Big Bang and the Big Hitters

Sunday, 27 February 2011

The 7.30 hour on Sunday nights is turning into one of the most competitive of the week, the week 60 minutes was the timeslot winner and Bondi Rescue posted its best audience of the year so far (for a well promoted episode I'll note).



Last Week Modern Family was the victor at 7.30 whereas the week before it was The Force. Every one of the shows at 7.30 is attracting a healthy audience. If only the same could be said about 8.30.

A few weeks ago you could point to Seven's Bones and see how they're dominating the timeslot - then ABC had to wheel out that old bitty Miss Marple, I'm guessing it's not the same Miss Marple I remember seeing as a kid (yes it's been going that long) but 1 million viewers is a very good audience for the ABC and proof that while every other demographic in TV is eroding the old folks are sticking to their free to air TV.

Maybe it's time to address television's cult of youth where every show is tailored to 25-54 or 18-49, then again, this same Audience targeting allows us to have multichannels these days.

On the multichannel front the main news was Ten bumped Smallville to a 10.30 slot replacing it with a movie which did way better and liften Ten's share. NZ Next Top Model is still struggling - but so does everything against Big Bang and the big hitters on the main channels at 7.30

Five-O gets Boned, LA quakes

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Well the 3 commercial majors had a decent night on Sunday with the best performers being the returning duo of Border Security & The Force which have stepped back to anchor a strong Sunday lineup for Seven.



Nine's Cricket kept them in the game for the night with 1.2 million viewers while the presence of Bones seemed to chip away at the audience for Hawaii Five-O which dropped 251,000 viewers week on week.

NCIS: LA meanwhile dropped 166K week on week to a much more precarious figure of just over half a million, about half of that audience were in the crucial 18-49 demographic which, whilst good, points to a show with an older audience and a declining one at that. I wonder whether Ten might move the show back behind NCIS Original in order to shore up its audience.

On Digital TV the big kahuna was again The Big Bang Theory, it was also the top demographic draw on digital with 201K 18-49 viewers. While the top rating movie (yes there are still Sundays movies if you have a HDTV! was "Dodgeball"

Sunday Rant

That's right the RANT is back - let's jump into it!

Sunday 15th November 2009
Sunday night was good for Seven and bad, bad, bad for everyone else.


At 6.30 Ten’s Electric Dreams almost got done by Wipeout on the increasingly strong GO! While even the combined auds of 20 to 1 and Wipeout couldn’t match the might of Sunday Night with almost 1.3 million tuning in!


The Magic continued for Seven at 7.30 with Border Security and The Force proving that there were still people using their televisions in November, while 60 minutes really struggled, despite having a well balanced show. Australian Idol continues to be a disappointment, no amount of promotion seems to be able to interest viewers in this clapped out old format, yet still they talk about renewing it for 2010.


Bones was the only game in town at 8.30, Nine fell right off the map with some unknown telemovie, get used to it because this is the season when Nine starts trotting out bad first run Australian movies to shore up their drama quota (there’ll a forthcoming rant about that!) for the year – you’d think with Underbelly, Sea Patrol and Rescue Special Ops they wouldn’t have to do too much this year but we’ll see…


At 9.30 Castle almost broached the million mark, if only it could hold its ground in the US market! The final Rove managed only 760,000 viewers, imagine what they could’ve pulled had they promoted the move beforehand.

Big Week

Sunday 26 April 2009
Every April for the past several years Ten has a really big week, and this is the one, that’s when the finale of the Biggest Loser meets the premiere of Big Brother.

This year of course the scenario is a little different, Big Brother is no more, the show a victim of a myriad of bad decisions in the final season coupled with the standard viewer decline.

The Biggest Loser has surged in recent weeks and pulled in a very good result up 293,000 viewers week on week and 313,000 ahead of its nearest competition.

So You Think You Can Dance, by contrast, has limped along at times this year and although week on week it improved 281,000 viewers it struggled to hold sway against 60 Minutes and Seven’s The Force which has slotted into Sunday nights nicely.

Last Year the finale of Dance scored 1.8 million viewers, this year there were 416,000 less watching with an almost uniform decline in every capital.

What the show seemed to lack this season was buzz, if anything Biggest Loser had more press going in thanks to the behind the scenes antics of Ajay Rochester and Shannan Ponton whereas the dancing comp has been buzz-free since its return.

I’m not sure how ten can liven things up next year – some are suggesting a later start to the season, others are suggesting a new night.

Season three seems to be the point where ten starts mucking around with the format of these shows, for Big Brother season 3 saw the two-houses gimmick, Idol had change thrust upon it thanks to a Dicko defection, so the precedent is there, but also in both those cases a change in the format was followed by an audience decline.

A quick note that The Evidence seems to be doing well for Nine in the 10.30 hour and Bones actually beat CSI last night!! Perhaps people really were tuning in to see Grissom!

Remember to watch this space tomorrow, it’s gonna be a big night, the premiere of Masterchef, the finale of The Biggest Loser – up against, of all things, Underbelly, also the premiere of Eleventh Hour and Four Corners has a special on the recent Vic Bushfires which should see a good result for them.

No News is Good News for Good News Week – Monday 20 October 2008

Monday nights are developing a familiar pattern to them, 7 comes first, 9 comes second and Ten comes third in every single timeslot!

Ratings for all Seven’s shows went up with the biggest increase going to The Force which added more than 200,000 viewers week on week and became the night’s top rating show.

The ABC’s ratings powerhouses were down on last week, I have anecdotally noticed that the ABC does well on a Monday when either Four Corners takes on something topical or Andrew Denton has a very high profile guest, last week both shows were in effect with Denton interviewing Kevin Bloody Wilson and Pakistani Cricketer turned politician Imran Khan and Four Corners showed a special report on the financial crisis.

This week Denton’s guests were considerably lower profile and Four Corners tackled the much drier subject of the Murray-Darling river system (pun intended)

This was good news for Good News Week which also received a 200,000 viewer increase and stunningly unlike the week before where it lost 27,000 Idol viewers this week they built on Idol’s aud by a healthy 67,000 people!

Good News Week’s improvement also helped lead out Supernatural improve 59,000 viewers week on week, interestingly both Bones and Cold Case improved by similar amounts.

Finally Nine appears to be incrementally wearing down it’s audience with it’s drip feeding of Til Death, this week recording an additional 29,000 viewers. The initial episodes of this sitcom aired in Summer 06/07 were woeful to say the least but (IMO) the series has seemed to find it’s feet from this second season and if Nine persists they’ll have another keeper on their schedule.