Lead in – Lead out - Wednesday 15 October 2008

Wednesday was a story of poor lead ins on channel Ten and horrible lead outs on channel Nine

Channel Seven continued to dominate although they ceded 7pm – 8.30 to Nine by a whisker with Wednesdays being the preferred viewing night for Two and a Half Men, what happened next was simply beyond belief, like one of it’s bizarre mysteries the audience for Fringe vanished the latter only retaining 47% of the sitcom’s audience. This is an unmitigated disaster and by virtue of this they have flushed the returning CSI NY down the toilet.

In previous years an audience like this would have had Nine reaching for the late-night button, no scratch that – in previous years this sort of audience never even would have been a consideration, back in 2006 everyone was shocked with the low performance of Yasmin’s Getting Married with figures that were just unheard of – now we’re hearing about these kinds of figures all the time.

Back in 1996 Nine sent Star Trek Voyager packing from it’s 8.30 Tuesday slot all the way to 11pm when it was attracting 300,000 Sydney viewers each airing (extrapolated out you can assume that 300K in Sydney means comfortably over the million mark in the 5 cities – indeed 9 Perth (then run by Sunraysia) kept the show in Prime Time.) So Voyager with an Audience of 1 million gets canned and now barely 12 years later half the audience gets an indefinite prime time run.

I like Fringe, I think it’s a great show, perhaps the successor to the X Files – but I’m in a small minority here and I’m amazed Nine is sticking with it as long as they are!

The other side of the coin is channel Ten, Friends is at 500,000 viewers and sinking – these kind of figures meant the end of Taken Out several weeks ago – hell they meant the end of Wheel of Fortune a few months back on Nine, but Ten is trapped like a deer in the headlights – it doesn’t want to make to many scheduling moves and alienate viewers – but it’s not like there’s that many people to piss off in the first place.

Friends is a good show – I was pleased in summer to see the first few seasons which are actual television classics, yet Friends was a monster hit in it’s day – sometimes commanding upwards of 3 million viewers per episode, with that in mind – it’s a good bet that everyone’s already seen it whereas with Two and a Half Men – a lot of people are only just now discovering it – hence it’s high numbers.

Despite the low nadir of Friends, Jamie Oliver incredibly manages to attract 200,000 more people to his earnest cooking escapades, from here House builds to catch third spot behind Criminal Minds and Spick & Specks.

The ABC has, for almost 4 years now, been causing headaches for the commercial nets on a Wednesday night with their ever changing line-up of local comedies anchored by the Adam Hills hosted game show, I had thought that without The Chaser – the viewers would desert ABC on a Wednesday, but although they’re not there in the same heady numbers, Aunty puts in a solid performance for the night.

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.

Seriously F*cked – Monday 13 October 2008

Ten Execs could have been forgiven for having some optimism going into Monday night – their Sunday night performed nicely and Good News Week was coming back to take back some audience share.

The only thing Ten didn’t count on was Channel Nine…

Nine Launched a bold assault to take on Seven’s dominant Monday lineup with the return of CSI and Cold Case. It wasn’t a win but it really did some considerable damage leeching away all of City Homicide’s younger viewers blasting the show into third place for the all important 18-49 Demographic and propelling CSI into first place for 18-49 and a very close second overall. This is the first time in a long time where someone has fought fire with fire and it has paid off so Nine can be pleased.

Nine, or anyone else for that matter cannot be pleased with what happened next – perhaps everyone is just exhausted after a big Monday but the post 9.30 audience just evaporated with nothing over 1 million

Look at the comparison at 8.30 (excluding SBS) there were 4,444,000 viewers watching FTA TV, at 9.30 that figure dropped dramatically to 3,434,000 – that’s over a million people switching off, to add insult to injury ABC beat the imported dramas with Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope which pulled 979,000 viewers. The 9.30 switch off is a worry these days – especially after a high yielding 8.30 hour.

Finally what to do about ten, a day ago David Leckie (he of Ch 7) boasted that Ch 9 was f&*$%d and Ch 10 was the Pocket Money network. Given that Cold Case, a well established favourite with higher peaks than Bones has ever achieved was wiped by the low rent Fox procedural and given that two Channel Ten former hits Australian Idol and Good News Week are being pushed into Pay TV territory – he may be onto something.

For the record – Channel Ten had decent 18-49 results but that doesn’t excuse a night that never even got off the ground. Shameful.

