The Ex-Network - Monday 8 December 2008

As was the case with Last Monday – the ABC dominated by showing something people actually wanted to see – with the final part of The Howard Years and the final episode of Enough Rope winning their timeslots.

Bones pulled a more than respectable number for channel seven as did the Rich List. Surely the Rich List has now earned a 3rd season in 2009.

Ten seems to be in worse shape this Monday than last with it’s entire prime time line-up well an truly in the tank, last week’s semi-bright spot Army Wives lost whatever good will it had established whilst the defunct Ex-List sunk into 90210 territory , I’d be surprised if it is still around next week.

Nine’s line up was depressed, but with next week seeing a whole new post 8.30 schedule for ABC, they should regain some older viewers from the pubcaster.

90210 No – Monday 24 October 2008

Ouch!

I can’t even look – I’m just going focus on the other channels for the moment.

Nine, Seven and ABC all enjoyed a close tussle for control of the Night.

Nine kept their Monday buzz going with a retrospective on the old 90’s show Weddings, that show was quite popular in it’s hey day being one of the original fly on the wall series attempted in this country.

A rerun of CSI gained week-on-week beating City Homicide into second place with The Howard Years Part II a close third, Cold Case also showed a slight gain week on week but was still in fourth place with Enough Rope taking the slot for the ABC.

The Good News Week Awards did OK, no scratch that – in light of it’s lead in it did magnificently with over 200% retention!

The big stories of the night though were at 7.30. SBS which rides on 5-6% audience share, wheeled out a new season of the UK Top Gear (after several weeks of middling performance of the Australian version) and saw their numbers lift spectacularly – It’s easy to think that people just ignore channel 28, up there on the lonely UHF dial while everybody else parties on VHF, but when SBS get a hit going the people come running.

The Rich List saw a 200,000 viewer lift in their fortunes week on week, at first you think – good for them they’re picking up, but I submit to you a theory – if there’s nothing on that viewers want to watch then mediocrity wins out.

These were the Audience Shares for FTA in the 7.30 hour (by my reckoning)
9 25.74%
7 25.07%
SBS 22.11%
ABC 18.63%
TEN 8.45%

8 percent, 8… That is horrific. As Ten’s 7pm timeslot has lurched from disaster to even bigger disaster their 7.30 timeslots have taken a beating but this is the absolute worst 7.30 beating they have ever sustained.

Ten has shown some faith in the new 90210 by reintroducing it for summertime but where are the viewers? 7.30 is arguably a better timeslot for a teen drama than 8.30 but they just didn’t show up.

I’m not sure why – the new show is well made, it’s not embarrassing to watch, it contains a lot of continuity for fans of the original and it cracks along at a breakneck pace, so why aren’t people watching it.

Here’s my (crackpot) theory…

There’s no buzz, or rather, all the buzz is centred on what old 90210 star will next appear, does anyone know who the stars of this new series are? Let me put it another way…

Back in 1992/93 did anyone NOT know who Luke Perry and Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty were? They were megastars at the time, helped a long in large part by the behind the scenes feuding, but Ten rode out a year of poor ratings (1991) with the show on Friday nights before it caught on with kids here and (more importantly) in the US.

The next big Teen thing was Party of Five – Ten waited two years to bring it out – by the time they did Scott Wolf (remember him?) and Neve Campbell were on magazine covers everywhere.

Back in 1997 the WB Launched Dawson’s Creek – ten waited until 99 to introduce it here by which time Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes were fully on our radar even though we’d never seen them in anything.

In effect Fast Tracking (in the initial years) may be a teen show’s worst enemy. There’s no hard and fast rules of course some teen shows never take off or generate any buzz (One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl) my point is that although I don’t think it will go this low again (it’s moving to Sunday nights with a better lead in than Will and Grace and less competition) Ten is going to have their work cut out for them getting it to catch on with audiences.

The only thing that can help this show in the short term is for Rob Estes to take his young co-stars down to the Viper Room for a night out (with Paparazzi in tow) – or perhaps Lori Loughlin could introduce the kids to drunk uncle Jesse!

Brisbane boosts the numbers - Monday 17 November 2008

An interesting night of TV last night with Nine getting Blitzed, Ten getting better and seven getting slightly richer. Overall viewing numbers were up last night across the board. Including SBS there were 5.1 million people watching Free to Air TV at 7.30 last night – out of a population base of 13 million (for the 5 metro cities) that’s pretty good.

ABC has been pulling respectable numbers all year for Four Corners which ended it’s season last week to make way for the four part doco – The Howard Years (one part for each term in office I believe) it was definitely interesting, especially whenever Peter Costello had something to say and I’ll definitely be either tuning in or recording the last 3 instalments.

Andrew Denton, who needs no assistance with his ratings was actually down by 200,000 on the previous week, but his show really rises and falls on the guests he has on.

Looking at the other networks – Seven had a massive start to the night with Seven News, no doubt boosted somewhat by the storms in Brisbane – both Seven and Nine News had inflated figures in Brisbane as locals tuned into the coverage with Seven Brisbane netting 400,000 (Up 110,000 or 37.9% week on week) and Nine Brisbane welcoming 322,000 (Up 110,000 or 29.3% week on week) this also proves that after years of being the last state well an truly welded to Nine’s 6pm bulletin, Brisbane has indeed made the switch.

The Rich List improved by 90,000 week on week, which is good, no doubt helped along the increased numbers watching FTA. Given how inexpensive the format is no doubt some Seven execs are hoping that it maintains a decent performance throughout November.

City Homicide tied (that’s right tied) with the Howard Years which is good for a rerun. Nine were also in a rebroadcasting mood with the 8.30 CSI a repeat, no doubt a defensive move in light of the ABC’s play into the slot for the next several weeks.

Another episode of Domestic Blitz (is this the regular timeslot now?) went very well for Nine, next year I can see a game of quick draw between Nine and Seven to see who can get their franchise into the slot with fresh eps first, Blitz or Border Security.

Over on Ten it was the first outing for Out of the Blue, while the turnout was substantially down on Ten News (Ten News typically pulls over 450,000 in this timeslot, more during winter) I would have expected that – the key is – does it build (meaning will audiences follow it and will it be worth retooling for early evenings) or will people desert it? Stay tuned for that one.

Still on Ten, something unexpected happened last night, blame the wild Brisbane weather – but they did it – they got their four shows over 1 million! That means this week they could potentially have 6 shows over 1 mill by the end of the week. It probably won’t do much for their overall shares but total audience counts as well, especially when it comes to promoting future shows.