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.

A doctorate in high ratings

Sunday 31 May 2009

Biggest Week on Week Disappointment
Weekend Sunrise
Seven Early Morning, down 194,000 viewers

Biggest Week on Week Disappointment (Prime Time)
Merlin
Ten 6.30pm, down 164,000 viewers

Biggest Week on Week Improvement
Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story
ABC1 8.30pm, up 224,000 viewers over the previous week’s episode of Dirt Game

Well there you go! A lot going on last night. Not only the return of Doctor Who, which unlike Star Trek, Stargate, Lost, Heroes or any other sci fi in this country, seems to have a large (probably older and more patient) following pushing the ABC over a million in that slot and doing some damage to Masterchef which was down by 107,000 viewers.

The other major story is the ascendance of Seven’s Sunday Night. Their current affairs flagship leaping 99,000 viewers week on week for a timeslot win and a comparison win against 60 minutes.

Nine’s post 8.30 fortunes took a beating with Bones a full 379,000 viewers clear of CSI (it was even beaten by Rove), Nine only managed to save face at 10.30 with CSI NY proving even more popular than The Evidence (a 152,000 week on week lift)

Headache Inducing Scheduling

Saturday 9 May 2009
Another Saturday, another unspectacular set of numbers, the 6.30-7.30 hour is good with almost 4 million watching free to air, but after that the audience tails of quickly, of course you have your AFL on Ten which did slightly less than Seven's game on Friday night, Ten had about 120k less watching in Melbourne, and a few more watching in Adelaide and Perth.

In order to acheive this comparable result, however, Ten needs to do a lot more legwork.

Seven airs the one match on Friday nights (never live because of the commitment to Better Homes and Gardens) 8.30 for all southern markets (and occasionally Brisbane), 11.30 for Sydney (and Bris at other times)

On Ten the picture isn't so clear cut, this is ten, which during the 90s was the most tightly synchronised network in this country, with little to no variation between the 5 cities, of course the territorial pursuit of Aussie Rules football has changed all that, observe...

The AFL last night aired in all 5 cities, starting at 5 different times! Perth got the game, Blues vs Dockers, from 5.30pm - 8.30pm, Adelaide picked up the game at 6.30 (after screening Before the Game, live at 6pm), Melbourne started at 7.00, in reality the same time as Adelaide - but two different games! Melbourne catching the Blues game while Adelaide opted for Kangaroos vs Port Power!

In Melbourne the Mick Molloy/Dave Hughes football talker Before the Game went from 6.30-7.00 and was Melbourne's second highest rating program of the night with 390,000 viewers.

Brisbane picked up the Blues vs Dockers match after 7.30 (Before the Game does not rate north of the Murray) and Sydney had an alternate sked featuring two Simpsons eps not seen in any other market and a movie shared with Perth viewers, finally airing the AFL to a paltry 21,000 viewers at 10.30pm!

It gives me a headache just trying to line up this insane schedule in my chart - I can only image what the oztam people (and for that matter Ten's Programmers) make of this beast.

Out of the Frying Pan...

Friday 24 April 2009
Ahhh if only we could all agree on a code of Football! Last night if you combined the audiences for AFL and NRL you would end up with 1.3 million viewers (717k watching Rugby League and 676k watching AFL in Prime Time) alas we are fractured nation - forever doomed to squabble over whose sport is best.

If you don't like sport there's always Midsomer Murders on ABC, Old fashioned murder mystery preferred by almost double the audience watching the more high concept kind on Channel Ten, Medium will be off to Thursdays very shortly to take advantage of the younger audiences on that night while Law & Order will air double eps in its place.

But Law & Order could be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire, Law & Order skews heavily male in its demographics putting it squarely in competition with... you guessed it - Football and that's a fight it can't win.

Something we should all Ponder

Wednesday 22 April 2009

Last night everyone had a reason to smile, and a reason to worry.

Ten can take heart that The Simpsons has settled nicely on Wednesdays and has scored some of its best numbers in years thanks to the better timeslot.

They can also worry about Life a show whose audience won't grow no matter what Ten does, it's very likely when Life leaves the stage in a week's time it will be for good, soon to be replaced by Numb3rs, so will Numb3rs improve ten's numbers at 9.30 or is the slot itself a problem?

