A cyclone runs through it.

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Last night primetime programming was suspended on Seven (and to a lesser extent Nine) for rolling coverage of Tropical Cyclone Yasi as it made its way through North Queensland.



Nine already had the Cricket commitment and Ten stuck to it's schedule (for the most part) and it paid off with an excellent debut for "Blue Bloods" the new Tom Selleck/Donnie Wahlberg police skein.

Today I've decided to only list the pecking order for 1st Second and Third and to largely leave the digital channels out of it because the digital figures are so close together and so reliant on demographics for advertising dollars that pecking order comparisons become meaningless.

Yes Heartbeat dominates whenever it's run, whilst 7mate's Sitcoms and The Simpsons do good work on Wednesdays, but they're all pandering to their own audiences and neither is very much in danger from the other.

But it's still interesting to see how much they're all getting. Indeed The Simpsons has taken a real beating on it's move to digital heaven, arguably the potential audience for everything goes down when you give people more choice - so the 200 thousand turning out for New Simpsons eps are the real die-hard fans, where as there's another tier who like the Simpsons but they'll catch it when its on and still another tier that watched it because it was the best thing on at the time, that third group no longer applies in the digital age - they have too many other choices.

For this reason I think when the analogue is totally switched off we will see the figures between the main channels and the digital channels even out a bit more as more people have the choice to watch something else.

Mondayitis

Masterchef is breathing new life in Ten's previously moribund 7pm project (966,000) - something that The Biggest Loser was unable to do.

The question is how many of these people are just waiting around for Masterchef to start - we saw similar spikes last year with Neighbours' figures as Masterchef's lead in (though nothing as consistent as 7pm's improvement it must be noted)

Worryingly there is no halo effect for Neighbours and even more worryingly no impact on Good News Week which was polling better in total people earlier in the season, still it won the timeslot in the 18-49 demographic which is Ten's major focus these days.

Still it's a world of difference to Seven stuck with Mondayitis will all of their post Home & Away shows coming down under the million mark - Home & Away is also underwhelming given that it's longest serving cast member just walked away with the Gold Logie the night before.

Nine keeps chugging along nicely with good numbers for all their primetime shows and the continuing good performance of Hot Seat and Nine News versus Seven's Deal or no Deal/Seven News combo.

Today also pulled off a close win against Sunrise 386,000 to 370,000 mostly due to people hoping to see a repeat performance of Karl Stefanovic's legendary post-logies stint last year - I know I was - and I was thouroughly dissappointed in his sobriety :(

The Biggest Losers - Tuesday 10 March 2009

Viewing was down across the board last night with all networks losing audience week on week, the biggest losers were (in order):

Bondi Rescue down 183k
Two and a Half Men 7pm rerun down 171k
Seven News down 155k
Home & Away down 132k
Lie to Me down 130k on last week’s NCIS rerun
Neighbours down 124k
Wipeout Australia down 110k

Phew – and that’s just the big losses! The only show to gain viewers in any meaningful way were the 8.30 episode of Two and a Half Men which 41,000 folks from last week, and Ladette to Lady which also had an extra 40,000 watching.

Special Mention to All Saints which stayed relatively steady week on week to eek out a timeslot win.

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.

9pm - Wednesday 25 February 2009

Lets look at the week on week progress of some series

Seven had some minor losses with Australia’s Got Talent shedding 49,000 viewers and Gangs of Oz taking out 27,000 but overall they were on par with the previous week.

Nine made some good gains particularly with News up by 119,000 viewers, as Kuttyswood pointed out on this blog yesterday the Queensland Election is proving a boost to Nine’s news ratings in Brisbane as they have more experience covering politics than Seven whose political coverage remains disappointingly lightweight. Since the bushfires in Victoria Nine News also seems to have won back some ground in Melbourne – the other state capitals however, remain largely indifferent to Nine News.

ACA also boosted by 154,000 viewers, the Two and a Half Men rerun took an extra 86,000 as a result and Farmer Wants a Wife went up by 132,000 week on week.

