Thankyou MasterChef Australia

I've haven't watched more than 5 minutes of it, but I'm going to miss Masterchef.

For a ratings nerd like me the results of the past several weeks have been unadulterated fun.

Because Australia's ratings system put emphasis on the whole of prime time rather than the core 7.30 - 10.30 period, nights are often won on the strength of the 6pm hour, which for Nine and Ten means a local news bulletin followed by tabloid current affairs.

Almost two decades ago, Ten bowed out of the 6pm race preferring profit over glory, so ever since the 90s, television ratings in this country has been a two horse race, Seven and Nine. Dull, dull, boring and dull.

But not this year. Amazingly Ten's 6pm hour is unchanged for almost a decade, but this show, Masterchef, has become such a viewer magnet, a watercooler show, an all ages crowd please, it has caused all sorts of upheaval all over the schedule from one end to the other!

Ten has had successful 7pm shows before - but nothing like this, among the shows which will be glad it's over next week you can count

Better Homes & Gardens
Has seen it's aud fall away by approximately 200,000 viewers as it clashes with Masterchef's Friday Masterclass - an ingenious idea which stands apart from the competition proper as a cooking class for the masses. I knew this was a good idea when I was invited by my mother-in-law (not in ten's target demo) to try a dish she learned on the Friday night show!

Nine's Factual/Reality department
Masterchef brought a quick death to such unforgettable fare as Missing Pieces and You Saved My Life forcing Nine to fall back on their current crutch - Two and a Half Men, a show repeated so often this year it's starting to look transparent.

Working Dog
What an embarrasment, Masterchef has proven revenge is a dish best served hot! At the end of last season all looked lost for Ten as its one remaining hit show, Thank God You're Here, defected to the Seven network for more money, the expected crowds for the lazy laffer were at first subdued as the first half hour butted heads with Masterchef, later Thank God was almost totally subjugated by some strategically placed 90 minute episodes! Seven didn't buy that show to run interference, they bought it expecting a big number which never came!

Home & Away
In recent years the departure of The Biggest Loser was the signal for people to flock back to Summer Bay, not this year - the venerable soap has endured an unremittingly harsh climate for the past 7 months, first with Loser, and now Masterchef culminating in the ultimate insult for the show - the first time (in my memory at least) that it has ever been outrated by Neighbours!!!

So thankyou Masterchef, whatever your actual entertainment value, it has been fantastic to see this kind of upheaval to the status quo - wishing you all the success in the future!

Million Dollar Bogey

It’s an ironic twist that certain events have conspired to make me miss yesterday’s deadline forcing me to post two days worth of results on the one entry.

The reason is posting them together allows me to outlay a huge contrast in the fortunes of channel ten and channel seven and their dealings with production company Working Dog.

Working Dog productions is the boutique television company behind TV shows such as The Panel, The Hollowmen and Thank God You’re Here.

Thank God You’re Here was a megahit for channel ten, over the course of two years (2006-2007) the show was a top ten mainstay with in excess of two million viewers on several occasions.

After spending a year away from the screen the show’s producers late last year moved their skein to the Seven sked for an undisclosed sum which has been speculated to be up to one million dollars per episode.

At the time this was seen as yet another nail in the coffin at channel ten, the perennial third-place network was well on it’s way to coming fourth in 2008 with it’s major 7pm franchise Big Brother having failed resulting in the collapse of their Prime Time schedule.

For the last 13 weeks of the 2008 season it was rare for Ten to have more than four shows post more than 1 million viewers.

While one could look at the Working Dog decision as having the appearance of rats fleeing a sinking ship and on the other hand representing incredible business nous with the company parlaying a show nurtured by a rival broadcaster into a multi-million dollar payday, Thank God You’re Here producer Tom Gleisner sought to dampen the angry internet chatter by famously claiming that the move to Seven was about exposing the show to a wider audience.

Now 2008 rolls around and ten feels like they’ve got their mojo back, they were always going to have a respectable first quarter with The Biggest Loser a popular 7pm switch-on for the net, but it has been the performance of their Big Brother replacement, the cooking competish Masterchef, which has caught everyone by surprise.

Then there’s the case of Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, an amiable nostalgia themed quiz show hosted by the normally avant guarde Shaun Micallef taking a rare paddle down the mainstream. It’s likely that with Thank God still on their roster, Ten wouldn’t have taken a chance on this show which was reportedly a spurr of the moment programming decision (producer Granada wasn’t even looking to pitch the show to Ten execs) but the gamble has paid off richly for the net giving them a stranglehold over Tuesday nights.

As for Thank God You’re Here. The show has performed well, but it has been repeatedly dogged in it’s Wednesday timeslot by Masterchef.

Masterchef’s second half hour on Wednesday has been butting up against the 4th season show dragging it’s ratings down significantly in the first half, last night was the first time Masterchef took on Thank God for the whole 7.30-8.30 hour and the result was an emphatic win to ten.

