Something wrong with the mix

Hmmm compared to recent Saturdays it was a bit of a quiet one for the networks.

Nine dominated held their nose in front at 6.30 with Funniest Home Videos but then slipped away at 7.30 with the often repeated Big Daddy. This and Nine's 9.30 movie (different in various markets) was enough to see them fall to fourth place on the night.

Seven drew a larger crowd with their movies The Wild (which was an almost wholesale rip-off of Madagascar) and National Treasure, both contributing to Seven's night winning share.

Ten's AFL gave them the edge in the 7.30 hour and they were competitive across prime time thanks to the sport, but lets spare a thought for The Simpsons, that extra 145,000 people watching in Sydney is probably 140,000 more than would have watched had the swans been playing!

The ABC had a shocker with New Tricks making way for the second season of East of Everything and suffering a 35% drop in their 7.30 ratings in the process, maybe they shouldn't be trying to mix Australian shows into their well established Brit line-up on this night.

Consistency Pays

Saturday 30 May 2009

Biggest Disappointment
Saturday Night AFL
Ten down 68,000 week on week

Biggest Improvement
New Tricks
ABC1 7.30pm - up 182,000 week on week


Nothing big happening last night and a whole lot of missing figures making the picture even cloudier. Suffice it to say Nine was the winner on overall percentage with the ABC second for the night.

Nothing else that interesting happened, Nine's movies were both down on last week, but both were still good performers, Seven's southern broadcast of Phenomenon was down on last week's Meet the Fockers, but again not by too much.

Interestingly most regular series were up, aside from New Tricks, Gardening Australia, Foyles War, Vicar of Dibley, Rockwiz, Kath & Kim, The Bill and Funniest Vids were all up from last week. I guess on a night where almost anything goes schedule-wise, consistency pays!

Was it all worth it?

Friday 15 & Saturday 16 May

Well that was the weekend

A little later than usual for your truly and really a pretty standard weekend by the look of it.

You’d think Ten would be reaching for the axe on their lineup with several weeks at below 20% but they look like persisting for the time being.

On Saturday night we had one of those odd occasions where not only were Sydney and Brisbane playing in (separate) night games, but also Adelaide and Perth meaning no Melbourne teams were represented. That meant auds were slightly down in Melbourne, the footy beaten in that city by Kath & Kim, Funniest Vids, Billy Connolly even Before the Game proved more popular. Football auds were up in both Adelaide and Perth (which you’d expect) but Sydney and Brisbane barely registered a blip on the radar.

I wonder when the next rights issue comes up (next year I think) whether Ten will look back at the deal they made to get the sport on their air (unlike Seven or Nine they guaranteed to screen matches in prime time in Sydney & Brisbane) and whether it would have been worth it.

Friday 4 and Saturday 5 April 2009

Dead beats Old - Saturday 28 February 2009

If you ever needed any indication of how the under 50s have abandoned Saturday night - you need look no further than the 6.30 timeslot where the ancient Malcolm Douglas managed to best an hour of idiotic pratfalls on channel nine.

Funniest Home Videos low ratings could be a reflection of the host (Shelley Craft seems to have copped a lot of flak in the blogosphere since she jumped from Seven) but then again this show has always been hosted by an airhead (well barring the illustrious first season at least)

In fact I've just had an idea - why don't Nine move this to another night where they desperately need it - then slot in reruns of the Graham Kennedy original on Saturdays, Douglas may be old but Kennedy is dead and dead trumps old!

OK, Also interesting - and I have to credit MediaSpy member retter2critical with this observation, that Seven is winning the night with old ABC shows (ie: Kath & Kim and The Vicar of Dibley), I didn't even notice this strategy but its pretty sound, far superior to Ten's weird movie choices based on some tenuous link to dancing.

Think Local, Act Stupid - Saturday 14 February 2009

Well good luck making sense of last night which was all over the place. Nine at least had a consistent sked but even that didn't help them out beyond Funniest Vids which had a decent return - it will be interesting to see if they can claw back the 200,000 or so viewers who have gone missing over the course of 2008.

Channel Ten had a logical state split based on their AFL screenings Perth Missed out on Mean Girls (because they got the AFL at 6.30) and picking up Sydney's movie after the game, sounds reasonable enough, but channel Seven - WTF is going on there??!?

