Monday May 9th, 2011

Good ratings for The Big Bang Theory in the face of the all conquering Masterchef. But Masterchef's highs still aren't rubbing off on the rest of Ten's sked.

Especially sad is GNW which didn't even air in the AFL states.

All I can personally say is thank FRAK that Seven has the AFL rights next year, they consistently have the most boring and stale lineup (from a 34yo male perspective anyway) and so I won't care one iota when AFL storms in on a Monday or Thursday night to disrupt the regular schedule.

Over on digital it was all 7TWO with GO! suffering a particularly bad night (only Top Gear appeared in the top 50) part of the blame there has to lay with their scheduling - to the casual observer GO! appears to have 4 shows: Top Gear, Big Bang, Two and a Half Men and Wipeout! and their scheduling has all the consistency and predictability of a game of roulette.

Nine outta just pick a night for each of these shows and use them to promote their less popular shows and stop peppering them all over the schedule.

Big Trial Period

Well this is the first time I remember seeing figures for Brisbane's breakaway 7pm broadcast of The Big Bang Theory. That's because on Tuesday Big Bang netted 207,000 Brisbane viewers. To put this into perspective here's what its competition did in Brisbane:

ABC News: 146,000
Home & Away: 189,000
The 7pm Project: 148,000

It beat all three of them, yet Two and a Half Men running in the other four cities sees Nine in fourth place across the network. Now we know why come Monday Big Bang will be network wide at 7pm

Sons of Liberty

Well the first big thing you'll notice is the switcheroo with George Negus moving to 6.30 to take on the big Current Affairs duopoly. I have high hopes for it so I'll reserve any comment until its had a bit of time to bed in.

Leaving that to one side there's plenty of things to be annoyed with here. A month ago Brothers and Sisters was netting 1 million viewers, now half an hour later and behind a middling show its doing half that number.

Ten have gone back to the Undercover Boss for the time being and the result is - pathetic, its funny actually - both 7pm Project and the Stand up comedy special net 750K yet 200,000 people decide to take the hour inbetween them off.

In spite of a MASSIVE amount of promotion, Two and a Half Men only netted 1 million viewers, its easy to see why - that show is now pedestrian compared to things like this...



But more of a worry for Nine is the Million Dollar Drop, 4th in it's slot and less viewers than the 5.30pm games shows, its a bonafide flop. Part of the problem IMO is that the show is nothing more than a vehicle for Eddie McGuire to sit there and chat to people (at copious length) while the rest of us wait for some sort of game show. Watching Eddie McGuire hosting a game show is like sitting through those Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden asks every question 3 times and then bickers with his girlfriend Rose. It's frustrating and it should be ended.

On digital check out the amazing performances by 7TWO and Eleven with Neighbours, Supernatural and Raymond all netting their biggest numbers yet.

Charlie Sheen and Justin Beiber

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Hang on - what's this? An actual post 7.30 show scraping past a million on a Thursday night? Wow, that honour goes to The Biggest Loser which improved week on week by 50,000 viewers.

CSI grew by a whopping 117K week on week (was it the episode where Justin Beiber got killed because I could see that drawing a crowd)

Meanwhile just about the only show which slumped week on week was, surprise surprise, Two and a Half Men, down more than 50,000 week on week. I think the problem with it may be that it just pales into comparison with the real deal which has been far more entertaining!

Not like the old days

Monday, 28 February 2011

Hmmm. There was a fair bit of speculation at the weekend that Nine had axed the weeknight rebroadcasts of Two and a Half Men, it seems that they've only done so in Brisbane - so the figure you see for 9 at 7pm is for four markets only. Even so - excluding Brisbane, that figure is not up to Nine's usual standards. They need to take some action on 7pm and soon.



This is your Life had a successful debut for Nine at 8.30, the Academy Awards though didn't do too well for the rerun - it doesn't help that everyone spoils it and if you're anywhere near a media outlet between 4pm and 9.30pm you'll hear who won. The Daytime Live broadcast pulled 196,000 for a total of 701,000 viewers, not like the old days anymore.

Oh Mr Sheen

Thursday, 24 February 2011

It's just depressing isn't it, we should just close Thursdays down and forget about it.



You may have noticed if you're reading this blog on a regular basis that I've chosen to ignore Fridays and Saturdays, that's mostly down to the fact that apart from the smaller audiences, the schedules start to get ridiculously fragmented as different states follow their different football codes. A few years ago (and you can rifle through the posts in 2009 to check it out) I attempted to make sense of this haphazard scheduling, but I don't even think the networks themselves know if there's a net benefit to splitting up their schedule by state.