The Mentalist broke the magic mill going up 83,000 viewers and although stuck in second place Cold Case took the paint of Life over on ten with 155,000 viewers dumping LA for Philadelphia at 9.30

Over on Ten their early evening lifted nicely with The Simpsons up 63,000, Neighbours up 93,000 and The Biggest Loser up 92,000 week on week – but with Guerrilla Gardeners only able to add 24,000 viewers – the writing may be on the wall – even more distressing is that all those gains were in Melbourne, where it still posted under 200,000 viewers – unacceptable in Melbourne for a 8pm show.

Not sure whether the 8.30 timeslot or its 8pm lead-in is hurting House but neither is helping one iota, the sad irony for channel ten can be seen in the ABC’s figures – at 8.30 there’s over a million people watching Spicks & Specks and at 9pm 618,000 of them change the channel looking for something else to watch! All they have as an alternative of free to air is 3 American dramas half-way through the hour – c’mon Ten take advantage – move it back to 9pm.

Speaking of the ABC – what is it with their Wednesday nights becoming the cable comedy repurposing night? I’m not sure of the appeal of Chandon Pictures, it’s on a channel that even the bulk of Cable subscribers probably don’t get, it seems to be a very insider baseball premise and Aunty can only rustle up 431,000 people at 9pm to have a look? ABC don’t care about ratings – but if they do care about exposing good programs then they are wasting one of their best timeslots on a turkey.

Opening Night - Sunday 8 February 2009

Last night was the first night the official 2009 Australian Television Ratings season.

The night was thrown into chaos with split scheduling across the board owing to the developing news story of the Victorian Bushfires which so far has become the worst natural disaster in Australian history.

All networks devoted extended coverage to the event in their Melbourne markets as well as additional bulletins at night, pushing existing shows all over the schedule

My chart attempts to make as much sense of all the moves as possible but a clear picture of the night won’t be available until figures adjusted sometime later in the week.

Anyhow here’s how they fared on the first night in

Seven

Seven had a big night – deferring their afternoon programming for news and pushing the debut of newsmagazine Sunday Night back to 7pm in Melbourne didn’t hurt them one iota, the new lineup of Sunday Night/Border Security/Triple Zero Heroes pulled a mammoth audience for it’s first outing – it looks as if Seven has successfully transplanted their Monday shows to Sunday night – but the real test will be up against 60 minutes next week.

Nine

Nine had the cricket all day and reaped a huge rating as a result, but it was their news coverage of the fires which stood out for this viewer, they seemed to have almost every reporter in their employ out at a different location bringing some truly memorable vision of the day.

Ten

Ten had the most uneven day and they were partly to blame. Ten have the unique advantage on big news days of being the first cab off the rank at 5pm, but Saturday, when these fires started (not to mention the hottest day in Melbourne’s history) saw Ten run with a national Sydney based bulletin, giving Sydney stories priority over the unfolding crisis.

Sometimes Ten’s national weekend bulletins are interesting because you get to see a bit of what is going on across the country as compared to the more parochial market leaders – but on days like this a local approach is really needed.

By Sunday Ten had realised their error and had brought in Mal Walden for a special hourlong Sunday bulletin but viewers ignored them in favour of Seven’s early coverage.

This result, and the decision to persist with Out of the Blue saw Ten’s share fall dramatically last night. The Biggest Loser was easily dropped by a news hungry public although they recovered nicely with So You Think You Can Dance – proving the show has a devoted audience – Rove got off to an inauspicious start, I suppose people weren’t much in the mood for snarky fun after all sheer horror – they’ll pick up next week.

2009 - Week 2 - The News

Week two of 2009 has come and gone and thanks mostly to a cricket lead-in, Nine News had a great week, though most of that strength was centred in Melbourne and Sydney with Nine still struggling in the west.

A Current Affair also had a big week thanks to an interview with Magda Szubanski re her new year weight loss resolution.

Here's the breakdown of how the news rated - city by city...

Where are Seven Now? - Sunday 16 November 2008

A Solid night last night for Nine with the network dominate every slot from 6.30 onwards. Keeping Rugby League away from the southern states seems to be a good idea with CSI Miami picking up the slack for Nine down south.

No Dancing with the Stars meant that Seven’s Sunday went into freefall after the news. Surprisingly the (very late) return of Where are they now? Didn’t give the network any traction at 7.30 with Dancing’s viewers flocking to 60 Minutes.

