Surprise Erosion!

One of the features of television ratings in the past couple of season in this country has been the rapid audience erosion on Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays were always TV dead zones, where the only people watching seemed to be in their 60s and over (judging by the schedule)

Now we all know that there's a fair stay at home crowd in the 30-40 age range - these are the people with young families who might be home some of the saturdays - but generally these people are harder to pin down and these days with Cable, DVD rentals, the internet and video games there are far more options for this age group - so the networks don't bother to try to cater to young people on these nights.

But in the last few years the audience has been eroding on Thursdays as well. Starting around 2008 we saw drastic drops in Thursday audiences with the only successful shows being cop dramas and 20to1, it was like the people meter population was all on Thursday night shopping which would make sense except a lot of states do it on a Friday night!

Whatever the reason - I didn't see this coming - but for the second week running we have really low figures on a Wednesday night.

Only 4 shows after 7.30 made it past a million, the number one show for the night was a measley 1.28 million viewers (Customs) and former million raters Cold Case and Gang of Oz struggled to keep their shit together in prime time slots - and I don't even know what's going on with Burn Notice - egad!

At least you have Steve Leibmann

Wednesday was a curiously low-viewing night across all the channels with only the bafflingly popular Customs and the milquetoast Spick & Specks making any real impression on the people meters.

The popularity of Customs was perhaps helped along by yesterday’s news story about Australia’s international terminals installing those nude scanners by next year

Only a few nights into the season and already I can see a trend emerging and a problem for programmers to solve.

Young viewers are mostly gone, at least large numbers of them are using the DVR or the internet or watching cable and the digital channels (Lost’s final season premiere was top of the digital pops last night with 216,000 viewers).

The ones that are left are spread so thinly that even youth magnets like So You Think You Can Prance are finding it hard to keep a million people in front of the box for two hours.

In their place the nets are trying to pitch to older viewers, notice how almost the hot young-skewing properties on Seven and Nine have made their way to 7TWO and GO! while people stuck with analogue TV feast on a morbid diet of docu-soaps and cop shows.

Now we have the situation where two cop shows can’t exist in the same space – look at the 8.30 aud for Cold Case, a veteran show for Nine was smothered in fourth place, suffocated by the more agile Criminal Minds – itself headed for veteran status in it’s fifth season and struggling to maintain a healthy figure.

The low, low audience for sophomore doco Gangs of Oz might suggest that people are starting to tire of this real crime stuff – seriously anyone who is way into this has an entire cable channel along with numerous shows on other channels to sift through day after day – Gangs has to be pretty special to make its mark and the problem is – it has no real hook – Crime Investigation Australia the CI series which is rerun on Nine at least has Steve Leibmann.

A House built on eroding foundations - Wednesday 11 March 2009

Another night of week on week drops across the board though nowhere near as drastic as Tuesday. Today Tonight posted the biggest loss of 148k week on week, while its rival A Current Affair gained 69,000 viewers from last week, Neighbours however was down 73,000 so overall viewing was down.

Both eps of Cold Case were down week on week but still respectable, Gangs of Oz’s final instalment kept above 1 million declining by 48,000 viewers from last week, conversely Lost, which has been on the slide, lifted by 36,000 viewers.

The 8.30 slot seems to have settled somewhat with Criminal Minds boasting a comfortable lead over the competition, the (remarkably less exciting) procedural The Mentalist has grown back to late 2008 levels, no where near its Sunday episodes but on par with its Wednesday outings last year and helping Nine to a strong second place on the night.

Over on Ten, House has incredibly stabilised, and although a 4th placing at 8.30 is not ideal, 900k against two other (newer) first run US dramas is passable.

Less inspiring is the lacklustre performance of its lead-in Guerrilla Gardeners which has slipped below the 700k mark, Ten says they’re going to stick with it but I cannot see the point, on one hand it’s Thursday counterpart Bondi Vet posts less than spectacular numbers, but those numbers are stable and do not hamper its lead in, the gardening show, on the other hand, is declining from an awfully low base (from which that vet’s numbers look like lofty heights) this show may be bound for the midday Saturday death slot! (Previously occupied by such Ten luminaries as Celebrity Dog School and Teen Fat Camp) maybe Ten should do a straight swap with current occupant Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that show is a fine way to pass 30 minutes!

Stuff Gardening, get back to the House! Wednesday 4 March 2008

Last night Nine saw improvement in all their skeins from 7.30 to 11.30 with Cold Case within striking distance of Seven’s soon to be gone Gangs of Oz and the 10.30 rerun dominating the timeslot.

Week on week the 9.30 Cold Case lifted 218,000 people, the week’s biggest gain, also performing well Farmer Wants a Wife added 67k, The Mentalist added 119k and the 10.30 Cold Case rerun added 106k

Seven suffered the biggest losses with Gangs of Oz shedding 101,000 viewers, still it scraped through to a timeslot win. Lost is floundering at 10.30 coming after an incompatible lead in it sunk a further 84,000 viewers to 380,000 which surely constitutes a series low for a new episode.