Nine can be pleased with Cold Case which has bounced back after erratic scheduling over summer, a breif fling with 10.30, now with Seven's Gangs of Oz dispatched we see Nine dominating the post 9.30 field.

But they should be worried as to why The Mentalist seems to be fading, for the past couple of weeks it's been neck and neck with House which indicates that perhaps either its aud have lost interest due to a cliched format or worse, erratic scheduling (witness what AFL interruptions did to Life on Mars)

Seven can be happy with Australia's Got Talent which routinely been Wednesday's best performer, and ecstatic even that the channel ten megahit Thank God You're Here will be filling that slot next week.

They can also fire someone over the boneheaded decision to move their crime docos and bump Lost for a sitcom lineup at 9.30.

My Name is Earl has always gotten good ratings on Thursdays, then late 2007 Seven started fucking with success (sound familiar) by moving the show to Sundays, now it's on 9.30 Wednesdays?? I'm all for having sitcoms later into the night, but this show was a success at 8pm, why on earth would they mess with that?

Family Guy fared even worse - I can't help but think if Ten was screening this show it would be an 8.30pm hit, instead Seven, admirably keep persisting, but the old axiom that people watch shows and not networks continues to be proven false - both show and network need to mesh and Seven does not equal Family Guy.

As for bumping Lost, how do you insult fans of this show any further??, oh yeah bump their show behind a low rent comedian whose entire schtick seems to be poking fun at old educational videos.

Seven are currently at the top of the heap in TV, so these kinds of incompetent programming mistakes probably don't bother their top brass too much, but you really have to wonder if they managed to be consistent with the scheduling of their shows, how much more dominant they'd be.

Note to Nine: Viewers are not idiots

Tuesday 21 April 2009
First Tuesday back from the break and a real surprise in a new makeover show (yes that’s a genre now) called Ten Years Younger in Ten Days. It’s a rare occasion that a 9.30 show out-rates its 8.30 lead in but there you go, not only is that figure remarkable but the boost it delivered to Eli Stone was quite substantial.

One can imagine that if the show holds these viewers in a few weeks time it may get the switch to 8.30 bumping the Saints back.

This is the fourth week with no Packed to the Rafters and still Nine has failed to capitalised, new episodes of Two and a Half Men should be pulling significant audience but ill-conceived lead-ins and an over-saturation of the show have led to the bizarre situation where a 5 year old rerun beats a new episode!

While I’m at it – what is the deal with these horrendous shows at 7.30? Commercial Breakdown?? Isn’t that kind of cheap and nasty programming the reason Seven’s Sundays were a basket case throughout the 90s, just awful cheap filler and viewers know it too.

Nine moves up the dial 22 places - Wednesday 8 April 2009

Wednesday

While Ten scores with reruns on Tuesdays, Seven drops the true crime chicanery and dishes out a double Criminal Minds with great results - at 8.30 they were only bettered by the ABC's light entertainment double, then at 9.30 they owned the hour.

Ten's House and Guerilla Gardeners were both up week on week, although Guerilla Gardeners fate has already been sealed with a move to 6pm Sundays in the wings after Easter.

Meanwhile check out the performance this week of The Simpsons and Neighbours in the 6pm hour - are the school holidays helping these shows or what?

Channel Nine meanwhile had a good night until 8.30 - a new double of What's Good For You and RPA (somewhat reminiscent of the old Our House/Money Wednesday fixture I guess) won the 7.30 - 8.30 hour, then at 8.30 everyone had the night off - Southern viewers were subjected to a two hour Footy Show, though this sort of Wednesday stunt is quite common at this time of year the Footy Show is no longer the major draw it once was, perhaps its time to limit the number of 8.30 screenings of this stuff which, rather than win local market ratings, seem to just disrupt the networks programming.

In fact Sydney - with The Mentalist and Cold Case was the only Market which resembled the network last night, Brisbane viewers got some sort of local fashion awards??!? Is this channel nine or channel 31?

Packed to the End

Now that it's finished its first season here are the ups and downs (mostly ups) of Packed to the Rafters.

