Do you laugh or cry? Tuesday 3 March 2009

I’m sure Ten’s programmers wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry – laugh because a rerun of a five year old drama takes down All Saints, or cry because their acclaimed local drama Rush couldn’t do the same.

At any rate it’s wonderful that two dramas can bring over 1.2 million each to the screen at 9.30, in fact viewing across the 5 capitals was up week on week with an average of 147,000 additional people tuning in between 7.30 and 10.30.

Seven’s early evening benefited immensely with Seven News recording a whopping 238,000 gain week on week. Nine’s news also gained an extra 134,000 viewers.

Kudos goes to Wipeout which built on its audience by 75,000 viewers and the new ep of Two and a Half Men increased it’s aud by 109,000. Although Ladette to Lady continues to disappoint in total people terms, at least its not going down, and I can’t see it doing much better given that the Tuesday night game is really between Seven and Ten.

Ten News won the battle at 10.30 – in fact the surge for news across the board indicates intense interest in this unexpected attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan.

Opening Night - Sunday 8 February 2009

Last night was the first night the official 2009 Australian Television Ratings season.

The night was thrown into chaos with split scheduling across the board owing to the developing news story of the Victorian Bushfires which so far has become the worst natural disaster in Australian history.

All networks devoted extended coverage to the event in their Melbourne markets as well as additional bulletins at night, pushing existing shows all over the schedule

My chart attempts to make as much sense of all the moves as possible but a clear picture of the night won’t be available until figures adjusted sometime later in the week.

Anyhow here’s how they fared on the first night in

Seven

Seven had a big night – deferring their afternoon programming for news and pushing the debut of newsmagazine Sunday Night back to 7pm in Melbourne didn’t hurt them one iota, the new lineup of Sunday Night/Border Security/Triple Zero Heroes pulled a mammoth audience for it’s first outing – it looks as if Seven has successfully transplanted their Monday shows to Sunday night – but the real test will be up against 60 minutes next week.

Nine

Nine had the cricket all day and reaped a huge rating as a result, but it was their news coverage of the fires which stood out for this viewer, they seemed to have almost every reporter in their employ out at a different location bringing some truly memorable vision of the day.

Ten

Ten had the most uneven day and they were partly to blame. Ten have the unique advantage on big news days of being the first cab off the rank at 5pm, but Saturday, when these fires started (not to mention the hottest day in Melbourne’s history) saw Ten run with a national Sydney based bulletin, giving Sydney stories priority over the unfolding crisis.

Sometimes Ten’s national weekend bulletins are interesting because you get to see a bit of what is going on across the country as compared to the more parochial market leaders – but on days like this a local approach is really needed.

By Sunday Ten had realised their error and had brought in Mal Walden for a special hourlong Sunday bulletin but viewers ignored them in favour of Seven’s early coverage.

This result, and the decision to persist with Out of the Blue saw Ten’s share fall dramatically last night. The Biggest Loser was easily dropped by a news hungry public although they recovered nicely with So You Think You Can Dance – proving the show has a devoted audience – Rove got off to an inauspicious start, I suppose people weren’t much in the mood for snarky fun after all sheer horror – they’ll pick up next week.

Nine puts cart before horse and kills news but wins night - Tuesday 14 January 2009

If there’s one thing that Nine won’t be looking forward to in the 2009 television season, it is Tuesday nights, with Seven’s behometh Packed to the Rafters and channel ten’s one successful show NCIS squeezing them out of this valuable night

Well last night I think they hit on the solution – a weekly Twenty20 cricket match every Tuesday should be enough to see off the competition!

If only Cricket wasn’t a summer sport because last night Nine racked up a 44 share across prime time so far being the only program to take down NCIS this summer with the drama losing 286,000 viewers week on week (although recovering 63,000 of those in it’s second hour.

Strangley Eli Stone actually slightly improved – suggesting that although it has a smaller audience, they are much more loyal.

Whatever Nine is doing right in the cricket – it is struggling in the news department, after a week of good news ratings on the back of a cricket lead in, this week they are under the hammer – with Seven maintaining their share while Nine’s news goes backwards, ACA was beaten by Ten News FFS! Since when has that ever happened!?

2009 - Week 2 - The News

Week two of 2009 has come and gone and thanks mostly to a cricket lead-in, Nine News had a great week, though most of that strength was centred in Melbourne and Sydney with Nine still struggling in the west.

A Current Affair also had a big week thanks to an interview with Magda Szubanski re her new year weight loss resolution.

Here's the breakdown of how the news rated - city by city...

Start spreading the news

Channel Ten’s 6pm Timeslot is about to change again, this time The Simpsons will make way for The Bold and The Beautiful. Daytime’s most popular show is moving to evenings in order benefit from the broader viewing base after 6 and hopefully steal a few followers away from the news on the other commercial nets.

Here’s hoping that it works because in the 17 or so years since Ten moved their evening news to 5pm, nothing has ever taken off in this slot. Ten’s low readings between 6pm and 7pm have kept their audience share subdued for two decades.

Last night we got a small sampling (that pops up now and again) of what would happen if Ten extended their bulletin past 6pm. The Brisbane storms provided an opportunity for the 5pm bulletin to run 90 minutes last night, it produced an inflated result for the net.

You can see here a table showing The Simpsons’s 6pm Audience for Brisbane and on the same night nationally – this was from approximately a week ago with no big news stories on the night. In the Brisbane market The Simpsons got a 17.54% commercial audience share, on the same night nationally they managed 20.47%








Now look at last night – Ten News produced a 26 share – translated nationally that would improve Ten’s performance in the slot by 6% and mean an extra 180k watching the net at 6.









This is by no means a detailed or even competent analysis and there are an endless amount of naysayers who will tell you that messing with the news = ratings death, but I think it’s worth a look – if The Bold and The Beautiful fails to lift ten’s 6pm game – then start spreading the news.

Serious Trouble - Wednesday 5 November 2008

Memo to Nine, movies shown in midweek timeslots have not worked for years, and so it is with their latest Wednesday movie – Talledega Nights. It must be especially frustrating for Nine given that the lead in was the unstoppable Wednesday edition of Two and a Half Men, they must have thought some people would stick around for the comedy movie but clearly only 46% of their 8pm audience were interested in the prospect.

Even more damning is my memo to Ten, documentaries about Animals do not work – at least not on channel ten and here’s why

a) Animal or Nature docos appeal primarily to an older viewing audience
b) At any given time, channel Ten’s share of over 55 years old viewers rarely gets above 11% therefore it’s likely the intended audience would never have seen any promotion for the show.
c) The under 40 audience avoid these shows like the plague (hence the high numbers for two and a half men ever since Jamie Oliver showed up)

Ten is in serious trouble right now – there is no good way to spin it, their most popular program of the night was outside of Prime Time (the 5pm news), Neighbours posted a good result then the whole night fell in a heap, never lifting beyond it's 6.30 "high".

These are some of the worst numbers to come off the people meters for them since the introduction of people meters, ten need to use the summer for a complete reboot otherwise they will quickly see their share decline even further in the new year, just waiting for So You Think you can Dance and The Biggest Loser to pull them out of the hole is not going to be good enough – they need action ASAP.

Late Night wrap

Occasionally we’ll have a look at the post 10.30 timeslots, 400,000 viewers seems to be a decent level for 10.30 but you would think a really good 10.30 show (say Boston Legal, Family Guy, Buffy) could pull 500,000 – 700,000 depending on the night.