Even discounting the early evening bumping of Fawlty Towers, why launch two new British series in only two markets?? How does that possibly help their ratings? And what makes them think that anyone who chose Underbelly over Desperate Housewives on Monday is actually at home on Saturday to watch?? The mind boggles...

Waiting out the summer - Thursday 23 - Saturday 25 January 2009

That's a bit what it's like at the moment, waiting for something exciting to happen on TV, being assaulted left right and centre by Tennis and Cricket (and Beach Cricket for good measure).

Pay TV continues to provide real gems among the endless reruns of Judge Judy and Law & Order, like tonight Bio has a Final 24 special on the death of Tupac Shakur (Bio 8.30pm), TV1 has the next installment of TVLAND Moguls - Aaron Spelling (TV1 9.30), E! has the funniest show on TV - The Soup (E! 7.00) and SciFi is playing 'E.T. The Extra Terrestrial' (10.30pm)

But FTA is stuck in a rut, the promos are getting nicer as they promise all sorts of great new shows (or shows we saw last year due to fast tracking) but who is even watching to see these promotions.

Well here's the deal - if you need to promote your Prime Time lineup - sport helps.

Obviously due to the broad appeal and multi media coverage - a big sporting event can draw the spectators to the television regardless of lead in or a channel's reputation, and every summer for years has devolved into a tussle for sporting supremacy between Seven and Nine for top dog while Ten brings up the rear of the pack.

Nine's Cricket is always a massive draw but in recent years Seven has managed to parlay their 2 week tennis fiesta into a major promotional drive for their new season.

So putting those two aside for a moment - how is Ten doing?

Well on Thursdays - really well, Ten's Law & Order night has been dominant over all comers this summer and although bettered by the Tennis on Thursday it was still strong enough to leave Nine's lineup in the dust. This bodes well for the return of SVU in two weeks and the premiere of a big new skein Life on Mars.


Add to that a new wrinkle this week in that finally Don't Forget The Lyrics (a summer staple for the net) has lifted it performance above 800,000 for the first time - not dominant, but much better than normal - perhaps picking up a few stray Ugly Betty viewers.

On Fridays though the picture flips - although The Simpsons at 7.30 typically does well (though not so much this week with sport soaking up much of it's audience) Law & Order (the original in new eps no less) has been struggling all summer.


It has been a brave decision to put a long running (and generally well rating) cop series on Friday nights (a night bereft of solid entertainment for years) I have my fingers crossed that the addition of Paranormal/Cop Show hybrid Medium will be enough to bring non sport watchers to the tube on Fridays because the payoff from a regular series versus one shot movies is much greater for the network which can guarantee an aud for advertisers (with movies no such guarantee can exist)

Saturday was a bizarre surprise, Tennis, of course, was the dominant game in town, but a movie which has been rerun so many times that every teenager in the country has seen it and memorised it (Billy Madison) pulled an impressive aud versus the more family friendly lineup on Nine (Funniest Vids/Superman III), afterward another rerun movie - The Jackal continued the decent numbers despite a long history of adult movies airing on this night.


As far as I can figure the family aud was watching the Tennis leaving barely anyone left to see Nine's family lineup, that leaves anyone not interested in sport watching the Bruce Willis movie and perhaps the teens watching the ultimate guilty pleasure film before they go out. Whatever, in a few weeks it won't matter much - ten will have the Saturday sport, Nine will have the family movies and Seven will pick over the oldies and the natural order will once again be restored!

Saturday 6 December 2008

First things first - where's Friday? Well the info is pretty sparse no indication whether Numb3rs/Law & Order beat 24 on Seven which pulled only 645,000 viewers (oh yeah summer is in full effect!)

What is known is the timeslot winners on Friday
Seven News / Today Tonight / Temptation / Better Homes & Gardens Summer Series / Miss Congeniality.

Just like Ten, Nine is given to rerunning some movies over and over and over - and now we know why! With an average aud of 953,000 viewers, that's an audience you can bank on!

On Saturday the night was mostly ABC's. Funniest Homes Videos flourished early on, then everything else on the commercial nets bombed. It's a great shame that Wife Swap tanked, tihs will only encourage the networks to stick to their movies during the regular season.