High Points for the series include episode 2 (Playing a Googly), ep 11 (Away from it all) and the finale (Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone)

The lowest rating ep was episode 16 (Having it all) which was the show's second week back after the summer hiatus.



Now that Packed to the Rafters will vacate Tuesday nights for a while the interesting thing will be to see what effect that has on other shows, will Two and a Half Men or NCIS receive a boost, Will All Saints shoot up now that it moves to 8.30 and is lead-in Find My Family's big aud all it's own making or a product of viewers tuning in for the show about to start.

A lot of questions are gonna get answered this time next week...

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!

Dreams of her father - Wednesday 21 January 2009

Tennis again dominated last night with a Jelena Dokic match producing the biggest audience yet for this year’s tournament and whipping everything else on the night. There ain’t nothing like a comeback and if this one-time defacto Aussie keeps winning expect the audience to get bigger and bigger as the tournament progresses.

Brings back memories of Damir – ah that crazy crazy man, I’m happy for her that she’s rid of him, but perhaps Tennis is poorer for him absence. (OK maybe not!)

After last week’s hopeful result for House, the show found itself the victim of better options. After 7pm CSI Miami was the only show on either 9 or Ten that did any kind of Business against the tennis.

Hope was also the theme early on Wednesday morning as thousands (approx 417,000 across the 5 capitals watching FTA) rose early to witness the inauguration of Barrack Obama as the new American President. Rarely has an event of this nature attracted such a crowd – even the swearing in of Kevin Rudd last year only brought a 3 minute on the news, then again getting the keys to the commonwealth doesn’t have anything on yesterday’s spectacle

Ten is a four letter word - Tuesday 20 January 2009

NCIS may roll over for the cricket, but not for Tennis, the long running Naval procedural was in fine form last night winning it’s two hour span with ease and lifting the rest of Ten tent along with it.

The day on day lift for the rest of Ten’s sked was extroadinary:

Neighbours up 40,000
Friends up 89,000
The Simpsons up 276,000
Rules of Engagement up 261,000

Seven can still be happy with a stellar performance all night long though only taking a 100,000 hit to Home & Away and the Night Session of the Tennis in the face of Ten’s resurgence.

Nine too was doing alright until their 8.30 movie – Paycheck. Not sure what it got but I know it’s under 640,000, they likely clawed back some share late in the night with the start of a marathon inauguration coverage after the movie.

Its baaaack - Monday 19 January 2009

As you would expect channel Seven romped it in on Monday night with the Tennis posting a very decent opening night rating for the network. This two weeks is seven’s turn at sporting dominance – couching their news in wall to wall tennis coverage and delivering a guaranteed audience to Home & Away for it’s first two weeks back.

Indeed Home & Away’s ratings marked a solid improvement over How I Met Your Mother reruns and put the show well ahead of it’s 7pm competition with Temptation taking the biggest hit to the groin.

Another phenomenon when one net has sport, is that other shows can unexpectedly benefit, here the main benefactors were The Big Bang Theory (up 169,000) and Crime Investigation Australia (up 135,000)

The Simpsons proved it still has devotees pushing the 6pm slot over the 500k mark for Ten for the first time in weeks and Neighbours got off to a solid start (742,000) though this decent effort was undone by every successive show on the lineup with a little known movie, The Contender, dragging Ten into SBS territory.

When Disaster Strikes - Sunday 18 January 2008

Owwwwwwww, ouch.

Short disclosure - I don't watch it - couldn't care less as it's a soap and have better ways to waste time, but still, I expected it would do better than it did.

I'm talking about Out of the Blue which will soon be 'Back on the Shelf' how at least some of it's 10.30pm devotees didn't follow it is beyond me, it doesn't help them that both Seven and Nine's Sundays will be sport heavy in the next few weeks, will it even be back next week - given tens's itchy trigger finger of late (In Plain Sight anybody?) I doubt it.

Cricket and it's entourage (ie: Nine's Primetime lineup) was the victor on Sunday night. Special mention goes to Flashpoint which posted a good overnight figure last Sunday (1,030,000), but this was mostly due to cricket overrun (it was pushed from 10.30 to 11pm), the real figure (561,000) was much less impressive. Now with another week of promotion and a better timeslot the series posted a much healthier 1,112,000 - Nine can be happy with that result.

