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.

The week that was

Lets have a look shall we...

Sunday, 22 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Ahh the eternal struggle between Masterchef and Dancing continues, with Dancing succeeding by sheer weight, being over twice as long as its cooking competitor.

Monday, 23 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Come Fly with Me drops week on week but Big Bang Theory actually rises! Go figure. Meanwhile The Amazing Race loses 100,000 viewers week on week while Ten's shows hold steady, though House suffers by having a month off the sked and probably not being compatible with Offspring.


Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Tuesday night is almost identical to the previous Tuesday with Nine continuing to bring up the rear with the dreary Customs/AFP double. Also Sea Patrol at this point is merely making up the numbers for Nine's drama quota, stick a fork in it.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

State of Origin (in 3 markets anyway - but that's all they need!) Normally on a Wednesday Nine is coming a distant third to the other two nets, who incidentally managed to continue their fight despite State of Origin. Indeed the Origin match seems to have brought in a lot of one-time lapsed free to air viewers.

In Sydney alone Origin netted in excess of One Million viewers - Sydney never produces that kind of number any more having the most fragmented audience and the biggest Foxtel take up in the country.

Thursday, 26 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule


Thursday belonged to channel ten with one of Oprah Winfrey's final shows giving them the edge at 8.30.

Ten often puts Oprah into Primetime as filler but this year has seen some of the more successful entries with Oprah's Australian specials pulling a healthy aud. Before that you'd have to venture all the way back to 1993 and Oprah's interview with Michael Jackson to find a primetime Oprah special that rated so well.

For the record Oprah's Final show on the Friday night netted 743,000 but came second to Nine's cross-city combo of NRL and the Mentalist (893,000)

Also Between the Lines (which actually Eddie's third vehicle this year - This is your Life being the show I'd completely forgotten about!) has been axed after consistently being outrated by its leadout - which suggests that viewers are avoiding it on purpose!

Lots of sex jokes but no Big Bang

Well last night the main action was going on in the 7.30 hour.

Two and a Half Men is enjoying a resurgence but The Big Bang Theory suffered badly dropping a staggering 492,000 from Two and a Half Men, that's a 35.6% drop from the lead-in and a 17.29% drop week on week.

Puzzlingly Big Bang's faltering did nothing to the figures for Sea Patrol which tracked line ball week on week.

Australian Story is having a good run of late - improving 19.37% week on week, the flow-on even helped Four Corners over a million.

The return of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? did well but it remains to be seen if that was from the Matt Preston appearance or loyalists to the show, certainly it was the only shining light for ten on a harsh night: 7pm was down an upsetting 40.54% week on week, Ten is in for the long haul but a deeper analysis shows losses in all younger demographics, meanwhile the performance of Two and a Half Men and Home and Away speak for themselves - both above 1.3 million for the night.

Ten now has two very hard tasks on it's hands - developing this show on the run so people will watch it and then (the harder part) somehow attracting people BACK to watch it.

Good luck!

You can go back to the well

Monday 1 June 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Two & a Half Men (r)
Nine 7pm, down 156,000 viewers week on week

Biggest Improvement
Supernatural
Ten 9.45pm, up 100,000 viewers week on week

Hmmm not sure what to make of the precipitous fall of How I Met Your Mother. It's just sunk, completely overwhelmed by Masterchef and Two and a Half Men. It's a good bet that after Scrubs finishes in a week's time Mother will move in on Wednesdays behind Earl vacating this slot for older skewing fare.

The move of Mother to Mondays at the top of the season was a bit unexpected to say the least and in all fairness to Seven, it hasn't worked out. After generating so much goodwill for the show by running it at 7pm throughout summer, Seven managed to kill it by scheduling it against the current king of all sitcoms - Two and a Half Men!

Nine gave them a few brief weeks of reprieve by scheduling mediocre reality at 7.30, but soon wised up and brought back the Men to open their night.

For Nine, very good, not quite great, seems to be the most apt description.

New skeins You Saved My Life and Missing Persons Unit both registered mild increases on the shows they replaced raising by 60k and 50k respectively.

Sea Patrol, however, lost 102,000 week on week while Good News Week and Four Corners gained 93,000 and 84,000 respectively.

After spending most of it's vaunted return season in 2008 looking like a deer in the headlights of Ten's bad Monday programming, GNW is starting to reap the benefits of a stronger Ten and less harsh Monday competition with Desperate Housewives well down on it's historical highs and Underbelly gone (until next year) Ten have proven that you can go back to the well.

For those who don't remember, GNW is an ABC original which aired on Friday night in a 30 minute format, they spun it off with a live Saturday night series - Good News Weekend in 98.

When Ten bid for the show's fourth season (and won) they not only extended the format to an hour, but the kept the spin off, moved it to a Thursday (???) and called it GNW Nite Lite running for 90 minutes, that was two and a half hours of the show per week and it failed to fire.

Incredibly just when everyone had forgotten about it, ten decided to bring it back early last year, to Monday nights in a one-hour 8.30 timeslot. It's held the same timeslot ever since and after very patchy ratings it's starting to poll consistently over the 1 million mark, this is a very good result and proof perhaps that in this country old formats never die!

Now if only we can figure out a way to revive Hey Hey...

How I Met Your Match

Monday 18 May 2009

Well now we know – the official sitcom loving audience in the 5 cities at 7.30pm on a Monday stands at 2,076,000.

How do I know this? Well that’s the combined audience for How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men at 7.30. Trouble for Seven is that people love bad boys more than motherf***ers. Witness the lift Scrubs enjoys now at 8pm with 210,000 viewers deserting Nine at 8pm and switching to Seven with Scrubs up 233,000 on its lead in!

Sea Patrol returned last night with almost 1.4 million viewers tuning in at a reported cost of $1.3 million per episode on a show that is yet to be rebroadcast we’re talking about some pretty expensive television here!

Nine barely edged out Seven on audience shares for the night, while at 8.30 advertisers would be flocking to Ten whose Good News Week has enjoyed a viewer surge post Underbelly and wins in the 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54 demographic groups!

Amazingly 48,000 more people watched Four Corner this week, than last!!! With four shows over 1 million viewers at 8.30 (a combined aud of 4.6 million) it seems like there’s something in there for everyone.

Then at 9.30, 1.6 million people go to bed! Eleventh Hour and Supernatural both improved week on week (up 114k and 56k respectively) but if this is there natural level (when not facing the AFL like last week) then that is still unacceptable.