No gimmick to speak of

What the hell? How on earth did Farmer Wants a Wife net more viewers for the reunion special than at any point in the entire season?

Is this a case of people saying en masse: "cut to the chase"?

Of course they were helped out no end by the moribund Lie to Me, a featureless crime show with a gimmick, drowning in a sea of crime shows with gimmicks. At this point people have to realise that these shows need engaging or interesting characters to stand out, much like a lot of Ten's procedurals the characters in this just seem to blend into the background, against Criminal Minds, a show whose premise contains no gimmick to speak of, yet their ensemble cast is a group of characters each of whom could carry a show, the difference is there for you to see on the chart.


Over on digital it was great night for Eleven and 7TWO and Decent for 7mate and GO! though how GO's programmers think its sustainable to run so many movie slots is beyond me, its almost programming by panic.

Still when you see the alternative, a steady schedule - as demonstrated by GEM, then maybe panic is the way to go, GEM's post 7.30 lineup across the week has more or less fallen off the map.

Bumper Harvest - Wednesday 1 April 2009

Another instalment in what is becoming a topsy turvey week – this time it was Nine’s turn to shine.

With their second reality series bowing out in as many weeks Farmer Wants a Wife finally got one over Seven’s Talent show and dominated the night, Even the Mentalist did well, maintaining his aud from the previous week despite screening an hour later.

Everything else on Nine’s rivals took a hit with House and Life both down as well as Seven’s entire lineup finding itself in the red.

The only question left to ask is how fast can Nine come up with a new crop of country bachelors?

Ten’s Guerrilla Gardeners continues to limp along, Ten proved this week that they can pull of a good Monday night share, and their Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are in order. Saturdays continue to be an issue north of the Mexican border (err Murray River) and Fridays are passable I suppose but it seems to me that this Gardening show is the only thing standing between Ten and a decent slice of the Wednesday night pie.

Who knows? Perhaps with no farmers to compete against next week may see these trowel wielding activists jump up in the ratings, certainly perseverance is paying off for ten’s other light factual skeins but if Easter rolls by with no improvement, then I’d suggest a quick trip to the compost heap for this show.

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...

Welcome Back - Sunday & Monday 1-2 February 2009

The season has unofficially kicked off giving us a good opportunity to look at the early starters and see where the competition is going this year.

First you get the sport
If there was any doubt then Sunday night’s ratings at least proved Tennis’ ability to draw a huge crowd to the television. At 8.30pm Sunday an average of 4.5 million viewers was watching television in the 5 capitals, a phenomenal result this early in the year.

Cricket too was no slouch, but it’s fortunes seemed to depend on what was on Ten, whereas the Tennis steadily built throughout the night.

Then you get the reality
Ten’s two big reality franchises cranked up again and suddenly viewers discovered channel Ten again!

The Biggest Loser commenced it’s fourth season at 6.30pm Sunday with an hour long introduction to the various couples who will feature in this season, it also ended with the most ludicrous cliffhanger in the show’s 3 year history hanging on the edge of one of host Rochester’s incredibly drawn out sentences

At first glance it looks like a disappointment, the show came third in it’s timeslot, but consider a few caveats

– it was up against two popular sporting events
– it had the Herculean task of lifting from a 266,000 viewer lead-in

Not sure what Ten is going to do about Out of the Blue – it’s like an Albatross, the only reason Ten has bought it is to qualify for points on it’s Australian drama quota (you know – keep the rent seekers happy) but to do this they have to show it in Prime Time, but it is currently Prime Time poison. Not sure how they’re gonna solve this one.

So You Think You Can Dance also started last night for it’s second season premiere and posted a 153,000 viewer improvement on it’s lead in and second in the timeslot.

It took a hit on Monday losing 151,000 viewers night on night, but that may be due to increased competition.

