Come Fly With Me (not you Newcastle!)

Monday, 16 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

Monday was an interesting night with each net throwing a new show onto the pit of despair that is Free to Air television, with interesting results.

Seven is the network that is (and has been for the past 5 years) most likely to succeed and so they finally did something that I never thought they had the balls to do - a local version of The Amazing Race.

I guess the US version's ratings had gotten to a state where Seven felt comfortable shuffling it off to their HD channel, Where it has done well for itself but not in a Neighbours sense. (which is the current yardstick for analogue to digital transplants.)

An Audience of 1,258,000 (5th) 756,000 18-49 (3rd) is a good result for a first outing and like a lot of reality shows, I'd expect the aud for this to build over time.

Ten is the bottom of the heap network trying every damn trick in the book to claw its way up. It knows big event TV but drama has never been its strong suit. The season premiere of Offspring, a show about, who knows - some sort of Ally MacBeal wannabee (its not really aimed at me as an owner of a penis!). 927,000 (12th) and 588,000 18-49 (5th) is respectable but they'd be hoping for that to improve given the massive lead in

Meanwhile Channel Nine has done something quite remarkable. This is the former champion network in many ways a shell of its former self, so how they managed to debut a new show (a half hour mockumentary british sitcom at that) with a peak of 1.7 million is beyond me, but well done.

While I'm on the topic, Come Fly With Me (the show in question, basically a wholesale parody of those awful Airline reality docos) was subjected to the most baffling case of corporate idiocy that I've seen in years.

Essentially NBN (Nine's Newcastle-Northern NSW affiliate) chose not to take the show because of its 8pm timeslot, the reason? Well the previous show from these creators, Little Britain, was rated MA and considered vulgar (or something like that) and NBN was determined to prove that their viewers are hicks and couldn't handle such ribald humour in an earlier timeslot.

Notwithstanding that this is an affiliate that happily took episodes of Two and a Half Men at 7pm every night for umpteen years without controversy, the decision was baffling because, NBN is actually OWNED BY THE NINE NETWORK! It's an O&O basically and has been since SP Media sold it to Nine after the ownership rules changed a few years ago - so what's the deal with that?

Anyway - even they won't be able to ignore ratings of 1.4 million, so Newcastle viewers should expect to see it on next week without explaination!

MONDAY'S NETWORK SKED

MONDAY'S DIGITAL SKED

Once again we were kings

Winners & Losers continues on from its strong debut with winning ratings. Seven is just dominating this early part of the year and there's almost nothing the other two nets can do to stop them!

Ten must be counting down the days until Masterchef - but at this point I wonder whether the audience for that show will have already gotten their fill for culinary action by the time My Kitchen Rules bows.

Over on digital television Survivor puts in an excellent performance, just like The Amazing Race there are still decent audiences for these shows and while they might not look too spectacular on the analogue channels, on digital they are kings.

Sea of Procedurals

13 March 2011
SUNDAY


A great audience for 60 minutes edging in front of the 7.30 hour for the second week in a row, at 6.30 Biggest Loser again is top dog and Miss Marple hold the prize post 8.30. All the same as last week which means this is the pattern for Sundays going forward so the onus is on Nine or Ten to shake up their post 8.30 sked.

Nine has helped themselves somewhat with the new Harry's Law - a new drama from the insanely prolific David E Kelley.

Ten have nothing but despair with an underperforming Five-O and a moribund NCIS: LA. LA's problem is that its the most bland drama in a sea of procedurals. Its amazing that Ten have not as yet put this show on after the original. I suspect a lot who would ever watch this also watch O.G. NCIS on the Tuesday. Ten should (here I go again) move LA to 8.30 Tuesdays against the all-powerful Rafters leaving an all new original to clean up at 9.30.



On the digital spectrum it was all about The Amazing Race. Top Gear on GO! also did incredible figures.

You might have noticed I've changed around the format of the grid, its always a work in progress but this method gives me the opportunity to clearly display the pecking order in each timeslot without resorting to colour coding - which although cool, was becoming confusing with the mass of channels involved

The Rigid Formula

Sunday, 6 March 2011

Well 60 Minutes' foray into the ongoing Dicki-Leaks saga proved a ratings winner, coupled with an American interview of Charlie Sheen it was train-wreck television.