Seven, knowing they wouldn't win, chose instead to fuck with channel ten, matching ten's Hugh Grant movie (About A Boy aka the most repeated movie on earth) with a much less seen (and more upbeat) Hugh Grant comedy - Nine Months!

Extra Viewers No Reason - Thursday 15 January 2009

It seems a lot of OzTAM families are back from Holidays...

The only change to the night was move of Sudden Impact to Thursday Night (due to the Tuesday night Cricket)

This paid a dividend for Nine with an extra 100K tuning in, although that could have just reflected the additional numbers tuning into television last night, Eli Stone, Temptation, Seven News, Cold Case, How I Met Your Mother, Secret Millionaire – week on week all of these shows were up by around 100,000 viewers.

The biggest improvers were Today Tonight up Ugly Betty, up 293,000 viewers week on week and Ugly Betty which drew an extra 167,000 viewers for the season finale.

Crowded House - Wednesday 15 January 2009

Sometimes television forces you to choose between three good shows facing off against one another.

It gets interesting when the shows are of a similar genre and the viewers have to make a difficult viewing choice.

There is a truism about television – you don’t want your really big shows to go up against your opposition’s really big shows because you might hurt your own show in the process.

All the same, it’s extremely difficult to knock off strong competition without using a really big show to do it.

Late last year this game of ratings chicken moved to Wednesday nights as Viewers had to chose between long time champion House, high rating freshman Criminal Minds and newcomer Fringe

Viewers decided that House beats Fringe but Criminal Minds beats House

Eventually nine got sick of losing and subbed in fellow newcomer (and the biggest new show in the US) The Mentalist.

Right there in one slot we had three shows which, on their own, are capable of drawing 1.6 million viewers all fighting for the same block of prime time ad space.

Nine’s move with The Mentalist was a blow to the show (it aud going from 1.4 to 1 million) but it repaired their share in that slot and took the edge of timeslot leader Criminal Minds. House meanwhile, as the oldest kid on the block, continued to dwindle as viewers checked out newer, shinier shows.

This summer has seen a continuation of this 3-way jam with House again suffering at the hands of it’s competitors, the timeslot winner has been CSI Miami, which is an older show than House but has spent the last two years with erratic scheduling and a waning audiences – it looks as if people are rediscovering the series, the runner up has been Las Vegas which seems to have a core fanbase willing to see out the series despite it being cancelled in America some time ago.

However last night we got a rare look at the drama pecking order in this country, with House moving to 9.30pm for a second rerun – it audience increased! Seems that people still like the doctor, they just also like the other things that are on, but when it gets to 9.30 and the other options are ER (an aging drama whose entire cast has been replaced) and The Unit (a violent Action/Soap with seemingly limited Aussie appeal) then a rerun of House wins!

There’s still life in the old show yet I guess…

Note to Seven: Hitler is dead - Monday 12 January 2009

Well Monday saw an increase in overall viewers on the previous week, a lot of that was no doubt helped by Ten scheduling something that people wanted to see with the Ashley Judd thriller (one of many Ashley Judd thrillers) Double Jeopardy proving a big switch-on for the net with an almost 100% lift in viewers!

Even the soon to be departed Out of the Blue got a 50% week on week boost beating Scrubs!

Scrubs was a victim of Seven’s idiotic scheduling – removing a proven second hour of Bones for a documentary about Hitler… WTF?? First of all haven’t there been enough documentaries on Hitler? Those in the viewing public wanting their WWII fix are probably already hardcore subscribers to the Hitler, err History Channel.

I’d love to find out (and I guess we will next week) how many watched The Golden Globe Awards, in years past Ten used to draw over a million viewers to the January spectacle – making it a good platform for promotion, but after last year’s writers strike it seems to have fallen into the hands of cable TV, which, although better equipped to telecast it live, has a much smaller audience base.

The Rich List rebounded with no cricket to distract it’s followers and How I Met Your Mother is doing quite nicely – it is probably summer’s top rating sitcom and will no doubt be launching new episodes right out of the gate unlike last years haphazard start.