Then you get the women…OK so Desperate Housewives might do alright this year though you’ve gotta hand it to Ten for doing their best to burn up their re-entry. The Devil Wears Prada just earned a spot on Ten’s movie wheel (yes that’s what I’m calling it) with a sound 1.4 million viewers, just shading the housewives and leaving Brothers and Sisters in the dust. Clearly men did not control the remote last night as the only testosterone on the night (T3) sunk without a trace.


Oh and the sitcoms
Last night also saw the launch of one the dumbest competitions ever – sitcom vs sitcom. You know this sort of thing isn’t new but generally the programmers have stuck comedies on different nights, now more than ever when good sitcoms are in short supply different timeslots makes more sense to maximise your ratings and the public thirst for laughs, but instead Seven has decided to pit their summertime star performer (How I met your mother) against it’s US stablemate (Two and a Half Men), the result is there for all to see – they didn’t even beat Big Bang Theory, and that should’ve been a walkover.

Well done Worner – how long before we can expect this good show in an 11.30 slot?

Finally hey – it’s Ten
Yeah uh – people watch channel Ten last night – like The Simpsons and Neighbours all posted increases. The Biggest Loser was down night on night – but still a stratospheric increase over Ten’s 7pm entires for the past 6 months. The result of this was that Ten won Monday with 28.4% share to Seven’s 28%, Nine which relaunched it’s look (it’s currently the nicest looking of all the nets) was in third on 20.7%. Ten also won in 18-49, 16-39 and 25-54 with Seven taking out the over 50’s

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.

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.

Week 2 - Pay TV

Thought I was done with last weeks ratings? Well there was one more lot to wheel out - the Pay TV ratings.

These charts show the top ten by genre in Audience Reach. Audience Reach shows the total number of viewers who catch a particular program during any of it's airings over the course of week - it's useful because most series and movies have multiple screenings over a week, some are rerun at late night or the next day, others are timeshifted on the two hour channel and others still played again days later.

This measure supposedly doesn't double up on viewers so if I watch Family Guy tonight, and again tomorrow, then apparently I'm only counted once, which is good because then we get a picture of total numbers who may watch the program.

One thing you can marvel at from this list is the sheer dominance of 3 channels - FOX8, UKTV and Fox Classics. It's also interesting to see that despite Arena's switch to reality TV, it's biggest rater is one of it's old comedies, Sex and the City whereas another of it's old sitcoms, Friends, is introducing viewers to the new 111 Hits!

2009 - Week 2 - The Crap

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

2009 - Week 2 - The Shows

Here's a breakdown off everything scripted for the 6th week of summer, as usual NCIS and a handful of sitcoms are dominant across the cities

Return of the Rant

Television Rant will be cranking up again from Monday Jan 5 with fresh new ratings analysis as my holidays finish and TV starts to get interesting again.

In the meantime feel free to amuse yourself over at my other blog List 22 where I forensically examine 22 of 2008's worst TV disasters.

See you all on Monday!

Brand Power - Wednesday 17 December 2008

A bit of a weird night caused by a test cricket match in Perth which has skewed channel nine’s lineup and it’s figures as a consequence. It would be encouraging to believe that CSI, ER and Gossip Girl all lifted by 109,000 89,000 and 71,000 respectively – and hey it could’ve happened – but we won’t know until they release the adjusted figures next week.

Notwithstanding the performance of it evening lineup Nine’s cricket coverage had the bizarre side-effect of driving regular ACA viewers to Today Tonight – making it the night’s top show!

Clearly all those years of consumer advocacy has taught the viewers to recognise when one brand offers essentially the same features as another and so people had no trouble switching brands for the night. Nine would want to hope it doesn't become a more permanent switch.

That and the performance of How I Met Your Mother was the end of the good news for seven – the rest of their lineup suffering badly at the hands of the cricket – as did ABC whose older male skew doesn’t help on night’s like last night!

Ten was about the same week on week although that’s not saying much.

Sudden Drop - Tuesday 16 December 2008

There was a massive week on week drop in viewership last night.

