The week that was

Lets have a look shall we...

Sunday, 22 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Ahh the eternal struggle between Masterchef and Dancing continues, with Dancing succeeding by sheer weight, being over twice as long as its cooking competitor.

Monday, 23 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Come Fly with Me drops week on week but Big Bang Theory actually rises! Go figure. Meanwhile The Amazing Race loses 100,000 viewers week on week while Ten's shows hold steady, though House suffers by having a month off the sked and probably not being compatible with Offspring.


Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

Tuesday night is almost identical to the previous Tuesday with Nine continuing to bring up the rear with the dreary Customs/AFP double. Also Sea Patrol at this point is merely making up the numbers for Nine's drama quota, stick a fork in it.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule

State of Origin (in 3 markets anyway - but that's all they need!) Normally on a Wednesday Nine is coming a distant third to the other two nets, who incidentally managed to continue their fight despite State of Origin. Indeed the Origin match seems to have brought in a lot of one-time lapsed free to air viewers.

In Sydney alone Origin netted in excess of One Million viewers - Sydney never produces that kind of number any more having the most fragmented audience and the biggest Foxtel take up in the country.

Thursday, 26 May 2011
Australian Television Prime Time Schedule


Thursday belonged to channel ten with one of Oprah Winfrey's final shows giving them the edge at 8.30.

Ten often puts Oprah into Primetime as filler but this year has seen some of the more successful entries with Oprah's Australian specials pulling a healthy aud. Before that you'd have to venture all the way back to 1993 and Oprah's interview with Michael Jackson to find a primetime Oprah special that rated so well.

For the record Oprah's Final show on the Friday night netted 743,000 but came second to Nine's cross-city combo of NRL and the Mentalist (893,000)

Also Between the Lines (which actually Eddie's third vehicle this year - This is your Life being the show I'd completely forgotten about!) has been axed after consistently being outrated by its leadout - which suggests that viewers are avoiding it on purpose!

Come Fly With Me (not you Newcastle!)

Monday, 16 May 2011
Australian Television Ratings Report

Monday was an interesting night with each net throwing a new show onto the pit of despair that is Free to Air television, with interesting results.

Seven is the network that is (and has been for the past 5 years) most likely to succeed and so they finally did something that I never thought they had the balls to do - a local version of The Amazing Race.

I guess the US version's ratings had gotten to a state where Seven felt comfortable shuffling it off to their HD channel, Where it has done well for itself but not in a Neighbours sense. (which is the current yardstick for analogue to digital transplants.)

An Audience of 1,258,000 (5th) 756,000 18-49 (3rd) is a good result for a first outing and like a lot of reality shows, I'd expect the aud for this to build over time.

Ten is the bottom of the heap network trying every damn trick in the book to claw its way up. It knows big event TV but drama has never been its strong suit. The season premiere of Offspring, a show about, who knows - some sort of Ally MacBeal wannabee (its not really aimed at me as an owner of a penis!). 927,000 (12th) and 588,000 18-49 (5th) is respectable but they'd be hoping for that to improve given the massive lead in

Meanwhile Channel Nine has done something quite remarkable. This is the former champion network in many ways a shell of its former self, so how they managed to debut a new show (a half hour mockumentary british sitcom at that) with a peak of 1.7 million is beyond me, but well done.

While I'm on the topic, Come Fly With Me (the show in question, basically a wholesale parody of those awful Airline reality docos) was subjected to the most baffling case of corporate idiocy that I've seen in years.

Essentially NBN (Nine's Newcastle-Northern NSW affiliate) chose not to take the show because of its 8pm timeslot, the reason? Well the previous show from these creators, Little Britain, was rated MA and considered vulgar (or something like that) and NBN was determined to prove that their viewers are hicks and couldn't handle such ribald humour in an earlier timeslot.

Notwithstanding that this is an affiliate that happily took episodes of Two and a Half Men at 7pm every night for umpteen years without controversy, the decision was baffling because, NBN is actually OWNED BY THE NINE NETWORK! It's an O&O basically and has been since SP Media sold it to Nine after the ownership rules changed a few years ago - so what's the deal with that?

Anyway - even they won't be able to ignore ratings of 1.4 million, so Newcastle viewers should expect to see it on next week without explaination!

MONDAY'S NETWORK SKED

MONDAY'S DIGITAL SKED