Flasher at the cricket - Sunday 11 January 2009

That wheezing sound you can hear is the last gasp of test cricket as it struggles for air, deprived of viewers while it’s upstart younger sibling Twenty/20 cricket grabs the limelight.

For those who don’t know already Twenty/20 shrinks the one day 50 over per side cricket match down to a fast 20 overs per side, meaning the whole game can be played out in one evening – perfect for television and spectacle with the play less strategic and more ‘go for broke’

I’m reminded of a quote from an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where one of the characters laments the demise of Baseball several centuries earlier…

"Once, centuries ago, it was the beloved national pastime of the Americas. Abandoned by a society that prized fast food and faster games. Lost to impatience.”

That quote came to mind when I saw the ratings for last night’s Twenty/20 match – quite different to the middling ratings achieved by the test cricket just a week ago, the difference was – those ratings (because of the timeslot) provided a real benefit to Nine’s News, last night Nine’s News was off the radar and it’s 6.30 showing of The Secret Millionaire (honestly, how many timeslots are they going to trial this in?) was a disaster even being beaten by Ten’s also-ran movie.

Better for Nine though was the opening of Flashpoint which held onto half the cricket’s aud – not bad for a show running through to midnight, I didn’t catch it but judging by the previews it looked like ‘Rush: Toronto’ (or perhaps Rush is ‘Flashpoint: Melbourne’) but this initial turnout bodes well for future airings.

Seven suffered the most by Nine’s cricket dominance with the Rich List taking a dive and their movie being beaten into a close fourth place in the slot.

Ten’s decision to air movies was vindicated – although ‘Aquamarine’ was a non-starter it still did better than last week’s reality double, ‘Die Hard with a Vengance’ however did much better for them, it seems in summer when it comes to showing movies, the back catalogue and name recognition is a better guarantee of good ratings

2009 - Week 2 - The Crap

Yep, finally lets look at the rubbish, err, unscripted TV success stories for the past week...

Crime Pays - Thursday 8 January 2009

Even through summer – the audience for crime drama continues to be strong – witness the figures for the Law & Order reruns and Cold Case, hell even SBS’s Carla Cametti PD pulled an impressive (for them) 457,000 viewers.

Nine, however, has made a terrible misstep this summer with their handling of Cold Case, the show won it’s timeslot against Ten in the first few airings – then someone at Nine had the bright idea to use the timeslot to promote The Secret Millionaire, one of their many lukewarm ideas which they’re trying to push in these “troubled times”

I wonder whether it was worth displacing one of the few shows actually firing for them this summer, since it’s return it has struggled against the more regularly scheduled SVU. Last night was the show’s 6th season premiere and yet it only managed 859,000 – pretty woeful for a new ep of an established rater – thing is though – if you keep moving a show all around the map people will give up and watch something else.

Another case in point was Heroes – I didn’t even know it was on last night, it hasn’t been on for weeks and now it comes back to a 9.30 timeslot after months at 10.30, with next to no promotion, and they wonder why they’re in last. No doubt next week I’ll tune in at 9.30 looking for another episode and instead find “Out of the Question” or some other rubbish.

Grrrrrr.

Go with what you know - Tuesday 6 January 2009

Reruns and factuals are the order of the day, Tuesday night once again belonged to NCIS with reruns of the veteran drama pulling the best audience post 7.30. Next Week Ten ditches In Plain Sight (which has shown some growth but not enough) in favour of a second hour of NCIS.

For Seven the start of Tennis cannot come soon enough - Eli Stone has been a flop - perhaps if they played it back when they promoted it last year.

Seven's move of more factuals at 7.30 has turned that hour from Nine dominated into a level pegging contest, that this many people in summer, are interested in this sort of television either says a lot about the tastes of the viewing public - or a lot about the lack of any viewing alternatives.

The Arnie flick Collateral Damage did alright for Nine with their Tuesday movie keeping them in the game, perhaps with the take no prisoners opposition of Packed to the Rafters and NCIS, Nine will stick movies on this night as a defensive position, which is frankly - not a bad way to go.