It will be interesting to see if this is the first year where the multichannels can carry the sport live into the outlier states when it comes to NRL and AFL.

As for Thursday night, The Biggest Loser and Home and Away are the only things anyone is tuning in for.

Look at Two and a Half Men at 7pm - only half a million viewers and now getting regularly beaten by Ten's 7pm project despite having a superior lead in - Nine needs an alternative 7pm show pronto and they must know it - it's dragging down their whole night.

The problem for Nine is - What can they put in there - not a game show - they're played out, there's no other broad appeal sitcom that has as much strip potential as Men and a new newsprogram up against ABC News and 7pm would be fatal.

There's always Entertainment Tonight or TMZ I guess (I'd totally watch TMZ if it was on at a decent time like a few years ago) or maybe Nine could be brave and kick off their nightly sked at 7pm rather than 7.30, maybe that's too brave. Whatever happens they will not tolerate low figures for Two and a Half Men for that much longer - they need an alternative soon!

While I'm on the subject - What the hell is going on with Charlie Sheen check out this story on TV Tonight I think Sheen is going off the rails and it wouldn't suprise me if Two and a Half Men has taped its last show.

$#*!

Monday, 14 February 2011

A lot of shows suffered week on week falls this week.

ABC News down 110,000 week on week, 7.30 Report down 150K, Australian Story down 207K
My Kitchen Rules on Seven was down 141K, Bones was down 154K
Two and a Half Men was down 196K while Shit My Dad Says was off a whopping 258K, Underbelly was down by the same amount.



Over on Ten they had the big superbowl episode of Glee which saw the show's audience increase by 361,000 viewers! This is an excellent result for Ten in the slot and proves perhaps that Ten should focus on the musical numbers in their promos, but unfortunately none of this increase helped the 8.30 show NCIS, which although improved upon Undercover Boss by 90,000 viewers was a waste of an episode given that 699,000 in a slot against two other million viewer shows is appalling.

What's more the switcheroo did nothing to bolster the audience for Good News Week which actually shrunk marginally week on week!

Monday Night Boner

Monday, 31 January 2011

That's more like it!

This time last week Glee could only manage 659,000 viewers this week the audience almost doubled with 6 shows after 7.30 pulling above 1 million.



My Kitchen Rules looks entrenched - not bad for a show which last year had a sense of the "me-too's" about it as Seven tried to emulate the success of Masterchef.

Bones continues to lock David Boreanaz into a boring procedural but still people watch it in droves.

In the 'stuff I'm watching' department - Shit My Dad Says (yes I swear by the original title!) had an encouraging start retaining most of it's lead in, in fact it's probably one of the best debut performances on the back of Two and Half Men that we've ever seen.

Like I said - sitcoms are back!

Deciding on a Level of Success

Monday, 24 January 2011

I remember a time when Sitcoms were an endangered species on Australian television, now they're everywhere - often in the same damn timeslot - look at the 7.30 hour - no less than 4 channels are competing for the same Audience: How I Met Your Mother, Glee, Two and a Half Men and Futurama. You'd have to think the audience for these shows is pretty interchangable, I wonder how many Monday's we'll see this before either Nine or Ten blinks. 789,000 for Two and a Half Men is pretty sad even in summer and demonstrates the diminishing returns of pumping this show to death and wider variety of alternatives on offer now.



One thing that stands out on examining the schedule is Seven's acumen in programming their second digital channel - 7TWO. 7TWO has been around for a while now but in the last year it has morphed into a repository of old skewing British fare. It gives them a clear point of difference from the more youth-appealing GO! and ensures there's always a crowd turning up to watch - look at the numbers, all three shows over 300,000 which I think I will nominate as the level for multichannel success.

Unfortunate Reality

After opening on Sunday night with a quite respectable 1.1 million viewers the Biggest Loser plummeted on its second outing falling more than 300,000 viewers in the process.

While it certainly wasn't helped by its lead in the anaemic 7pm Project (674,000 viewers and a distant fourth) a bigger problem may be the controversy surrounding one of the contestants who is up on some very unsavoury criminal charges, subsequently that contestant has had to be excised from the show in the editing room which is reportedly causing all sorts of headaches for viewers trying to follow a narrative jumping around more than your garden variety Tarantino film.

Ten just can't take a trick with their reality shows of late, last year's public lynching of Kyle Sandilands completely sucked the oxygen out of Australian Idol, now this story which is just off putting and unfortunate - what's next? Maybe a Masterchef contestant turns out to be a cannibal!!