Just a question, does channel nine get some sort of drama quota points for showing the AFI's? I mean, they already have the logies and this ceremony sits at a late night on the first Saturday of Summer. If they're not getting drama points for it then I don't see the point because they're certainly not trying to grow the audience.

Not with a bang... Saturday 29 November 2008

The final day of the official 2008 ratings season came and went with barely anyone noticing.

Both Seven and Ten trotted out premiere movies at 6.30, Ten gave us the uneeded Garfield 2 (wasn't one movie enough?) while Seven showed us Disney Channel's attempt to create it's own bandwagon with Camp Rock which already premiered on cable about 2 months back.

Both were hopelessly outmatched by Nine whose Funniest Home Videos perked up slightly for it's season finale (but nowhere near the performance of previous seasons)

Note to Ten and Seven - get an hourlong 6.30 show, test pattern, whatever - Funniest vids has the biggest 6.30 aud and no-one (including kids) wants to start watching a movie halfway through - hence Nine's follow on movie a rerun of The Polar Express took the prize.

(In reality ABC's schedule of The Bill and some other show took the actual prize - but since they're too stupid to sell advertising with those sort of ratings, I'm not going to encourage them!)

Strangely - Saturdays are one of the few things that will actually get better with the oncoming summer - with less pressure on all the networks they'll start experimenting a little more and Saturday nights produce some real gems (Wife Swap for example) so thank god this season of Seven is over - maybe now we can be entertained!

Television's Ice Age - Saturday 1 November 2008

Last night we got a real patchwork, Seven and Nine went local last night to accomodate their broadcasts of Rugby (both the union and league varieties) and the face that people south of the Murray couldn't care less.

It's difficult to make sense of and I'm not even going to try except to say that nothing was particularly impressive ratings wise last night - Funniest Home Videos and Ice Age 2 both scored well, but their numbers were depressed in these spring months.

The loss of viewers this year has been even more acute than last year as people find something better to do than sport or repeats on a Saturday. With both Football matches pulling lacklustre figures even in their home markets, what does this mean for the future of sporting rights in Australia.

Surely they can't keep bidding up the price of these spectacles when the result is a diminishing return.

Saturday Night's alright (for something other than television) - Saturday 25 October 2008

Some years ago the major US television networks stopped programming on Saturdays, turning the night over to either sports or rebroadcasts of programs shown earlier in the week (a practice known as repurposing)

While the Australian free to air networks are not there yet it can't be all that far away with no single post 6.30 program drawing in excess of 1 million viewers and several regular draws underperforming.

The biggest dissapointment of the night was the Rugby League World Cup whose delayed telecast attracted a tiny audience even in the northern states where it was shown at 9.30pm. It remains to be seen how the league fares tonight with a better timeslot and Australia playing.

Everything else was movies. As long as the commercial networks treat Saturday night like an afterthought rather than building an audience on the night they'll continue on indefinitely earning these low numbers.

Hot in the City - Saturday 18 October 2008

At least it was hot in Victoria last night - at first glance of the ratings you might assume that the heat drove people outdoors and away from their televisions, only one show last night won over 1 million viewers, Seven News.

But look closer, at 6.30 there were a total of over 2 million people split between the commercial networks, those networks were all playing shows aimed at children, Funniest Vids, Jumanji (airing #478) and Shark Tale. The networks know that kids make up the biggest Saturday TV audience but they're all fighting for the same group of people, question to ask is - who's gonna blink first?

Saturday Shutdown - Saturday 11 October 2008

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Years ago Saturday night shows could command top 10 figures, programs like Hey Hey it's Saturday, MacGyver would fight it out in the same slot and still pull great numbers, now - it's just depressing.

Nine's Funniest Home Videos - once the shining beacon of Saturday night has sunk to the 900club which is getting more and more crowded these days as the potential eyeballs find other things to do.

Everything else was movies - Ten had the only rerun - Evolution, which seemed to have been promoted only 20 seconds before the start time and was rewarded in viewers thusly.

Seven again had the top show with family movie Holes - seven's access to the Disney brand helps them out every so often on Saturday nights and their family movie bent is working well.

Working less well was Alien vs Predator which predicably did about two thirds of it's lead in sharing it's potential aud with Aeon Flux a movie spin off of an anime series that SBS used to carry - hardly mainstream stuff. Why networks think that this is the best they can do on a Saturday is beyond me - people are home and are watching - but not the people they are aiming at.