If the yet to be seen 7pm project is a success then Ten have indicated that skeins like Biggest Loser and Masterchef will be 7.30 starters next year, making prospects for a next season a lot bleaker for the Working Dog people

Payback’s a bitch I guess…


Tuesday 16 June 2009

Going Up
Masterchef up by 8.11%
The Bold and the Beautiful up by 7.24%
Today Tonight up by 6.96%
Around the World in 80 Gardens up by 6.83%
Ten News at Five up by 6.22%

Going Down
A Current Affair down 17.64% week on week
HomeMADE (7.30pm) down 14.93%
Artscape down 13.49% on Jennifer Byrne Presents
Two and a Half Men (8.30pm down 13.42%/7pm down 12.04%/9pm down 10.01%)
Mumbai Calling down 11.06%



Wednesday 17 June 2009

Going Up
American Dad up 103.54% over Prison Break
Masterchef up 71.49% over All New Simpsons
Masterchef up 24.78% over itself week on week
SVU New Episode up 16.36%
The Morning Show up 13.84%
SVU 9.30pm rebroadcast up 10.52%
Sunrise up 10.16%

Going Down
Cold Case down 28.37% on The Mentalist down 20.10% on itself week on week
Prison Break down 26.11% week on week
RPA down 25.31%
The Cook and the Chef down 18.82%
The New Inventors down 17.76%
Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union down 16.81%
Thank God You’re Here down 15.67%
7.30 Report down 11.36%
Two and a Half Men rebroadcast down 10.35%
Spicks and Specks down 10.11%

The Danger of The Mainstream

Wednesday 4 June 2009

Biggest Programming Disappointment
Da Kath & Kim Code
Seven 7.30pm Down 37.93% of Thank God You’re Here and Down 37.58% on Criminal Minds

Biggest improvement
Duh!
State of Origin Rugby League
Nine 8pm – 10pm up 106.87% on The Mentalist and up 77.5% on RPA

Biggest Week on Week Improvement
Law & Order SVU
Ten 8.30pm up 43.58% week on week

First of all, no I didn’t see The Chaser last night, haven’t watched it since it’s return, given that these precious comedians didn’t feel obligated to produce any eps in 2008, I don’t feel particularly obligated to watch them this year, but of course you haven’t been able to turn on the radio or visit a news website without being informed of their latest transgression, which brings me to something I did watch last night…

Family Guy

Last night’s Family Guy was something a little different, a 100th episode compilation, the show mixed best of clips with bizarre commentary from Seth McFarlane and interviews with various focus group members of their opinions on the show.

It was a stark reminder that Family Guy, though successful with it’s target audience, is, in a wider sense, not a successful show, it certainly didn’t appeal to the 40-something people they interviewed for the special, most of them were either offended or at best non-plussed.

It’s funny to me that there was once another show that fit neatly into that category of appealing to 20 somethings and people with a childish sense of humour (myself included).

The Chaser

I first discovered the Chaser on the back of Kath & Kim with their news satire program CNNNN, that show was perhaps a little too focussed on politics and in-jokes to have broad appeal, but then ABC gave them another shot with the War on Everything.

At first a Friday Night skein the show got by on word of mouth alone, for a Friday night show it was like a secret treasure among a sea of mediocrity, ABC saw a show buried at 10pm Fridays after an incompatible lead-in trending up and decided to give it the coveted 9pm Wednesday slot in 2007 (an election year of all years!) the combo was pure alchemy and The Chaser morphed from an underground skein to mainstream hit.

But that mainstream success is strangling the show, last night was just the latest in a long string of incidents that seemed to have shocked the mainstream audience that has been on board since ’07, prior to this there was a major brouhaha over a weird musical number taking a swipe at the cult of dead celebrity, remember the storm that caused.

Personally I understand where a lot of the “angry viewers” are coming from on this – I have kids and jokes about kids in peril cut close to the bone in a way they never did before my parenthood, but I also remember that this sort of edginess is what drew people to the show in the first place. I wonder aloud what this means for the Chaser.

It’s audience was down last night, of course, because of the State of Origin, the Chaser experiencing a 24.16% drop week on week, but beyond that will the show start losing the viewers that brought it into the mainstream, or it persist in a love/hate relationship with the Australian public, or will a third outcome arise where the essence of The Chaser is watered down to appease the mainstream.

That would be sad, Australia already has a once-great team of risk-taking comedians who now just phone in stale comedy week to week getting fat and raking in the cheques…

What ever you do Chaser, don’t turn into Working Dog

Still waiting... Dog

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Well week two of Thank God You’re Here and we’re still waiting for that massive audience that will discover the show now that its on the Seven Network! Seems like some of that aud has discovered Masterchef, the cooking game show virtually tied with the defecting superhit in the 7.30 – 8pm half hour!

The Simpsons has proved a good move to Wednesday nights with the aging show pulling some decent numbers as opposed to its more subdued Friday night outings – I expect it to stay on Wednesdays for the remainder of the year.