Speaking of Masterchef, Seven's cash-in-o-rama had an uninspired sampling given the amount of promotion the show has gotten over summer, perception is working against them with this show - it feels like it's ripping of masterchef and it feels like it's ripping of My Restaurant Rules, still it did better than Loser so it could turn out very nicely for Seven.

Nine meanwhile steamrolled everyone else with their comedies and (lo and behold) a consistently programmed hour of The Mentalist all timeslot winners!

Monday Rant

Monday Night’s Ratings in a nutshell, delivered by a nutjob…

This folks is 7 O’clock. It’s been like this for months, age old reruns of Two and a Half Men scraping over the top of the ancient Home & Away with ABC News in a respectable third place and 7pm Project close to cancelled – except it’s not.

You’d think if 7pm had any hope of a boost it would be the night after Rove McManus quit his show and everyone missed it! But nope, no dice.

You don’t think that it could get much worse than 674,000 viewers but the overcooked Jamie Oliver proved that you could losing another 29,000 viewers in what is a staggeringly bad figure for 7.30 Monday.

Oliver’s shows were snared by Ten back in 2003 during a particularly lean period for them, and they were a modest success, already having generated buzz on the ABC, but Oliver peaked with his Australian based show (the restaurant from which, Fifteen, is still operating incidentally) and his popularity has waned here ever since.

Andrew Denton, however, continues to be evergreen with his new show, launched with scant promotion pulled almost 1 million viewers in a 44% increase over its lead-in

Flashforward continues to be the show that could, hanging in there at a million despite the predictions of everyone with a pen that it will drop off the face of the earth (just like Heroes, Lost, Prison Break et al) so far they’re hanging on but the real test will be after they have a break in the summertime.

Good News Week meanwhile, continues as Ten’s one bright spot posting a 39% increase on its lead-in against tough competition.

Despressing Stuff

Somedays you look at these charts and get depressed, I mean look at it...

Two and a Half Men, a rerun at that, is pulled out for it's 10th showing in the space of a week and equals the new hit World's Strictest Parents

This stellar performance does nothing for the lead out which more than halves the audience, if Australia's Perfect Couple teaches us anything - it's that no-one likes perfection.

The Librarians and Tara stumble badly - in fact the trend this week seems to be audiences deserting post 9.30 shows left right and centre, a worrying trend given there's no holidays, good weather or ashes to pin the blame on.

Law & Order UK continues the hex on Ten's Wednesday night - remember when Ten owned Wednesdays with The X Files, and then again with The Guardian, and then again with House? They desperately need a boost on this night - Celebrity Masterchef at 7.30 might do them some good - but as we can see in various spots on the grid - the lead-ins mean nothing.

Over at 7pm - the 7pm Project seems to have settled on a stable number now - though there's problems with it, mainly the beating it's taking in demos against Seven and Nine in the slot - Ten needs to find a hook to promote the show because despite the content having improved the ratings have not (although they have at least stabilised).

Criminal Minds is one of a handful of shows doing well whether it's new or rerun, also NCIS and Two and a Half Men fit this bill, but check back in two years for the inevitable erosion when not even new fasttracked eps will break a mill - that's my prediction

See - it's easy to look at the results and get depressed...

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!

Making an ASS out of U & ME

So Nine had a problem - their problem was Tuesday nights

They looked at what was popular in Australia

Shows about Dancing do well

Shows about weight loss do well

They looked at what was popular overseas

A US cable show about Dancing + Loosing Weight is doing well

So Nine assumed that it would do well here...

well...

The proof is the pudding

And there was whole lot of pudding on TV last night - a lot of it uncovered in ways not before explored outside of certain fetish videos available from reputable Fyshwick retailers!

Did it hook the viewers in - No
Did viewers feel like some hardcore sex jokes on Two and a Half Men afterwards - No
It it likely to remain in this timeslot - No

The Danger Zone

Ahhhhh

That sound you can here is Seven and Nine breathing a sigh of relief.

The behometh has rolled away and finally their shows are seeing some sunlight!

Sea Patrol lifted nicely with a double installment sustaining over the million mark giving Nine the night.

With Masterchef gone the 7.30pm rerun of Two and a Half Men rose to 1.4million proving it aint over yet for the oversaturated sitcom.

Seven had a decent night but the 8pm rerun of Scrubs was a rare low point for them sliding into fourth place with comedy viewers opting for an all new Big Bang Theory - in one of the biggest outings yet for the sophomore skein.

So what about Ten.

Ten is now in that danger zone, the second half.

It's worth taking a look back to this time last year to see how ten was faring back then.

