Irrational

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Man people cannot get enough of My Kitchen Rules! The top rating show of the night, followed closely by Today Tonight at 6.30.



Let's have a look at the 6.30 timeslot. It has been shaken up this year by the arrival of channel 11 which has installed Neighbours at 6.30 making it the biggest draw on all the digital spectrum. The replacement Ten Evening News has hovered under 400,000 viewers since commencement, indeed its lead in - 6pm with George Negus attracted 421,000 viewers, its biggest audience in weeks, no doubt bolstered by a rerun of 6pm at 10.30pm weeknights.

But Ten's predicament is a long term change so don't expect things to take off too quickly there, over on channel Nine though a trend is forming with ACA, they seem to be hovering around the 900,000 mark, unable to climb over 1 million. Meanwhile the nearly identical Today Tonight has a clear margin over Nine's tabloid.

Having watched both Nine and Seven's shows in recent weeks I'm struggling to figure what Seven is doing that Nine is not. Its almost as if Seven has the same irrational lead in news that Nine used to enjoy back in their 90s heyday

I wonder if 887,000 is the kind of audience Nine was expecting for Farmer Wants a Wife - the incessant promotion would suggest otherwise, perhaps the concept (a rural rip-off of The Bachelor) may finally be put to rest.

From Old and Bloated to Trim and Teriffic

Thursday, 3 February 2011

The Biggest Loser is just going from strength to strength, 1.3 million viewers is outstanding for a show that last year looked shell shocked from being pushed to 7.30 to make room for the 7pm project.



A year ago Loser was struggling to break 900,000 viewers per outing. This year they've made the show leaner with 4 1 hour installments a week helping to shore up Ten's typically weaker back half of the week with older demographics.

Seven looks like it is using the night to play the demographic game putting the younger skewing Mother and Greys skeins as well as Desperate Housewives which for me is in that category: "Is that still on??"

Similarly why are the CSI shows still going? Surely they're played out by now. Nine skews old with these dramas and Getaway - the show that's so old it's forgotten half of it's length - ready to be picked up by RBT - a show with a premise that's simultaneously stupid and yet so brilliant you wonder why nobody thought of it before!

Nice to see Stargate and Star Trek the Next Generation doing well in their slots on Eleven - Australian TV needs all the sci-fi it can get.

Outside the primetime grid there's a lot of blog chatter about the performance of Ten's new newshour - 6pm and 6.30 News - which has dropped week on week from the mid 400's to the mid 300's - its way to early to call these shows either a failure or success, my sincere hope is Ten will succeed with this venture - their decision to deal themselves into the 6pm hour is the biggest shakeup that the TV schedule has had - and in the long run it will put their prime time schedule on an even footing.