The Hypnotist

As much as Sunday night heralded the start of a tough new season, Monday seemed to pass by with networks asleep at the wheel! The Zoo get's 1.5million viewers!? The Zoo - now I didn't watch it but with a title like "Miracle at the Zoo" I'm betting they're talking about the Elephant recently born at Sydney's Taronga Zoo which vets beleived would be stillborn. Certainly there'd be some interest in that - but 1.5 million people! Wow, why bother spending money on a script or actors at all when you just poke around a zoo with a camera!

Meanwhile in other depressing trends the top show at 8.30 was a rerun of The Mentalist! A Rerun! Kudos to Nine for hitting on their own flavour of crack (not unlike the kind peddled by NCIS over at Ten) where people will suck up reruns on multiple nights and love every minute of it. I've not watched enough of this show to ascertain but perhaps in addition to a Mentalist Simon Baker is also some kind of hypnotist.

Granted if an ep of Star Trek the Next Generation comes on, I'd watch it even if I've seen it a hundred times, but that's a personal thing on a cult show - is the Mentalist like that for some people? Is it that good?

While Star Trek may not get the kind of ratings I think it deserves, at least there's still an audience out there for science fiction as evidenced by the timeslot win for CSI Miami

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Memories of Pete and Tina

Tuesday 12 May 2009
Just look away now! Those numbers are horrible!

No not the federal budget! I’m talking about the paltry 889,000 who turned out for the second episode of HomeMADE.

This is no cheap and cheerful show , described as “The Block on steroids” it’s a home renovation competition where designers compete in teams making over neighbouring houses each week. Apparently the competition runs for 8 weeks, so we’ve just had week one.

Now I’m not keen to diss on a show that gets over a million viewers, as this program did on Sunday night, but last night 131,000 people abandoned the show for the alternatives on other networks, a sad, sad result more reminiscent of the HotHouse than the Block.

Elsewhere Talkin ‘bout Your Generation proved it wasn’t a fluke only down 48,000 week on week, by contrast Seven’s The Zoo was down 154,000 on last week’s Lion special.

The ABC had a decent hour at 7.30 with the Federal Budget Speech and the Kerry O’Brien afterparty pulling a decent crowd, although both were (puzzlingly) outgunned by the preceding news bulletin, I guess once you’ve the gist of what’s going on you don’t need to listen to a politician talking out his arse for 30 minutes with the constant chant of “hear, hear” in the background!

The Pod People – Tuesday 21 October 2008

Channel Seven is viewed by Pod People, this week they switched out RSPCA animal rescue and subbed it with The Zoo (yet another fly on the wall thriller) and they didn’t even skip a beat – in fact they added viewers up 109,000 on it’s predecessor. The hegemony of these early evening doco-soaps suggests to me that whatever subject Seven’s cameras follow – people will watch

Coming soon we could expect concepts like “The Brothel”, “Centrelink: Australia’s Dole Queue” and “Pizza Delivery” it doesn’t matter how pointless, objectionable or irrelevant they are - they will rate their socks off – just make sure that they’re on Seven, because Nine and Ten’s attempts to inject a bit of light entertainment into Tuesday nights are failing dismally.

The Chopping Block lost 54,000 people week on week, but Kenny the Toilet Man fell down the crapper with a painful 117,000 viewers disappearing down the S-bend!

Speaking of painful, The Simpsons is agonisingly close to the Million Mark with only one thousand viewers shy of the big number.

Everything performed much the same as last week, Rush added a further 42,000 week on week while NCIS lost 97,000 viewers. It’s still doing well though which means it’s unsurprising that Ten has enlisted a second hour of the show to shore up Sunday Nights (back in it’s original 9.30 timeslot).

A big question mark for tomorrow night with The Mentalist entering the fray for Nine, this will either see a nightly win for Nine (their Wednesday Two & a Half Men is a timeslot winner) or we’ll see all three drama’s cannibalise each other’s audience.

One thing is for certain – Ten cannot keep blowing House on Wednesday with such a weak 7.30 lead in – Nine blinked first in the battle of the Wednesdsay dramas – but in doing so they have countered Seven’s Criminal Minds with an even bigger gun, The Mentalist – stay tuned for the outcome of that face off.