More troubling is the performance of House, the show is stuck, Grey’s Anatomy like, just below 1 million, it’s going to get worse next season when Seven has two shiny new medical dramas to dilute the market with (the paramedic themed Trauma and a nurse-centric Mercy both of which have been picked up by NBC and are made by NBC-Universal)

Actually I can see why viewers are flocking to The Gruen Transfer (a very smart and easy to watch show) and Criminal Minds (which I occasionally watch, and saw again last night. Flicking between Criminal Minds and House last night (sorry but couldn’t less interested in The Mentalist) the FBI drama just seemed punchier and less predictable than House which feels played out, at one point House was even talking to a ghost??? Cuz yeah that really worked for Grey’s Anatomy!

The night’s other FBI drama, Numb3rs didn’t fare too well, partly because with all of ten’s launches this week it’s been a little under the radar, and secondly, the show has always struggled here for some reason – it’s a pity because it’s one of the more inventive procedurals out there.

In other news My Name is Earl went up by 79,000 viewers the night’s biggest week on week increase, of course this good news is tempered by the news in America the show is teetering on the edge of cancellation.

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Wednesday 29 April 2009

Well one of the most shocking moves in TV land in the last year was the defection of Thank God You’re Here, a theatresports skein where celebrities imrpov their way thru a preset scene, from Ten to a much more cashed up Seven.

Seven reportedly paid between 1 – 1.3 million per episode for the rights to the show – you would think that’s a steep price but given it’s an hourlong format which will pull in excess of 1.5 million and repeats well I reckon it could actually make them a profit (provided the economy holds up) so from Seven’s end, despite the fact that it’s low, it’s a very sound business decision.

So what about Working Dog Prods?

At the time Executive Producer Tom Gleisner tried to justify this cash grab with the following…

‘‘It's quite understandable for people to assume that the only reason anyone switches networks is for money,''

‘‘But in our case the decision was based upon a desire to introduce the show to a new and potentially bigger audience. If money was our major motivating factor we would never have taken a year off making the show.''

Hmmm, OK so Seven is now going to deliver to this show an audience bigger than the 2007 season average of 1.86 million and the ratings peak of 2.13 million for the first season finale, alright lets see how they go!

Well first night in and yes there was a timeslot win and an average of 1.7 million viewers – very good, but not an increase by any means – we’ll see how it goes I guess.

As for the rest of the night, Nine scared the bejesus out of its audience first of all interviewing a NZ family affected with the swine flu (complete with face masks) which netted them 158,000 extra viewers, then What’s Good For You spent a whole half hour on the pandemic boosting that show’s aud by 258,000 week on week!

Nine suffered a drop later in the night for Cold Case with 110,000 fewer tuning in whilst Family Guy built week on week by 40,000 and Life grew 60,000, although that’s it for Life, that was the season (and possibly series) finale, a show that never got out from under the shadow of its lead-in a show which is now a shadow of its former self.

Speaking of Shadows, Lost improved slightly last night with a cracker of an episode, 'Dead is Dead' which gave some definite info on the old smoke monster, but ratings wise the show continues to be held back by one dumb scheduling move after another, look at the dismal performance of those 9.30 sitcoms - move this back to 9.30 damn you Seven, or sell the show to Ten who might treat it with respect.

Ten in general had a shocker with Masterchef falling further on its third night, there is the possibility with a more ten-friendly Thursday they could pick up, but it doesn’t look good.

The first ever widescreen episode of the Simpsons did alright as well rising 34,000 viewers week on week.

Thank God They're Gone

Leave it to the silly season to throw up the most shocking story of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing. It’s rare that press releases are actually news worthy but the following release from channel seven qualifies…

There’s no doubt that this is a win for seven, a win for Working Dog and a massive kick in the nuts for Grant Blackley, David Mott and co.

I thought it might be interesting, to pull out an old article where Tom Gleisner mentions the relationship with channel ten…

From PerthNow.com, dated 7 October 2006:

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,20540889-5005382,00.html

Working Dog's long-standing relationship with Ten played a big part in the TGYH deal.

``It's called the fear-of-loss factor: Ten couldn't afford to risk having Working Dog go to Seven or Nine with it,'' a Melbourne-based producer said recently.

``If you've been going out with Miss Australia (Working Dog) for 10 years, you don't want to share her with another bloke, even for one night. She may not come back.''

Well, you heard it from the horse’s mouth, Miss Australia is officially a slut.

She’s just run off with the rich older millionaire, taken the house and kids leaving ten with only the shirt on its back

The only silver lining in any of this for ten is the likelihood that the eventual infiltration of known stinkers such as Kochie & Mel, Noni Hazelhurst and Larry Emdur could bring down this show faster than Yasmin could get married. Gleisner, Stich and Co can only Thank God that Daryl Somers and Shelley Craft had already left their new home before they moved in.