Nine’s reality double looked hot last week but lost some of it’s sheen last night thanks to reduced overall numbers with about 160,000 less viewers tuning in across the hour.

Everything on Nine dropped week on week by around 100,000 viewers, ABC experienced a slight drop across the night while for seven Eli Stone and Ghost Whisperer both dropped while their 7.30 and 10.30 hours improved.

Seven’s decision to limit Ugly Betty to one night a week in favour of yet more animal flavoured reality has paid a dividend with Wild Vets and Coastwatch both lifting their audience by an average of 70,000 viewers in the slot.

Prison Break improved week on week by 30,000 viewers.

Ten showed slight a slight loss for The Simpsons (down 13,000 viewers) but a slight life for Rules (up 29,000 viewers. Last week Rules’ retention was 83%, last night it was up to 88% which is a good sign.

NCIS improved week on week by 7,000 viewers and In Plain Sight now coming in at a more manageable hour length was up 117,000 viewers retention improved from 51% to 60% an improvement but it will need to improve more over the coming weeks to secure a berth in this slot.

Blame Big Brother - Monday 15 December 2008

You know sometimes networks make weird decisions, the last few weeks channel ten has been in a state of panic worse than a Wall Street broker with all his money tied up with Lehman Bros.

Whatever they try on Mondays it isn’t working.

In the 90s US network CBS had a great slogan “If its Mondays – It must be CBS” well it certainly isn’t Ten. Big Brother has effectively their Monday Nights in 2008.

If we look at the early part of the year Ten were riding high on Mondays with So You Think You Can Dance and Good News Week, this pair of shows were posting healthy figures throughout.

When Dance came to an end in stepped 7 year veteran Big Brother. Big Brother has always been a force on Mondays – the show killed Nine’s Monday comedy hour after Friends departed with the pithy and often exciting Nomination shows both entertaining fans and frustrating others with their constant overruns screwing with their TV viewing.

In 2008 Ten changed the game and came unstuck. In an effort to revamp BB they ditched the traditional Nomination-Elimination structure of the show – for this season viewers would ring to protect their favourites and the three with the lowest votes were up for eviction with the housemates having the final say.

On paper it looks like a refreshing change to the old formula which often proved frustrating for followers of the show when nomination was in the hands of the housemates.

But in practice it removed that vital Monday Nominations a great opportunity to get into the housemates heads and see how they tick, there was also some real suspense involved to see who would be up that week and the previous night’s evictee was invited along for special comments.

In 2008 this was dropped and instead the Daily Show at 7pm was extended to an hour with a new import ‘How to look good naked’ filling out the hour.

It was a ratings disaster and the absence of Nominations was, I believe, one of the factors behind Big Brother’s rapid decline in 2008.

While BB and Carson Kressley were driving viewers away from the resilient Good News Week, the 9.30 show, Big Brother Big Mouth with proven showkiller Tony Squires gave whoever was left at that time a good excuse to try another network.

Thanks to this awful show a lot of people developed new TV habits on a Monday night. One of those habits was Bones over on Seven which was last night the top prime time show!

With Big Brother out of the way Idol came back and after a brief surge of interest for the auditions wrestled with a new hourlong verdict show that dragged on and on bleeding viewers along the way, Good News Week did well enough to keep it’s head above water at 8.30 especially in the face of competing real news over on the ABC with a resurgent 4 Corners.

At 9.30 Ten started playing dangerous games with a low-rated (US Cable) actioner with a very vocal fan base – Burn Notice couldn’t resuscitate Ten’s woeful 9.30 hour, nor could Supernatural a onetime megahit for ten scrounging for 1/3 of its original fanbase despite being fast tracked.

The year ended with Ten trialling the spin-off of 90210 (CW) first at 8.30 then eventually at 7.30. When an 8.30 debuts with less than 700,000 viewers you know the jig is up, Ten had managed to destroy Monday nights.

