Thank God They're Gone

Leave it to the silly season to throw up the most shocking story of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing. It’s rare that press releases are actually news worthy but the following release from channel seven qualifies…

There’s no doubt that this is a win for seven, a win for Working Dog and a massive kick in the nuts for Grant Blackley, David Mott and co.

I thought it might be interesting, to pull out an old article where Tom Gleisner mentions the relationship with channel ten…

From PerthNow.com, dated 7 October 2006:

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,20540889-5005382,00.html

Working Dog's long-standing relationship with Ten played a big part in the TGYH deal.

``It's called the fear-of-loss factor: Ten couldn't afford to risk having Working Dog go to Seven or Nine with it,'' a Melbourne-based producer said recently.

``If you've been going out with Miss Australia (Working Dog) for 10 years, you don't want to share her with another bloke, even for one night. She may not come back.''

Well, you heard it from the horse’s mouth, Miss Australia is officially a slut.

She’s just run off with the rich older millionaire, taken the house and kids leaving ten with only the shirt on its back

The only silver lining in any of this for ten is the likelihood that the eventual infiltration of known stinkers such as Kochie & Mel, Noni Hazelhurst and Larry Emdur could bring down this show faster than Yasmin could get married. Gleisner, Stich and Co can only Thank God that Daryl Somers and Shelley Craft had already left their new home before they moved in.

Karma’s a Bitch - Tuesday 3 December 2008

So the bitches at Seven have swiped Thank God You’re Here from channel ten, well something happened last night that I expected, and a few things that I didn’t expect.

What I expected

‘The In-Laws’ wouldn’t impress, that’s a given – movies have very rarely ever worked on Tuesday nights, Nine is clearly surrendering this night to it’s competitors and will continue to do so in the new year.

The Chopping Block held it’s numbers from the regular season – indicating a core audience who were interested in the premise. If Nine wants a third shot they’re going to have to find a way to attract more casual viewers to the show without upsetting what is a decent base.

NCIS would wipe the floor with it’s competition, that was also a given – what I didn’t expect was an incredible 93.5% retention to the 9.30 hour.

What I didn’t Expect

The 7.30 Report NEVER outrates ABC News, let alone wins it’s timeslot, I’m impressed.

A special about Britney Spears outdid Ugly Betty – didn’t see that coming, especially given that Seven had the greater opportunity for promotion.

Dirty Sexy Money completely bombs, worse than The Ex-List (which is saying something) after a much better lead-in to boot, they lost 45% of Eli Stone’s audience, a sad sad result which explains the performance of the 10.30 shows across the networks.

Friends, improves both day on day, week on week (with Will & Grace) and on it’s lead-in. Seems like one of my shakier predictions might come to fruition – that How I Met Your Mother viewers might slowly realise they’re watching a rip-off of Friends and migrate back to the original. Last night’s 7pm timeslot belonged to the ABC (and probably will all summer) but between the commercial nets it was as close as could be.

Update - Monday 1 December 2008

Just a quick update on Monday's Ratings with some new numbers for Neighbours, Home Improvement and Kath & Kim

WTF Is Wrong with Heroes?

Everyone is bitching about Heroes

The show’s ratings are in the sink, it’s been pushed back to 10.30 here in Australia and in America the behind the scenes dramas with writers being fired and Tim Kring calling the fans dipshits are attracting more attention than the show itself.

So what’s the problem, well in my view Heroes has reached that frustrating point that Lost came to early in it's third season where there are just way more questions than answers

Here's a few I can think of right now...

What is Arthur Petrelli’s actual ability that he is able to transfer others’ powers to himself?

If Lindeman could heal, why did he never heal Petrelli

When will any of these people do something heroic? So far the only ones have been Parkman (when he rescued the little girl in the first episode) and Nathan when he flew away with Peter in tow in the first season finale.

Nobody has sufficiently explained the Tracy/Nikki thing to my satisfaction – now we have a third sister – the ice queen?

Why did Seven schedule season 2 behind Bionic Woman?

Is Mohinder suddenly cured from being spiderman?

I’ve lost track of all these viruses, pathogens, antigens, now it’s adrenaline, oh no wait there’s a catalyst – it’s just getting silly.

Why bring Adam Munroe out of his coffin only to kill him one episode later?

Why did we spend several weeks driving from Mexico to the US with Sylar and the super-fun-happy siblings only to see those characters amount to nothing?

What happened to the girl who copies things from the TV?

Remember the boy who could fly? That was a great film!

If an eclipse somehow affects everyone’s powers, then what is the effect of the smiley-face moon from last night?

What is the point of all this?

The Timid & the Ugly - Monday 1 December 2008

The first Monday of summer played a lot like the last Monday of ratings season with The ABC’s one-two punch of Howard and Enough Rope knocking the other contenders around, with channel ten well and truly out for the count.

During summer I think it’s safe to consider 900,000 the standard barometer for success. With that in mind ABC, SEVEN and NINE all had great nights. Top Gear took a hit but still came out respectably.

Bones did at 8.30 what it was doing at 9.30 anyway, but The Rich List continues on resurgent. In fact the Rich List’s revival poses a weird dilemma for Seven – here they have a show which only seems to work on it’s Monday timeslot (it bombed on Saturdays) and yet they don’t really need this show as Border Security and The Force bring much higher ratings to this slot during the season – perhaps Seven should trial it on Thursdays (a weaker night for them) and see what happens?

Gratifyingly Scrubs is returned to a 10.30 slot and look, OMG it wins the timeslot (a very competitive one I might add) and brings 64,000 people who were not watching Out of the Question.

The Question for Seven is why have you idiots let this show languish at 11.30pm for 5 years? Last night as I watched this show, just to add to Seven’s stupidity they carried a commercial for the upcoming DVD release of Season 7 which is the season they are screening right now – how do I know this? Well simple on of the scenes they showed on the commercial was identical to what I had just viewed in the preceding segment.

There’s still two episodes for Seven to screen of this season before it hits the stores tomorrow, why they never tried to get this show back into primetime is beyond me, but hey we can get the DVDs I guess.

Fringe did better at 9.30 than on it’s last 8.30 show by 62,000 viewers so that’s something good. Watch to see if it improves week on week, it’s still an awful drop from it’s lead in but it’s still better than earlier in the year.

Ten had some OK news and some really bad news. In the OK file – the ratings for the first ep of Bold & the Beautiful didn’t suck – they didn’t bring down the house (a great rating would have been closer to 700,000 considering the competition) but they point to a solid start which is good. Even better is that Friends has shown some slight improvement at 7pm over Will & Grace (will Ten just TRY the Office here already) given it’s a rerun against a world of new (and news) it did OK and certainly cannot be blamed for the travesty at 7.30…

Like I said in an earlier blog – any show purporting to be about nudity in the 7.30 hour is clearly false advertising and thankfully people aren’t total fools so they gave this show (which bombed in the regular season) the flick. Expect to see an announcement of a third Simpsons/Rules of Engagement hour any moment now…

Army Wives did better, considering the lead-in and the competition from established hits but The Ex List got less viewers than Bold and the Beautiful and dragged Out of the Blue down with it. Ten needs a strong 7.30 show, I don’t expect them to be able to beat Charlie Sheen or Top Gear, but surely The Rich List is such a disposable show that their audience can be picked off with ease – it won’t be achieved with a failed reality import – that’s for sure.