Waving and drowning

Ten have all but given up on Wednesday nights.  They tried valiantly for a while with the cop drama Blue Bloods, that faltered so they wheeled out reruns of Modern Family a sitcom that in just over a year on the air feels like its been run to death.

Now they're slotting in Just 4 Laughs specials which is the equivalent of waving your white flag and surrendering the night.

Expect lots of super sized specials from Masterchef when it returns.  As well as a concerted promotional push behind whatever drama they throw behind it.

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.

Pricing yourself out of the market

In Mediaspy today there's an interesting report about the impending AFL rights negotiations with Citigroup warning that the asking price of 1 billion dollars is too high.

You can read that story here Citigroup issues AFL TV rights warning: $1bn is too high

Increasingly I think the commercial networks would be mugs to pay $1b for AFL rights. The ratings for AFL keep sliding down the slope each year and you have the added logistical headache of finding alternative programming for Sydney and Brisbane. Last Thursday’s match was beamed live into Sydney on channel One, only 9,000 people watched! How the AFL thinks they sustain 2 teams in that city let alone justify a billion dollar price tag for the rights is beyond me.

Ten will want to be involved again because they have the sports channel (I believe they’re also going after Rugby League which they had during the 80s), current Seven is suing Ten so I’m not sure that they’ll work together, but Seven needs a partner and I don’t think it will be Foxtel, unless Foxtel just partners up with Ten (I don’t think Nine will be a player in the negotiations)

You only have to look at the (non) performance of One HD which regularly nets only 1 or 2% of the Audience vs channels like 11 or GO! which get up to 5 or 6% to see that live sport is no longer king in this country.

Dead in the water.

Ooh that's not good.  Not only did Million Dollar Drop come a distant third in its slot, but it also got 36,000 less viewers than its lead-out CSI: Miami!

Consider this show axed.

All in all it was a great night for the ABC which saw a good turnout for 4 Corners.

Seven also continued its Monday hot streak with the unstoppable My Kitchen Rules.

Finally some common sense

Check out the dismal figure for ten's NCIS: LA only 387,000 people tuned in for a show which has a long future ahead of it in its home market but looks like it's headed for oblivion over here.

I've been saying for weeks that ten needs to move this behind its more popular sibling but its taken them until now to act.

Let's hope the show's impending move to Tuesday nights pays off.