Now it’s summer and already there’s been 2 schedule changes (one that never made it to air!), first was pulling the planned screening of failed US drama Swingtown replacing it with another failed US drama The Ex List – after two weeks at 9.30 The Ex List was pulled new drama Army Wives moved to it’s slot and a second hour of Law & Order CI added, all the while ignoring the elephant in the room…

Carson Kressley is watchable and after the success of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (well for about a year anyway) Ten could certainly expect a turnout for his new show. Indeed in it’s debut the show did fire pulling 1,227,000 viewers but the numbers quickly fell away after the initial look.

Ten left their line up in place for two weeks, in week one it was clear that the Naked show was struggling against formidable competition at 7.30 but Army Wives lifted at 8.30

The Second week was worse – although Naked grew, Wives dropped from it’s lead in, a disastrous result, although it was the final night for The Howard Years which was significant summer competition. The Ex list fell into no-mans land under 500k – once that happens the plug is pulled.

Which leaves us with last night – Law & Order was brought in to shore up 8.30 – it didn’t do much of a job, perhaps the promotion was insufficient, perhaps people feel they’ve had enough law and enough order without adding a third night, perhaps it’s the third cop show in the timeslot creating a drain on the audience. Whatever the case it didn’t help much and Army Wives moving to 9.30 was a failure itself falling into the under 500k dead zone – will we see it next week?

My advice to Ten, Give Carson the flick and put a nice long movie on, or show a test pattern – can’t do much worse!

Rubbish to the Rescue - Sunday 14 December 2008

If I heard the TV announcer declare that coming up was a romantic comedy starring Greg Kinnear and Ashley Judd I would reach for both the remote and a bucket and use whichever I could grab first, clearly last night a lot more people were closer to a bucket than their remote controls which explains why ‘Someone Like You’ gave the much more entertaining Die Hard 2 a run for it’s money.

Of course there is no explanation as to what possessed Nine to screen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2, the original fine (and it will be played at some stage you can guarantee it) but this offcut of a sequel starring Randy Quaid??

Quaid is at times brilliant, but he’s best in small doses, as a supporting player he can steal the show but if he is ever the star of anything, then run for the hills.

Bizarrely Nine chose this for it’s lead over the much funnier ‘Friday After Next’, which itself is not as funny as the original ‘Friday’ which is my all time fave movie bout the ‘hood!

Note to Nine re Battlefronts – its not them, its you. Please forward the same note to Ten re Top Model. Both 6.30 shows cost their 7.30 followers big time, in the order of roughly 100-200,000 viewers week on week.

Viewers still can’t get enough of this fly on the wall BS and so Seven raked in the rewards at 6.30 and 7pm and tool the 7.30 hour just for good measure.

I don’t even think Battlefronts itself is the problem – I just think viewers are savvy enough to spot a dead duck when they see it – here’s a show that’s on for four weeks before being mysteriously yanked and suddenly resurfaces in summer. They average Joe may not read MediaSpy or TV Tonight but they’re smart enough to recognise a turd when it float to the surface, why bother to be interested in a show that’s likely to be gone in a few weeks, sorry Nine this goose is cooked.

As for Top Model – here’s what I like to call the import paradox and you read it here first…

Rule 1. In the United States as broadcast networks rapidly lose audience share to cable, more and more high quality series are being made for cable networks.

Rule 2. Nothing originating from any US cable outlet will ever achieve widespread mainstream success in Australia.

Rule 3. In reference to the above rules, please note that the CW enjoys an audience share comparable to a US cable network.