Still there seems to be some conjecture at the moment as to whether they were actually legally allowed to name the girl at the centre of this whole furore and the fact that they have (and continue to) has made all sorts of talking heads and TV lawyers nervous.

I wonder if it was worth to only beat Seven in the slot by 130,000 viewers and still lose the night due to the poor performance of The Mentalist.

Perhaps The Mentalist has reached that point where the existing audience is eroding but no new viewers are sampling it. Still the new drama Harry's Law did exceptionally well at 9.30 retaining more of its lead in than Castle (though coming second in the slot)

NCIS: Los Angeles continues to underwhelm, its not well promoted, I don't know why I would watch it (I gave up on NCIS back at the end of Season 2 - it was good but there was a formula to it which had started to feel stale)

Indeed, perhaps that is the downfall with procedurals; They follow such a rigid formula that they become stale after a time and there's very little that happens in them that is so out of the ordinary they can draw new Audiences to them, at this point unless there's some sort of major cast change I think NCIS LA will stay in the doldrums for now.

On Digital it was 4 programs, The Amazing Race, Escape to the Country, Big Bang and The Middle. Two older movies: Pulp Fiction and Alien also posted very good numbers last night

Never mind the Vicar

I don't know what's more appalling - the performance of Criminal Minds and The Amazing Race (both have seen better days) or the fact that reruns of ancient Britcom The Vicar of Dibley managed to fend off Nine's Getaway!

The tragedy is there are so many hilarious new entrants to annals of British comedy that get ignored by the commercial nets until the ABC or SBS make them into hits (you may remember the Vicar's lineage goes back to Saturday nights on the ABC)

Frankly by my estimation the shows that did well last night (a grand total of 3 of them) were well promoted as opposed to the non-existent promotion for other shows on the dial.

Fans of Glee will be happy to note the good ratings which represents Ten's first high-school hit since Dawson's Creek (yes - that long ago!)

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.

Seven's Schedule - Now Twice as Ugly!

So what's Seven up to this summer? Lets check it out...

SUNDAYS
Looks like a very old skewing mix to me, continuing The Outdoor Room and then Hot Property - Hot Property seems to do well every summer that they wheel it out - but who is going to want to watch this orgy of auctions and house renovations whilst house prices across the nation are falling. As a social indicator - the ratings for this program will be very interesting.

At 7.30 Seven brings on a limited run BBC doco about various industrial marvels, followed at 8.30 by Holby Blue, the now cancelled spin-off of Holby City, itself a spin-off from the long running Britsh hospital drama Casualty.

I remember back in 1994 Ten attempted to foist the cheapness that is Casualty on unsuspecting Australian audiences - you know it's a bad sign when the set looks like cardboard and you're in the year nineteen hundred and ninety three. Who knows their may have been a decent story in there somewhere but I couldn't get past the Doctor Who production values.

A Touch of Frost rounds out Brit night on Seven, all of these shows should seal a comfortable lead in total people and over 55s (almost one and the same these days!)

MONDAY
With Home & Away taking the summer off, 3rd year sitcom How I Met Your Mother steps into the slot in an effort to give the show more exposure and expand the fan base - all useful causes. It's main genre competition is the remarkably similar Friends over on Ten.

The Rich List continues at 7.30 and Bones takes it's second hour away from Thursdays and over to Mondays, I'll be curious to see how this CSI-lite goes against the real thing, it is in vogue this year so anything's possible.

Late Night Monday we can see Scrubs followed by the US Kath & Kim, damn it to hell it should've been Scrubs in the 7pm timeslot many years ago, one of the most finely crafted sitcoms on television probably has more followers from DVD than actually on the television.

TUESDAY & THURSDAY
Yep twice a week Seven is throwing a lifeline to Ugly Betty - a first season hit whose second season return was horribly botched (by the network, not the show itself) joining it at 8.30 is Weirdo Lawyer Dramedy Eli Stone which was first promoted by Seven all the way back at the end of 2007. Has it taken them this to find the tapes they dropped down the back of the sofa in the green room? Sloppy Seven.

