Wednesday, February 11, 2009

First Friday, then Thursday, Now This?? – Wednesday, 11 February 2009


I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but last night the audience shrunk.

On Sunday night the top rated non-news program was Border Security with 1.7million viewers, on Monday Night the top rated non news program was Underbelly with 2.5 million, Tuesday the top dog was Packed to the Rafters with 1.6 million, but last night the top draw – Australia’s Got Talent – managed only 1.3 million viewers.

There was a similar trend last week as well – with Wednesday experiencing a big drop off from the first three days. So what is going on? Is there less on Wednesdays that viewers want to watch? Is the competition much tighter? Or is Wednesday the new Thursday?

Not sure – but starting tonight I will be calculating average commercial audiences (when possible) between 6pm – 10.30pm so we can get an idea of which nights are heavily patronised and which nights are for video games!

Last night was marked by three new skeins in the mix, The Farmer Wants a Wife did respectable business but was choked out of the 7.30 slot by the aforementioned Talent quest which your truly checked out for the first time last night and, well I can see the appeal – but that’s exactly the kind of show I would love on a Saturday night, oh well.

Embarrassingly for Ten So You Think You Can Dance came fourth in it’s slot behind 7.30 Report and Spicks and Specks. House recovered some dignity for the net although it was down 163,000 viewers and next week all bets are off as it moves back to 8.30 in direct conflict with perpetual spoiler Spicks and Specks!

Life lost 99,000 viewers and Flashpoint haemorrhaged 174,000 thanks to Seven premiering the heavily anticipated Gangs of Oz – it was certainly an eye opener and managed to open an extra 426,000 pairs of eyes who weren’t watching seven in this slot (24) the week before.

Lost came back with a fantastic episode but this once megahit has seen it’s Australian audience dwindle as it veered towards science fiction – whereas season two – when it was still big – you could surmise that they only had a toe in the genre pool (four toes perhaps) this season they are fully submerged – show any viewer from season one last night’s episode and they probably wouldn’t recognise it as the same show – nevertheless I was one of the 405,000 viewers who tuned in, more still (almost 600,000 were watching Nine News)

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