So there you go, Next Top Model is a dead horse, ten need to stop beating it. The last CW (or UPN, WB) series to achieve any success here was Supernatural which has been diminishing in viewers for several years now, I can’t think of any cable series that has achieved success with Australian auds except for the brief fling with Californication, once on 9.30 Mondays with 1 million viewers now languishing on late night Sundays with only 332,000

The list of US Cable dramatic series which have been successful in their homeland reads like a who’s who of Australian failures:
The Shield (FX): very quickly banished to 10.30 Saturdays
Nip/Tuck (FX): Brief success and summer series but eventually yanked, now Foxtel has first dibs
Battlestar Galactica (SciFi): a spark of hope with the mini-series but the regular season quickly flamed out on Wednesdays, second season didn’t even bow on the network
The 4400 (USA): First Season of 5 episode condensed over two nights and sold to Aussie viewers as a Mini Series had the goods, the second season was a complete bust.
Monk (USA): They have tried this again and again to no avail.
Burn Notice (USA): Vocal fans have kept this on the air and no doubt there’ll be another tryout in 2009 – it’s a good show but the general public don’t seem interested.
Psych (USA): Very quickly retired to TenHD.
The Larry Sanders Show (HBO): Remember the hype surrounding this in 1995, every TV journalist and their dog was salivating over this series complete with all the swearing coming to prime time, it had a very short prime time run
Dream On (Showtime): From the people who would go on to create Friends, this was one of the few US sitcoms with frequent nudity – Ten chose to screen the sanitized version – ‘nuff said!

And the mini-networks…
Star Trek Voyager (UPN): By today’s standards would be a massive hit – but Nine very quickly booted it to 11pm – except in Perth where it fared well against the competition and remained in prime time for a while longer.
The Sentinel (UPN): instant 10.30 status for this UPN action hour
Girlfriends (UPN): Was an early morning mainstay for Nine several years back
Reba (The WB): Foxtel absolutely loved this sitcom which was shunted to daytime on Seven
Grounded for Life (The WB): Ditto
Everybody Hates Chris (UPN/CW): Let me just say Everybody hates David Mott because this could still work dammit!
Felicity (The WB): One good summer does not a series make…
Smallville (The WB): Ten put in a superhuman effort to resurrect the man of steel from Nine’s scrap heap and they even got him to 1 million viewers – then did what every dumb network would do and switch timeslots midseason rendering the whole exercise pointless, first run right now sit with Fox8.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB): They barely tried, slotting it on Fridays before retreating to 10.30 – after a while it became the hottest show out of prime time.
90210 (CW): This year’s saddest case a show which had everything going for it except it’s US network which ensured it wouldn’t be watched on these shores.
Reaper (CW): See above although even worse because seven have promoted this show and simply not bothered to make good on their promotion – it still sits on the shelf gathering dust.
Gary & Mike (UPN): this claymation series was the original ‘Reaper’, heavily promoted by ten in 1999 only to never surface.
Do Over (UPN): As I recall this time travelling sitcom did alright in Australia but was done in by US audiences.

It could be worse - Satuday 13 December 2008

How many times has The Santa Clause been rerun now? I’ve lost count – it used to be every Christmas Seven would haul out that extra-long Dudley Moore movie where he plays an elf, well now Tim Allen is their go-to guy with this movie continuing to rake in the punters time after time.

Given the Seven has a deal with Disney I expect them to have the most clout over the holiday season.

With The Bill keeping all the elderly glued to ABC1, it’s like no-one else showed up to the party.

McLeod’s Daughters is having a horror run on it’s way out the door. This brings up the question, why on earth did Nine loudly announce in 2007 that the 2008 season would be McLeod’s last? I can see announcing that sort of thing mid-way through a season, but before the next one – it’s just madness – what they’ve done is given hordes of the show’s fans an excuse to kick the habit and they kicked the remaining fans in the teeth by their inane scheduling, kudos Nine for fucking up what was once an excellent performer.

Of course it could be worse, just look at Canal Road…

The Kids are Alright - Friday 12 December 2008

Credit where credit is due, Seven knows how to program effectively. Holding off the premiere of Madagascar until summer might seem bizarre, but it was perfectly timed to take advantage of the sequel’s theatre release. Clearly big family movies are an important draw on Friday nights as has been proven in recent weeks with the Harry Potter series and Ten’s Nanny McPhee.

