You Are What You Repeat - Sunday 7 December 2008

In many ways last night was the real first Sunday of Summer with several series staying an extra week last week, this week we get a look at life with all new 6.30 shows and there’s good news for Seven, bad news for Jamie Durie!

Turns out Jamie was holding them back in the early evening with viewers much preferring to see some animal action, this in turn unlocked a much larger audience for Hot Property at 7pm. Nine had a brief surge of interest for it’s perennial once a year Women’s Weekly promo but I don’t know what they were thinking segueing from Christmas entertaining to a horrid British series (You are what you eat) which upon last inspection had it’s host/protagonist sifting through the faeces of a family of fast food addicts. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see after planning your Christmas lunch.

Luckily Charlie Sheen resuscitated Nine’s audience at 7.30 with it and lead out Big Bang winning the hour, their 8.30 movie Heist, did alright though not as good as the Drew Barrymore comedy Never Been Kissed which was promoted with the line “Ten Premiere” which I guess means it’s been seen on another network previously. It didn’t stop it recording a timeslot winning audience against rather drab competition.

Seven had a meltdown post 7.30. Everyone must have figured out they’d already seen that Seven Wonders show on ABC resulting in 317,000 less viewers week on week, at least 132,000 of them went to the ABC to watch a documentary on something or other (like I care!), this in turn made things worse for already cancelled British drama Holby Blue. Not even the magical David Leckie could get this turkey to fly, given this is a spin off from a spin off of Casualty, the long running Brit Hospital Soap, surely he would’ve had somebody in the organisation look at the ratings that Casualty received back when Ten trialled it in 93 or 94? From memory it wasn’t spectacular.

A worry for Ten is that the jig is up with America’s Next Top Model, this show has a weekly reach on cable of around 750,000 viewers – that’s pretty big and those people are watching a cycle several seasons in advance over what is currently airing on Ten. It’s a good bet that a lot of people who picked up this show back when it was pulling 1 million per ep migrated to Fox 8 when they realised how far behind the US Ten was running.

Australian TV is very slowly turning into the UK model where a lot of imports go straight to cable with the ‘terrestrial broadcaster’ effectively rerunning the show months later if at all, this places a whole lot more pressure on the FTA nets to find local content as the value of the imports diminishes greatly when you can get it first elsewhere (same goes for BT I guess!)

Seven's Schedule - Now Twice as Ugly!

So what's Seven up to this summer? Lets check it out...

SUNDAYS
Looks like a very old skewing mix to me, continuing The Outdoor Room and then Hot Property - Hot Property seems to do well every summer that they wheel it out - but who is going to want to watch this orgy of auctions and house renovations whilst house prices across the nation are falling. As a social indicator - the ratings for this program will be very interesting.

At 7.30 Seven brings on a limited run BBC doco about various industrial marvels, followed at 8.30 by Holby Blue, the now cancelled spin-off of Holby City, itself a spin-off from the long running Britsh hospital drama Casualty.

I remember back in 1994 Ten attempted to foist the cheapness that is Casualty on unsuspecting Australian audiences - you know it's a bad sign when the set looks like cardboard and you're in the year nineteen hundred and ninety three. Who knows their may have been a decent story in there somewhere but I couldn't get past the Doctor Who production values.

A Touch of Frost rounds out Brit night on Seven, all of these shows should seal a comfortable lead in total people and over 55s (almost one and the same these days!)

MONDAY
With Home & Away taking the summer off, 3rd year sitcom How I Met Your Mother steps into the slot in an effort to give the show more exposure and expand the fan base - all useful causes. It's main genre competition is the remarkably similar Friends over on Ten.

The Rich List continues at 7.30 and Bones takes it's second hour away from Thursdays and over to Mondays, I'll be curious to see how this CSI-lite goes against the real thing, it is in vogue this year so anything's possible.

Late Night Monday we can see Scrubs followed by the US Kath & Kim, damn it to hell it should've been Scrubs in the 7pm timeslot many years ago, one of the most finely crafted sitcoms on television probably has more followers from DVD than actually on the television.

TUESDAY & THURSDAY
Yep twice a week Seven is throwing a lifeline to Ugly Betty - a first season hit whose second season return was horribly botched (by the network, not the show itself) joining it at 8.30 is Weirdo Lawyer Dramedy Eli Stone which was first promoted by Seven all the way back at the end of 2007. Has it taken them this to find the tapes they dropped down the back of the sofa in the green room? Sloppy Seven.

TUESDAY
Dirty Sexy Money is back, perhaps fast-tracked (not sure), itself followed by Prison Break which will also be pulling double duty on Wednesdays. This is surely Prison Break's last gasp - a show whose premise justified exactly ONE SEASON has stretched onto it's fourth!

WEDNESDAY
Air Crash Investigations has gotten a headstart last week, as has The Unit, Las Vegas takes the 8.30 slot to play out their final season (or at least some of it) there was a point (When Vegas aired 7.30 Thursdays) when it was a timeslot winner and a solid rater - but like so many imports on Channel Seven they had trouble sticking to ONE TIMESLOT and the viewers quickly found other things to do.

THURSDAY
The Amazing Race moves back an hour with Heroes staying on through the summer - that's one lesson it would've paid Seven to learn last year when it counted, now Heroes (like so many others) has faded away.

FRIDAY
Apart from Better Homes & Gardens reruns (oh sorry "Summer Series") nothing else is locked in - first week back though we get the 24 movie, which is handy, after a sixth season which started out ludicrously and got worse ('I held my mud') I'm not holding out much hope for a return to the greatness of season 5, but I guess we'll see what happens...

SATURDAY
Two unknowns here - a British drama called Brittania High followed by a short lived US game show called Dance Machine, not sure what the purpose of either is and perhaps Ten should've kept MacGyver on and run a marathon from 6.30 to 10.30 - if this is all Seven have got for competition on this night - it's not looking good.

If Ten is loading up on reruns to lock in a schedule for 2009 and Nine is just regurgitating failed series, then Seven's sked feels the most like summer, a whole bunch of shows we wouldn't see otherwise, nights and lineups completely remade and almost all of it imported. There is also still a very good question mark over the non appearance of Reaper another show which was heavily advertised LAST summer.