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.

Sometimes it's good to move House...

After spending an entire summer scraping the bottom of the ratings barrel, channel Ten suddenly burst back to life with one week to go before ratings season begins, and against some tough competition.

The last Sunday of January has for the past several years featured the same tussle Tennis vs Cricket vs Dance.

As usual Tennis came out on top with a healthy average of 2.4 million viewers, Nine did respectably enough and Ten's big franchises pulled in nice numbers, the real suprise of the night was the 9.15pm showing of House, a show that last year was looking long in the tooth, turns out it was just up against too many other good shows (and newer ones at that, as this blog pointed out some months ago) it pulled a fairly decent 1 million viewers a much more encouraging start than this show has had in some time.

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

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.