for their brains!

The Bold and the Beautiful dropped for the third day in a row – that’s not that worrying as the drop off has not been severe like the wild fluctuations ten’s 6pm slot has had to deal with in the past, but Neighbours dropped as well, taking Friends with it.

Where is my axe?
Okaaaay, so quick turnaround for Rush, not going that well. One one hand this could be half a million people who didn’t see it the first time around and are catching up now, on the other hand the lost 130,000 from an already low lead-in and sunk to 10.30 level numbers.

So what can Ten do, we’ll I’m not sure – I think they’ll just sit tight, they’ve renewed it anyway so it’s future is somewhat assured. The quick turnaround is always a gamble because in one sense you can hit a different audience, in another it becomes like one of those ‘encore episode’ deals which are all to common these days.

Gossip Girl, wrong channel, wrong timeslot, wrong show. Why Nine even hung onto the rights is one of life’s unsolved mysteries. The Foxtel showing will probably capture more actual viewers than last night’s 3rd placer.

Just as with my assessment of 90210, there is no buzz about Gossip Girl, I don’t see any of the stars of this show gracing magazine covers, even TV Tattle has given up covering it, to be blunt I see the following scenario in a few weeks, extra rerun of CSI at 9.30 (look at how NCIS does with two in a row!) ER at 10.30, with Gossip Girl either at 11.30 or 11.00 on some other night.

Rush for the exit - Tuesday 25 November 2008

Last regular Tuesday of the year and Seven cleans up marking an unbeaten run on this night since the Olympics. Aside from Seven’s supercharged Tuesday the other top performer (again) was NCIS with an outstanding 1.35 million against the week’s toughest competition.

The same cannot be said for Rush, the show has one of Ten’s best lead-ins yet the viewers are not sticking around.

At one point it looked as if Rush had fairly good retention out of NCIS but now that NCIS’s figures have been improving the picture is becoming clearer – Rush has a core audience that has settled at 800,000 viewers and the fly-by-nighters tuning in for NCIS are not sticking around for the follow-up act.

The big question (which will be answered next week) is, will a timeslot free of local competition (9.30 Wednesday) encourage new viewers to sample the show? Or is 1,000,000 the true upper limit of Rush’s reach?

Stay tuned for that one, Although NCIS has weathered Ten’s season of hell, the same can’t be said for The Simpsons which took a beating at 7.30 back into fourth place – this is in great part thanks to the paucity of Ten’s entire schedule sucking the oxygen (and buzz) out of the network – can anyone even recall the last time they saw a promo for the Simpsons? I can’t and I don’t know if that’s due to Ten not promoting it or me not watching enough ten??

Nine barely showed up last night but luckily for them they have enough people tuning into their news and current affairs hour to keep them respectable.

What happens next week on Tuesdays depends entirely on whether people want to see Ugly Betty and Eli Stone – watch this space…

Curious Phenomenon - Tuesday 18 November 2008

Another Tuesday night of wall to wall Seven dominance. You know a night of TV is big when people you know start talking to you about it apropos of nothing!

So it was last night with All Saints lifting for the last episode with actor Mark Priestley who died shortly after the Olympics in an apparent suicide. This help to subdue the figure for Rush, ten’s strategy for a quick summer turnaround for the Melbourne based drama is a welcome move – getting it out of the path of Seven’s steamrolling Tuesdays.

At least Ten has the one show that can weather a Seven storm in NCIS, occasionally this show, a procedural laced with sarcasm feels like it’s straight out of the 80s, which makes sense as it’s from Don Bellisario, the creator of such 80’s highlights as Magnum PI, Airwolf and Quantum Leap and although he has long since left NCIS (over a dispute with series lead Mark Harmon) the tone of the show is unmistakeable.

In the US NCIS is proving to be indestructible with reruns outperforming other new series wherever they land and the series itself standing up against megahits like House and American Idol.

Here in Australia it has been Ten’s most solid import, while their other big draw House implodes NCIS goes against the toughest show of the week and shines.

This week we can also bear witness to that curious phenomenon of the 8pm episode of The Simpsons outrating the 7.30pm episode. Anecdotally this makes a lot of sense, viewing generally (but not always) peaks at 8.30pm because with people working later and commuting longer they are often not ready to watch TV until later in the night.

For Ten this has been a factor for years – they used to show Everybody Loves Raymond after Becker on Tuesday nights because Raymond could net the larger audience – amazingly it has never occurred to anyone at channel ten to post the New Simpsons episode at 8pm and see what happens!

People Meter Madness - Tuesday 11 November 2008

Another Tuesday, another clean sweep for Seven, leaving Nine and Ten to fight over the scraps.

Nine came out better earlier in the night with The Chopping Block posting an encouraging number and their other shows holding that crowd through the night.

Ten on the other hand peaked for NCIS and... that was it.

One thing that is becoming clear after 3 weeks is that Will & Grace is probably hurting Ten just as badly as the rest of their 7pm disasters this year, how else do you explain a figure for the Simpsons that's barely 20,000 people more than the 6pm rerun??