15. Neighbours 6.30pm - 954,000
19. Good News Week 8.30pm - 865,000
23. Friends (r) 7pm - 776,000
24. America's Next Top Model 7.30pm - 756,000
25. The Simpsons (r) 6pm - 752,000
29. Burn Notice 9.30pm - 641,000

All in all when Neighbours is your top rating show - you're in trouble and that's how ten was - 1 week after Big Brother wrapped for the final time, Ten had a game show (Taken Out) not ready for launch so filled the gap with reruns of Friends.

Whatever else you think about Taken Out, having that rerun break gave whatever remaining 7pm viewers ten had an opportunity to check out the competition, when Ten doesn't have a strong 7pm show - their whole schedule suffers - you only need to look back at the early posts on this very site to see just how bad they were going!

Which brings us to last night, the big question is, will the 7pm Project be a good lead-in for Ten's primetime or will it be Taken Out?

Well for the first night, so far so good, a live pastiche of news and panel style commentary with the odd live cross thrown in, it had a good debut averaging 1.2 million (with an increase in the second half - always a good sign) They also pulled a formidable 41.3% of the 18-49 age demographic.

Ten programmer David Mott has indicated to TV Tonight that the show would live or die by it's demos so that's a good start.

Following at 7.30 was the final episode of The Recruits - one of ten's best factual launches in recent years, next week they're replaced by a new season of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? That show did some real heavy lifting for Ten on Thursdays last year - as long at the 7pm project holds up as a lead-in they should post some good numbers.

Post 8.30 is a bit hard to judge - GNW had the night off with a rerun posting figures more akin to 2008 and Supernatural dropped drastically as a result. There are apparently only two eps of Supernatural left this season and it's a good bet that new ones won't return until summer (where they've got some clear air) so whatever Ten puts at 9.30 is going to be crucial for them in the weeks ahead - with their post 8.30 falling apart they dropped to 3rd place and a 21 share for the night, that's passable but there's no killer app at 9.30 like last year's Andrew Denton which is holding everything else back - so theres's no reason they can't fill this slot with something hot that brings in the crowds.

Going out with a whimper

Packed to the Rafters had a triumphant return in Melbourne with a whopping 665,000 viewers tuning in south of the border, clearly having to wait an extra week did that much more to whet the appetite of Victorian viewers.

Rather than subjugate everything else on TV, Rafters had an effect of a rising tide with several shows up week on week including Talking Bout Your Generation (up 4.1%), Masterchef (up 13.6%), The Zoo (up 6.6%) all of these show pulling over one and a half million viewers.

HomeMADE is now finished, going out with a whimper on 900,000, a disastrous figure which also dragged down the rest of their lineup - especially Two and a Half Men which reran episodes seen only months ago to an underwhelming result. A new episode of 20 to 01 managed only 902,000 though a lot of those stuck around for the Nine premiere of Little Britain - 579,000 viewers being a fantastic result for 10.30pm.

Geeks vs Freak

If there is a show I feel sorry for right about now it's The Big Bang Theory. On it's third tryout on Nine making a concerted effort to find another sitcom to spin off of the Harper Bros the show has run smack bang into two solid weeks of Michael Jackson specials on Seven.

Last night Seven reaired the second hour of the Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary concert from 2001 (30th anniversary of his solo career), it came around the time of Invincible, an album which remains underappreciated because by the time of it's release Jackson's bizarre personal life had well and truly overshadowed whatever he was doing music-wise.

Desperate Housewives did even better for Seven booking 1,253,000 an increase over last week.

Supernatural was down 11%, the only thing letting down ten on an otherwise stellar night which saw Neighbours over 900,000 (a rare feat for the ancient soapie) and Masterchef up by 8% week on week heading for the finale.

Even SBS are knocking on the door

You can imagine that Seven will be pleased that NCIS just had it’s season finale and their own Rafters is coming back soon, the beating they are taking on Tuesdays is pretty harsh though a lot of their troubles can be explained by a weak 9.30 hour – don’t expect a second season of 10 Years Younger in 10 Days, the show only barely managed to beat HomeMADE something which must be sending shivers down the spines of the powers that be.

Although Ten will keep NCIS on in reruns (why wouldn’t you with ratings like that) the return of Seven’s megahit should get them over the line on the Tuesdays to come.

Seven’s woes on Tuesday, however, are chickenfeed compared to Nine’s structural problems.

HomeMADE, meanwhile continues to sink, it’s not enough that Seven’s factuals and Ten’s quiz show are kicking the reality skein – now Kezza has joined in on the fray with Utegate adding the 7.30 report to the list of shows HomeMADE can’t challenge!

It was worse for Two and a Half Men, all three editions of the sitcom were beaten by Auntie and they want to add more episodes on a Wednesday!?

