Sunday May 8th, 2011

Part of me wonders about the wisdom of Seven taking off their flagship public affairs program, Sunday Night, in order to show the aging crapfest Dancing with the Stars.

Then I see that Dancing beat Masterchef (though it came a distant second in viewers 18-49) and held that audience over 2 and a half hours and well frankly with those numbers who gives a crap about 'Sunday Night'

Loser of the night is actually no-one (thought I was gonna say Nine didn't you!) while Nine didn't pull great numbers for its telemovie (honestly networks in this country embraced telemovies at the fag end of their popularity as a format in the US but that's a topic for another post) and 60 minutes was down, they did get a decent aud for In Their Footsteps which actually surprised me.

Furthermore while Ten is facing a problem with hanging onto their huge Masterchef audience into the night, they are at least doing well in the 18-49 demographic with Merlin and Hawaii Five-0 posting good demos despite lacklustre overall numbers.

Also worth mentioning is the revamp of OneHD which kicks in this week, although Sunday night had purely sports programming it went well with a peak of 507,000 people tuning into the channel for Formula One racing.

Well see how they go throughout the week and if they start to make a blip on the radar - I'll start including them in the chart!

Tolerance

Sunday, 20 February 2011

Lots going on last night with every network having a turn at a timeslot win (the Blue boxes) Particularly impressive was the performance of Miss Marple on the ABC as well as Modern Family on Ten (probably helped by a very funny promo this last week)



Digital went well for Nine and 7 with big numbers for The Big Bang Theory and Escape to the Country, but the best Eleven could muster was 115K for Everybody Loves Raymond, the rest of their night bombed.

How much longer are Ten going to tolerate Smallville pulling in less than 100K per outing? Even more disturbing - how long will they tolerate the lacklustre numbers from NCIS Los Angeles at 9.30 on the main channel.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Now that we have so many new channels to choose from, counter-programming has never been more important. You need something to make your shows stand out from the pack. Its no good any more putting two sitcoms up against one another, you're diluting your potential audience.



Look at the public affairs shows, Sunday Night and 60 Minutes, they air in different timeslots and get roughly the same number of viewers - could you imagine if they were up against one another?

With that in mind, (and excuse my language) why on earth do we have this procedural cluster-fuck in the post 8.30 period. Bones, The Mentalist, NCIS, Castle, CSI, Hawaii Five-O, for all I care you could be describing the same damn show!

US drama relating to law enforcement, Self contained episodes, centering on Murder or serious criminal activity.

Individually any of these shows could clean up, but together they're fighting a pointless battle. While Bones keeps its head above a million, the performance of The Mentalist is kind of startling, and just when you think CSI Miami's 531,000 represents a new low point for 9.30 drama, along comes the much younger NCIS: LA to undercut it by 100,000 viewers.

Surely LA cannot last in this timeslot much longer and I suspect ten will swap it for something completely different (ie: a different genre) before Easter.

Also how much longer can Smallville last 8.30 Sundays on Channel 11 while drawing under 100K. That seemed to be the benchmark that got 90210 pulled on a Friday night. As a fan of Smallville it doesn't fill me with confidence for the show's future on Australian TV.

Five-O gets Boned, LA quakes

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Well the 3 commercial majors had a decent night on Sunday with the best performers being the returning duo of Border Security & The Force which have stepped back to anchor a strong Sunday lineup for Seven.



Nine's Cricket kept them in the game for the night with 1.2 million viewers while the presence of Bones seemed to chip away at the audience for Hawaii Five-O which dropped 251,000 viewers week on week.

NCIS: LA meanwhile dropped 166K week on week to a much more precarious figure of just over half a million, about half of that audience were in the crucial 18-49 demographic which, whilst good, points to a show with an older audience and a declining one at that. I wonder whether Ten might move the show back behind NCIS Original in order to shore up its audience.

On Digital TV the big kahuna was again The Big Bang Theory, it was also the top demographic draw on digital with 201K 18-49 viewers. While the top rating movie (yes there are still Sundays movies if you have a HDTV! was "Dodgeball"

3rd place is no Loser

Sunday, 30 January 2011

I think all three nets can be genuinely happy with their Sunday night this week. Well maybe not Seven, but the other two.



On the surface 1.3 million for Tennis looks great - but when you consider its the Men's Final - a match that has routinely pulled in 2 million viewers in years past you can see that Tennis has a slight problem.

Ten had an excellent Launch of their big new Sunday lineup with the constant promotion for The Biggest Loser and Hawaii Five-O paying off over the summer.

Modern Family meanwhile, confirms that Sitcoms are back in vogue with both eps pulling excellent numbers.

Apart from The Big Bang Theory on GO! there was nothing much happening on the netlets.