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…

Saturday Shutdown - Saturday 11 October 2008

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Years ago Saturday night shows could command top 10 figures, programs like Hey Hey it's Saturday, MacGyver would fight it out in the same slot and still pull great numbers, now - it's just depressing.

Nine's Funniest Home Videos - once the shining beacon of Saturday night has sunk to the 900club which is getting more and more crowded these days as the potential eyeballs find other things to do.

Everything else was movies - Ten had the only rerun - Evolution, which seemed to have been promoted only 20 seconds before the start time and was rewarded in viewers thusly.

Seven again had the top show with family movie Holes - seven's access to the Disney brand helps them out every so often on Saturday nights and their family movie bent is working well.

Working less well was Alien vs Predator which predicably did about two thirds of it's lead in sharing it's potential aud with Aeon Flux a movie spin off of an anime series that SBS used to carry - hardly mainstream stuff. Why networks think that this is the best they can do on a Saturday is beyond me - people are home and are watching - but not the people they are aiming at.

Nobody's Watching - Friday 10 October 2008

Well nobody except those rusted ons who like their gardening and family movies. Frankly Seven is playing the other networks like fools.

Nine somehow condensed Wipeout to half an hour and followed it up with the insipid Hole in the Wall - this was a disaster - a disaster one can only chalk up to either zero promotion for this lineup or a lack of viewers on a Friday.

Ten's Next Top Model was even worse, surely any future cycles of this show will be off to TenHD, although one wonders why Ten keeps persisting with this show - it had a season in the sun last year but ever since it has struggled to keep it's head above 900,000.

The movie issue is a big one and demonstrates what is going wrong with Friday nights. Here we have 3 movies against each other, Seven goes the PG Family Comedy route and scores, Nine choses a thriller (in Melbourne at least) and bombs, Ten goes for an action flick (a predominantly male genre) and also bombs. Both Nine and Ten were trying to cater to an audience which just isn't there on Friday Nights.

The chart I've put up is for Melbourne Viewer numbers only because I have no idea what Nine showed post 8.30 in other cities and whatever it is it's impossible to find the numbers on it, but here you can see that as with most nights - Nine News and Two and a Half Men are all that's keeping the network afloat.

Only the elderly – Thursday 9 October 2008

Only the elderly seem to be sticking around for a Thursday night, the evidence is that after 7.30 only one show broke 1 million viewers, Criminal Intent, once a ratings powerhouse, can still pull in the older generation enough to put it over the line.

By contrast Seven gave us a night aimed at younger viewers and came off worse for wear, Heroes seems to be suffering from the ennui which has hit almost all “fast-tracked” shows this spring – either that or a lot of people bailed out after the boring season 2.

Nine would have to disappointed with the numbers pulled by RPA – the show used to be able to draw a crowd at 9.30 like nobody’s business but now it’s either being hurt by The Strip, a local drama which is trying to be CSI Gold Coast but comes off more like Paradise Beach ’08, or it’s potential audience is satiated with Seven’s Medical Emergency a day earlier.

Just looking outside Prime Time for a moment – 4 shows aside from Criminal Intent pulled over 1 million, Sevens News & Today Tonight, Home & Away and Nine News. Given that Nine’s 6.30-7.30 hour skews younger than Seven’s we can assume that the under 40’s audience on a Thursday is drying up.

Fast Track to Oblivion - Wednesday 8 October 2008

Woah, the first thing you notice about today’s ratings is not the outstanding performance of Two and a Half Men which after a pretty ordinary Tuesday has found viewers more agreeable to a Wednesday broadcast.

No the first thing you notice is House for the third week under 1 million viewers.

Ten is officially in dire straits.

Just last year an episode of House could attract close to 2 million people – ten decided to keep the buzz going by fast tracking the series so that episodes aired barely one week after their US broadcast – the show seemed to lose a bit of steam but still chugged along with respectable figures.

It even pulled good numbers amid the Writers Strike which saw it’s ratings depressed but still afloat.

But obviously a lot of people took the writers strike as their ticket to kick the habit and start a new one with the Serial Killer hunters on Criminal Minds.

To be fair to Criminal Minds – it is a great show, a lot more realistic than a lot of US cop procedurals (read the book Mindhunter ) and repeats very well.