If this proves anything it’s that now more than ever you have to program to the audience available. Using Fridays to burn off adult films is no longer a good option. During the year the older audience has been split up all over the place with only the ABC (by virtue of having regular series after 8.30) commanding a consistent audience on the night.

To Ten’s credit they have decided to hedge their bets, Family hour for kids, post 8.30 with Crime Dramas. It will take some time for the young skewing ten to attract some older viewers on this night but it’s a worthy experiment and we’ll keep checking back here to see how it goes.

Better for Ten was the performance of The Simpsons which is pulling a better number in that slot than anything since the demise of Friday Night Games. Perhaps Ten should give this hour over to it's animated comedies and not bother experimenting with niche cable formats in the future.

Nine was the flunky of the night with appalling turn-out for Australian Geographic, you know it’s bad when you could be beaten by Ice Road Truckers. One wonder whether it will be in the schedule next week. Their choice of Movie, The Last Samurai, was unsuited to Friday night – back to the drawing board guys.

Law & Order: Interchange Bench - Thursday 11 December 2008

A very good Thursday for all networks with the numbers very even across primetime. After 7.30 Nine seemed to fare the best with older skewing original programming.

Cold Case continues to be the most popular series on Thursday nights. Having said that it’s also the series that lost the most viewers week on week with 100,000 deserters, The Closer had 60,000 folks bail. This kind of precipitation can be expected in December, but the other network’s shows stayed pretty even week on week.

Now onto one of the more baffling network moves, what is channel Ten doing? They got scared that CI took a beating from Cold Case so they did they swap-a-roo with SVU.

Last week Criminal Intent at 8.30 got 742,000 viewers, this week SVU at 9.30 got 745,000 viewers – a 3K gain.

Last week SVU at 9.30 got 829,000 viewers versus CI this week getting 821,000 so they lost 8K, that’s a net loss week on week of 5,000 viewers for their trouble.

Law & Order is so interchangeable it doesn’t seem to matter to viewers which show is where – they’ll tune in if nothing better is on, hence why the 9.30 hour with less competition (Reality and a US Cable Drama) is stronger than an 8.30 hour against two first run US Dramas.

Let’s get specific – Wednesday 10 December 2008

At this time of year the viewing figures are so low it’s difficult to read anything into the numbers, however Nine would be encouraged to stick with CSI Miami in this slot next year.

The reason it’s rating so well at the moment probably has a great deal to do with the amount of moving it’s done in the past two years. In 2007 and 2008 this show was all over the map, even having split broadcasts with Melbourne viewers getting the show in lieu of the banned Underbelly.

It was a solid performer in Melbourne at that time as well it should be noted, although it was being beaten by House which is now floundering even with less competition.

It’s a good bet that Ten will stick Rush at 8.30 Wednesdays at some point in the new year, whatever ratings it’s garnering in it’s quick turnaround are obviously too embarrassing or depressing for anyone to put in print at the moment, so it’s likely that unless Ten can find a way to sell the show to a bigger audience then it’s natural level would be approx 800,000 - 1 million folks.

How I Met Your Mother is starting to become the dominant commercial player at 7pm which some people will put down to the better lead in but I give viewers more credit than that – last night while watching Heroes I spied two separate promos for How I Met Your Mother, neither of them was generic, they were in fact episode based.

Seven is spending money and time putting together promos for a strip sitcom, something ten should seriously consider, all ten has to do is pick a 10 second moment out of that night’s episode of Friends and pump it at daytime and late night and viewers will eventually be drawn to the show – just showing the same generic promo over and over is useless – you may as well just go back to voice-overs over the end credits if you think it makes any difference.

Generic promos just let people know that shows are on, they are solely for the benefit of folks who would watch the show anyway – they do nothing whatsoever to attract new viewers to a show – that’s when episode-specific promos are needed.

Right now Seven is doing a better job of this than anyone, when you’re number 3, teetering on the edge of number 4 you should look at your market leaders and learn from their success.