Perhaps the Simpsons' core audience has hollowed out to the point where there are only half a million dedicated followers anymore, perhaps it was barely promoted during the week, perhaps it was so gut bustingly funny that several people meter users forgot to press the button while it was on only to have the unfunny Shane Jacobsen snap them back to reality, or maybe - just maybe Will & Grace is driving viewers away. Now I don't pretend for one minute that a lot of Neighbours viewers switch to Home & Away at 7pm - that's pretty logical really, which makes 7pm a switch on point for viewers and that 7m show just ain't bringing the numbers.

At the other end of the night there'll be a whole stack of people happy that Rush has been renewed for a second season but what the hell do we make of a well promoted episode, where a character dies no less, rating lower than the rest of the season?

Late Edit: There may be something wrong with the figures for The Simpsons THE SIMPSONS TUES Ten 653,000 289,000 140,000 101,000 122,000 it only covers four cities and it's not clear which ones but it's likely that either Sydney or Melbourne is missing from that list which would explain a whole lot, including why this is a rant and not a factual analysis :D

Chink in the armour – Tuesday 14 October 2008

Not much of one – but enough to provide a ray of hope to the other nets particularly Ten. Whilst Seven’s 7.30 hour increased week on week, Packed to Rafters reduced by 93,000 viewers and All Saints lost 175,000 week on week

Most of those viewers must’ve found their way up the dial. Ten recorded increases for NCIS (40,000) and Rush (94,000), and Nine increased Two and a Half Men by 93,000 viewers.

The prescence of The Chopping Block was a blow to Nine’s 7.30 hour and seemed to bolster the fortunes of Seven’s 7.30 shows – especially RSPCA which gained almost 100,000 viewers week on week.

Kenny’s Toilet Tour benefited from the move to Tuesday nights but still lost viewers from The Simpsons. Which is vernturing back into more respectable territory increasing week on week by 49,000 people (and by 145,000 over last weeks new 7.30pm ep!)

Overall it was a fairly stable night with some good gains to ten, they now have three shows over the million and have improved there other timeslots, can they keep it going or will they falter again with House tomorrow night, it remains to be seen but the can be encouraged by the stronger performance for Rush, one of the year’s best new shows – here’s hoping it’s numbers improve.

As for Nine – it is hard to imagine where else they could put The Chopping Block, but Nine doesn’t tolerate sub-million figures for long (Battlefronts has just been axed), Tuesday night has been a free-for-all up to The Olympics at which time Seven got the night in a headlock, the other two will be lucky just to keep their head above water on this night – and for the most part last night – that’s what they did.

The Seven Steamroller - Tuesday 7 October 2008

This is becoming a familiar story on Tuesday night with Seven having locked in it’s audience for yet more doco-dramas at 7.30 and the all conquering Packed to the Rafters which jumped an astonishing 143,000 viewers in a week.

Pulling off a quadrella for Seven is the long running All Saints which hung on to 69% of it’s lead in to win the timeslot.

This is obviously a massive boost for Australian drama which since 2007 has been heavily invested in by both Nine and Seven with very few flops.



A different story is playing out over at Ten, having put all their chips in the reality pile at the start of the year their schedule has fallen apart and their one attempt at scripted Australian television this year, Rush, which is as good any cop show that you’ll see, has been scheduled – in a moment of breath-taking stupidity – against All Saints.

Ten’s programmers obviously judged that All Saints would be ripe for the picking, indeed it was been beaten regularly by reruns of NCIS, but nobody counted on the confluence of three factors – the promotional push given by Seven’s Olympic coverage in August, the lead-in delivered by the year’s most watched regular series and the tragic death of one of the show’s actors which focused media attention on All Saints in it’s first week back.

If the brains behind Ten are smart they will swap out Rush for Life and give their cop show the benefit of a better lead-in and a clear run on a Wednesday. But I don’t think they’re that smart…

Even more disastrous than the non-performance of Rush is the failure of The Simpsons at 7.30. With the Simpsons being the perennial Tuesday Family Hour occupant and having so many reruns on the schedule, viewers seem encouraged to check out the alternatives. For a while there the obvious alternative was Wipeout a show dedicated to people making fools of themselves on a giant obstacle course in the mold of a Japanese game show, but Wipeout’s last two instalments (last night was the season finale) have been clip shows which have not attracted the same audience, when Chopping Block returns next week expect a small dent in Seven’s reality hour and the remaining Wipeout viewers to flee back to The Simpsons.

The Simpsons has got to be losing ground to RSPCA/Find My Family also – especially with younger children and people in their 30’s and 40’s.

Finally the ennui over Wipeout has put the kibosh on Nine’s “Adult’s Only” Two and a Half Men, the romance isn’t over just yet because the 7pm strip still netted 1.15 million viewers and a second place in the slot but it indicates that the 8.30 competition is strong and perhaps viewers are beginning to look at the Charlie Sheen sitcom in a similar vein to the way they view The Simpsons – ‘it’s on all the time, so if I don’t catch it now – it’s alright’ Essentially Supply is beginning to outstrip demand!

A surprise of sorts was the good performance of 20 to 01 Greatest Movie Scenes, it was well promoted during the week and obviously provided a reasonable alternative to all the Australian drama on the other channels, but it’s still nowhere near it’s performance 2 years ago and it feels like the concept is on it’s last legs.

Looking forward to tonight the big question is: Will Jamie Oliver rescue Ten’s Wednesday Night?