Rove’s Season Finale didn’t set the house on fire but it didn’t suck either thereby ensuring Ten a shot at four millionaires this week.

Thank God You’re Here improved slightly but is now the poor cousin of 20 to 01, here’s how clever 20 to 01 is – that episode about child stars was a rerun but it’s subjects were so interesting I didn’t realise until they got to Liz Taylor! A celebrity who long ago crossed into ‘famous for fame’s sake’ territory and is now the exclusive province of gossip magazines – it was enough to snap me into reality and realise I’d seen it before!

Week on Week NCIS and The Outdoor Room both fell.

The Outdoor Room is in a particular pickle – it has the best lead in on television – Seven News yet it sheds almost 400,000 news viewers. Compare that to a recently renewed Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader which raises almost the same amount on it’s lead in and you see that networks weigh actual performance against potential performance.

The Outdoor Room is done for, you’ll probably see Durie on Seven next year but I doubt it will be in this show.

POSTSCRIPT
I thought I might end with what I watched on the box last night – since it was none of these shows and yet I found it quite entertaining.

At 7.30 after some channel surfing I discovered a series on CI called ‘The Academy’ which follows police recruits through their training – I reckon Ten will be emulating this show for their factual about Goulburn Police Academy next year.

At 8.30 E! had a premiere True Hollywood Story about Oprah Winfrey – it astonished me the whole way through how much about Winfrey I already knew just by osmosis and watching the news. A lot of the events they profiled were very familiar and yet I don’t really watch her show!

At 9.30 SBS showed the first in their Stanley Kubrick festival – 2001: A Space Odyssey – what a film, it has the most unsettling opening and closing scenes in the history of cinema (for my money anyway), I still can’t figure out what the hell is going on with that ending (the astronaut is aging so rapidly he can see his future self or something??) and it’s the only film I know of that’s ever tried to imagine the dawn of man. A classic film, and even though it was made in the 60s and set in 2001 it still looks futuristic today!

Ten Lifts, Seven Sags, Nine’s the one – Sunday 12 October 2008.

All the attention in the early evening was focused on Seven, buoyed by a generous lead in from the Bathurst 1000, the network had two aces up it’s sleeve, the US version of Kath & Kim (more on that later) and the David Koch special on what to do during the all consuming world financial crisis.

This half hour news special features Kochie at the news desk, a quick cut to Kevin Rudd (that’s the Prime Minister for any overseas readers) who announced that they’re guaranteeing deposits a la Ireland’s recent move, a response for the opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull and any number of crackpot economic theorists who varying predicted we would either “ride the storm out” or spiral in Armageddon!

It worked because people watched – shoving Thank God You’re Here under the million mark and pushing Battlefronts (how many of these Gardening makeover shows can they do) out to the boondocks.

Kath & Kim held over 80% of that Audience and wasn’t that bad really, the trick for them will be to make it there own, like they did with The Office (the first 6 episode season of The Office was shaky but from second season on they had nailed it)

Alas none of this helped Dancing with the Stars, it’s worth noting that even though this show has only been around since 2004, this is season 8 (two rounds per year in 05, 06 & 07) is it possible they’ve made one to many trips to the well, expect to see an all stars edition next year I reckon.

It was beaten by Australian Idol which cleaned up in the demographics as did it’s follow on Rove which also held over 1 million viewers, Californication even rose by 45,000 viewers.

The question for ten is – have they hit their nadir, or is there worse to come?

In the past two weeks only 3 Ten shows have over the million each week (Wk 40 TGYH, Idol Sunday, NCIS, Wk 41 Idol Sunday, NCIS, Criminal Intent) With the return of Good News Week and Download this week can they lift their performance on Mondays and Fridays or will their 6pm – 7.30pm sked keep them underwater?

Nine had the run of the night, clearly affected by Seven’s bolt out of the gate the panicking aspirationals took a look at Kath & Kim then headed over to 60 minutes for even more Kevin Rudd action.

The Mentalist dropped but still won it’s timeslot as did CSI Miami a show which once dominated Wednesday nights but is now reliant on a good lead in to get by. Will a fast-tracked CSI (Las Vegas) be the evidence viewers need to switch to Nine or will it be DOA?

Stay tuned to find out…