But the precipitous drop in viewers for House is just amazing – are all those people watching Criminal Minds or Spick and Specks? Have viewers tired of the weird medical mysteries, given that it’s on Ten – do people even know that it’s on???

Another fall from grace is Jamie Oliver who at one point was Ten’s golden boy with his rough language and extensive cooking show repertoire – but watching Jamie Oliver after witnessing the force of nature that is Gordon Ramsey is akin to binging on X Rated videos and then trying to get exited at Maxim!

I’ll seriously doubt if Fringe is still here after next week which is a pity because it’s starting to fire but Nine generally aren’t in the business of sticking with a show so I predict that’ll be the first show to blink – who knows what they’ll try in it’s place – maybe 4 eps of Two and a Half Men in a row! Nothing succeeds like excess.

Seven’s 7.30 doco-drama hour (how many of these must we endure per week and why is it that they rate so well???) brought a close second – clearly this fly on the wall reality is working for Seven.

The Mentalist did about as well as you could hope for from an encore screening the test will be on Sunday do it’s number increase?

Finally Life, arguably one of the most interesting shows in Ten’s line-up is suffering behind House and I can see it getting the chop before the good doctor but neither show is really the problem.

The problem with Ten on certain nights has progressed from worrying trend to a full blown catastrophe but more on that later.

Improving Nicely - Fringe

When this first debuted several weeks ago, fast-tracked to Australian viewers no less, I was pretty skeptical - JJ Abrams has (in spite of his track record) created exactly one series I like which is Lost, and I could see this show becoming like Alias.

The first episode had it's moments most of them extremely gross with some sort of horrific virus infecting passengers on a plane and veered into total weirdness with the shock ending of the dead FBI agent (and traitor) being revived

Only the presence of Joshua Jackson somehow managed to keep the whole thing from going off the rails.

I took a break and then came back for tonight's ep 1.04 "The Arrival" the whole story revolved around a mysteries cylinder that burst from under the ground and was set to return to the earth in 48 hours, that's if some dude wielding a very mean looking gun doesn't get to it first.

In the midst off all this is a bald guy with no eyebrows who keeps showing up at these weird events and Peter (Jackson) wanting out and away from his father.

Let me not spoil too much for the VCR/DVR crowd by just saying that even though all the elements are strange it all held my interest for the hour and held together really well, the scenes between Jackson and Noble are very well done and one particularly creepy scene involving mind reading make this one worth your while to watch.

This final scene where we get a bit of backstory on this father/son science team is intriguing and marks a spot on a much larger canvas without us having to see the big picture - much like (the oft cited) X Files in it's best moments.

If you're like me and opted out after the grossness and unevenness of the pilot then now is the time to opt back in, Fringe is starting to get good!

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?

What Went Wrong - Monday 6 October 2008

Hello and welcome to the first of many pointless rants about the state of television in Australia. As good a place to start as any is with the nightly ratings so lets have a look...



Clearly this is going to be the trend for the remainder of the year, Seven is entrenched as the number one network thanks to it's command of the elderly with their doco-dramas in the 7.30 hour leading into the very popular City Homicide.

At the other end of the spectrum channel ten is failing to fire with of all things, Australian Idol. The Monday night results show (apart from being a bloated spectacle) is really only holding onto the core of supporters for this program, much like Big Brother earlier in the year. The question now becomes with the law of diminishing return well and truly in force for Australian Idol, will Ten pull the plug this year or will we see yet another "retooling" (ie: Adding more tools) in 2009?

Supernatural returned and it too has experienced an Audience decline, in fact if you look at audiences across the board the biggest declines seem to be hitting fast-tracked shows (ie: US programs broadcast very soon after their original air-date) surely this does not bode well for this practice continuing into the future.

Bones continues on it's ride to mediocrity - here is a show that has been moved all over the place, shelved and retried in half a dozen different timeslots and yet it still maintains a decent audience. It's probably not ideal for Seven (it loses a lot of it's City Homicide lead in - yet a lot of those people are probably off to bed) but it's strongest show in 9.30 at the moment.

Another bright spot is the performance of Til Death which has improved week on week. Nine is desperately trying to get it to work because it can see (through the logic defying ratings of Two and a Half Men) that people are trending towards sitcoms and light entertainment rather than drama, if they stick with Til Death and promote it - it should start to bat above a million viewers and re-establish a comedy night on Monday for Nine. Expect it to pick up even more when new CSI shows up next Monday night.