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Going Up
Grand Designs up 45.35% on Around the World in 80 Gardens
Lateline up 23.15% week on week
The Simpsons 6pm rebroadcast up 14.16%
HomeMADE elimination up 12.78%
7.30 Report up 11.07%
Masterchef ip 8.59%
Neighbours up 5.39%

Going Down
Two and a Half Men ® 8.30 down 11.5%, 9pm down 8.52% 7pm down 6.48%
Today Tonight down 10.89% week on week
The Zoo down 9.95%
Home Made 7.30 down 7.56%

The Really Odd Couple

One of the more annoying aspects of this season has been Nine’s propensity to team episodes of Two and a Half Men with everything under the sun.

They started this year by getting cold feet about The Big Bang Theory and slotting in the UK Mashup Customs at 8pm Mondays as a bridge between the sitcom and Underbelly – the move was fairly successful but most of that success could be attributed to the large masses tuning in waiting for Underbelly to start.

Nine tried to go in for a double dose of reality after Easter with Missing Pieces and You Saved My Life, both lame attempts to post feel good factual skeins that would trade on the success of Seven’s Sunday and Tuesday megahits.

Well times aren’t like they used to be and with the advent of Ten’s steamroller Masterchef people have dropped Seven’s Sunday offerings like a bad habit, while Nine’s rip-offs never got a look in.

A a few weeks of woeful ratings Nine gave Missing Pieces the axe and placed new eps of Two and a Half Men at 7.30 to partner Missing Pieces.

I don’t know about any of you who read this blog – but I watch a sitcom to get away from these dreadful fly on the wall shows, ever since Nine switched onto this strategy Two and a Half Men has held up it’s end of the bargain (it regularly beats Seven’s How I Met Your Mother) but as soon as 8 o’clock rolls the viewers grab the remote and head for Scrubs over on Seven.

Anyone who wants to see a factual is most likely watching the superior Recruits over on Ten.

Now news comes down that Nine will attempt the same deal on Wednesdays partnering Two and a Half Men at 7.30 with What’s Good For You at 8pm in order to move RPA to the 8.30 slot.

Partly this is good news, RPA is a completely different genre to anything else on Wednesdays 8.30 and thereby has more chance of success than the current drama logjam which is screwing up that night, but I don’t think pairing the lifestyle show with the sitcom is going to work

To put it bluntly – I don’t think anyone who regularly follows the teachings of Charlie Harper is the slightest bit interested in what’s good for them!


Monday 22 June 2009

Going Up
Australian Story up 23.24% week on week
Spooks up 19.45%
Brothers & Sisters up 13.53%
Neighbours up 13.52%
Deal or no Deal up 11.12%
7.30 Report (aka Utegate) up 11.11%
Desperate Housewives up 10.85%

Going Down
Supernatural down 29.34%
You Saved My Life down 27.59%

The Shape of things to come

With Masterchef picking up all sorts of steam in the run up to it’s finale Ten is on an absolute roll with Good News Week posting great figures and extending from 75 to 90 minutes tipping the network over the edge for a rare Monday win (All people and key demos from 6pm – midnight)

Seven and Nine both must be hanging on for dear life waiting for this cooking show to end so their early evening shows can breathe again, How I Met Your Mother did only marginally better on Monday than in it’s 10pm Wednesday slot languishing in 4th place, pitting this show against Two and a Half Men (and now Masterchef) has been an absolute disaster for Seven, the network is still Number one by a comfortable margin but like Nine in the 90’s this is actually more by virtue of its News/CAF hour than anything happening after 7pm.

Seven has already made several moves this year remeniscent of Nine in it’s heyday – chasing diminishing ratings with big dollars (Thank God You’re Here), shafting series back to 11pm at the drop of a hat (Heroes, Lost) and counterprogramming for spite.

Oh yeah, spite, what the hell am I talking about? Well simply put spiteful programming sees a network take on a successful show with a show that would appeal to the exact same audience with the object of railroading the original timeslot occupant, Nine was a master at this tactic, one of the most famous examples was taking on Ten’s US Hit NYPD Blue with their own Megahit ER on Thursday nights, we all know who won that battle, but it’s a good bet that most of the people who watch ER would also watch NYPD Blue, Nine forced viewers to choose.

Seven has tried the same crazy game of chicken here this year with ‘Mother’ and they’ve flopped spectacularly.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Seven emulates Nine’s old tactics (the very tactics that used to piss viewers off and led to that famous label “Nein”) because half of the Nine Network is now on the Seven payroll but for god’s sake Seven please – you don’t have to become them to beat them, you’ve already won!