House lifted for Ten but still lost out to Spicks and Specks, while Life gained 105,000 viewers week on week but only managed a distant third in its timeslot for total viewers.

Interestingly The Biggest Loser and House seem to have similar numbers watching then in between 200,000 viewers disappear at the onset of Guerrilla Gardeners – it interesting to note that city by city the biggest lead in losses are in Melbourne and Adelaide the two cities with currently the harshest water restrictions where gardening is probably the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Still at 700k against tough competition I see Ten toughing it out for a few more weeks yet but if it stays under 800,000 after Nine’s Agricultural show disappears then my tip is for a quick return from Rules of Engagement which has just returned in the US.

9pm - Wednesday 25 February 2009

Lets look at the week on week progress of some series

Seven had some minor losses with Australia’s Got Talent shedding 49,000 viewers and Gangs of Oz taking out 27,000 but overall they were on par with the previous week.

Nine made some good gains particularly with News up by 119,000 viewers, as Kuttyswood pointed out on this blog yesterday the Queensland Election is proving a boost to Nine’s news ratings in Brisbane as they have more experience covering politics than Seven whose political coverage remains disappointingly lightweight. Since the bushfires in Victoria Nine News also seems to have won back some ground in Melbourne – the other state capitals however, remain largely indifferent to Nine News.

ACA also boosted by 154,000 viewers, the Two and a Half Men rerun took an extra 86,000 as a result and Farmer Wants a Wife went up by 132,000 week on week.

The Mentalist broke the magic mill going up 83,000 viewers and although stuck in second place Cold Case took the paint of Life over on ten with 155,000 viewers dumping LA for Philadelphia at 9.30

Over on Ten their early evening lifted nicely with The Simpsons up 63,000, Neighbours up 93,000 and The Biggest Loser up 92,000 week on week – but with Guerrilla Gardeners only able to add 24,000 viewers – the writing may be on the wall – even more distressing is that all those gains were in Melbourne, where it still posted under 200,000 viewers – unacceptable in Melbourne for a 8pm show.

Not sure whether the 8.30 timeslot or its 8pm lead-in is hurting House but neither is helping one iota, the sad irony for channel ten can be seen in the ABC’s figures – at 8.30 there’s over a million people watching Spicks & Specks and at 9pm 618,000 of them change the channel looking for something else to watch! All they have as an alternative of free to air is 3 American dramas half-way through the hour – c’mon Ten take advantage – move it back to 9pm.

Speaking of the ABC – what is it with their Wednesday nights becoming the cable comedy repurposing night? I’m not sure of the appeal of Chandon Pictures, it’s on a channel that even the bulk of Cable subscribers probably don’t get, it seems to be a very insider baseball premise and Aunty can only rustle up 431,000 people at 9pm to have a look? ABC don’t care about ratings – but if they do care about exposing good programs then they are wasting one of their best timeslots on a turkey.

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)

Primetime Preview: Wednesdays

7.30 - 8.30
Australia's Got Talent vs Farmer Wants a Wife vs The Biggest Loser/Guerilla Gardeners

Hmmm, clearly no-one was happy with their Wednesday performance last year as all this stuff is new to the timeslot, also no-one thought to include comedy in the slot as Two and a Half Men worked marvellously for Nine on Wednesday nights last year.

The first few weeks will see an extra installment of So You Think You Can Dance over on Ten before it is replaced by a gardening show (unusual for Ten) which is an unknown quantity.

The Hot Tip...
I don't expect Got Talent to do anything special here, Red Symons is good value but the presence of Danni Minogue and Tom Burlinson keeps it from being entertaining - frankly on the strength of it's previous seasons and Nine's summer campaign I'd tip Farmer wants a Wife as the winner of this slot. Only problem is do they have more than six weeks in the can?


8.30 - 9.30
Criminal Minds vs The Mentalist vs House
For the first few weeks House will be pushed back to 9pm, this may advantage it over the other shows in the slot as it won't have to directly face the ABC's Spicks and Specks - a perrenial contender in this slot.

Out of the commercial channels, Criminal Minds has The Mentalists' measure and I expect that to continue

The Hot Tip...
Criminal Minds still the timeslot winner, though a lot will depend on whether Ten's extended Dance sessions act as effective spoilers in the early weeks and deliver an aud to House - I'm not holding my breath...


9.30 - 10.30
Gangs of Oz vs Flashpoint vs Life
It's hard to know what Nine are thinking here, Flashpoint has been doing reasonably well in an 8.30 slot but they have had trouble pinning down a night with all these sneak peeks - now they pull a random night out of their collective arses and it's Wednesday at 9.30??? Whatever.

I predict some initial interest in Gangs of Oz (the seven factual publicity machine is a loud beast) but I wonder exactly how many criminal gangs are out there for them to profile.

The Hot Tip
After an initial interest for Gangs of Oz, Flashpoint will take over the slot, I don't see Life troubling either 7 or 9, which is unfortunate because it is one of the best shows on TV.