TUESDAY
Dirty Sexy Money is back, perhaps fast-tracked (not sure), itself followed by Prison Break which will also be pulling double duty on Wednesdays. This is surely Prison Break's last gasp - a show whose premise justified exactly ONE SEASON has stretched onto it's fourth!

WEDNESDAY
Air Crash Investigations has gotten a headstart last week, as has The Unit, Las Vegas takes the 8.30 slot to play out their final season (or at least some of it) there was a point (When Vegas aired 7.30 Thursdays) when it was a timeslot winner and a solid rater - but like so many imports on Channel Seven they had trouble sticking to ONE TIMESLOT and the viewers quickly found other things to do.

THURSDAY
The Amazing Race moves back an hour with Heroes staying on through the summer - that's one lesson it would've paid Seven to learn last year when it counted, now Heroes (like so many others) has faded away.

FRIDAY
Apart from Better Homes & Gardens reruns (oh sorry "Summer Series") nothing else is locked in - first week back though we get the 24 movie, which is handy, after a sixth season which started out ludicrously and got worse ('I held my mud') I'm not holding out much hope for a return to the greatness of season 5, but I guess we'll see what happens...

SATURDAY
Two unknowns here - a British drama called Brittania High followed by a short lived US game show called Dance Machine, not sure what the purpose of either is and perhaps Ten should've kept MacGyver on and run a marathon from 6.30 to 10.30 - if this is all Seven have got for competition on this night - it's not looking good.

If Ten is loading up on reruns to lock in a schedule for 2009 and Nine is just regurgitating failed series, then Seven's sked feels the most like summer, a whole bunch of shows we wouldn't see otherwise, nights and lineups completely remade and almost all of it imported. There is also still a very good question mark over the non appearance of Reaper another show which was heavily advertised LAST summer.

Thank God it's Thursday! - 16 October 2008

Or at least that's what the head honchos at Nine and Ten (especially Ten) would be saying after last night.

In fact Ten would be particularly pleased, one of the lowest rating nights of the week is also one of their strongest, with the Law & Order Franchise delivering the goods as people drop serialised dramas (like Heroes) and retreat to episodic crime procedurals.

Also significant is this marks the first time in weeks that Ten has had 5 shows over 1 million in the same week the other three being NCIS, Idol and Rove.

Less pleasing would be the performance of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? Which went from decent ratings in it's earlier 'celebrity focussed' outings to middling figures now, pulling what is now a 7.30 average for ten on a weeknight.

They would be none to pleased to be beaten by Make Me a Supermodel a concept which could best be described as Next Top Model with sms voting - which kind of defeats the whole purpose I think.

Shading them all was Getaway, from Getaway to RPA Nine only shedded 45,000 viewers which is not too shabby, Seven on the other hand kept a good chunk of viewers around for The Amazing Race - which has been given the 8.30 timeslot - something which should have been established years ago.

On the other hand Heroes seems to be quickly becoming a cult show, only problem for the fanboys is the only other outlet showing it at the moment is SciFi channel which is frustratingly broadcast in unglorious 4:3.

This is a sad outcome for a show which burst onto the scene in a competitive slot (8.30 Wednesday) with 2 million viewers but quickly lost steam, especially as Seven began to mess with the show, sticking it on Thursdays in two states and then on it's second season shunting it to 9.30 behind the incredibly boring Bionic Woman remake and then insulting loyal fans by withholding the final two episodes of the season for 8 months after fastracking the rest of the season.

Now that it's back people have been demotivated to watch. Serialised dramas need constant promotion and care by the network to keep up fan interest, if you start missing episodes then you're more inclined to give up the habit, and the best way to miss an episode is for a network (I'm looking right at you Seven) to screw with the scheduling.

Oh well - you reap what you sow I guess.

As for Prison Break, seven's one time golden child now laguishes at 10.30pm on a decent audience - but nowhere near it's first season hey day - for that however I don't blame seven, the show is a perfect 1 year concept dragged out too long, now it's so convoluted that most people couldn't care less anymore.

So for that one - blame the writers, and the greedy people who couldn't resist stringing it out for as long as possible in order to wring every last dollar from the idea!