Bait & Switch

Uh Oh – Ten’s getting jittery again, hot on the heels of Nine’s Schedule Announcement – Ten has made some changes to their sked, mostly for the better, no doubt there will be even more changes once Seven publish full details of their Summer line up – but for now let’s have a look at what’s changed

SUNDAY
The big change is removal of perpetual rerun Thank God You’re Here, replacing it with the new 90210 on Sunday nights. This is a good thing – first of all we know that Nine has placed Two and a Half Men on Sunday nights – that would spell an embarrassing death for Working Dog’s precious project. By moving the 90210 sequel to it’s spiritual home (the original ran in this slot from 93-96 - Seasons 3-6) it might actually catch on with the viewers!

The little change late on Sunday night involves The Daily Show and The Office in the late night slots, why Ten does not give The Office a decent try in an early evening slot remains one of life’s great mysteries but on the other hand at least Ten is starting to recognise that the station is still running after 10.30 at night so it’s not all bad!

MONDAY
With 90210 only making a fleeting appearance on Mondays that opens up the night for Rules of Engagement to be given another go at 8pm, Swingtown gets the boot at 9.30 instead we get to see The Ex List which has already been axed by CBS after what was apparently an excellent pilot but a lot of creative difficulties between the network and producers since.

The other thing you’ll notice from Mondays is the weeknight lineup. First of all – although I didn’t include it on the chart – The Bold and the Beautiful, forever the lead-in to Ten’s 5pm news and the highest rating daytime show is promoted to 6pm – it’s an audacious move (see I didn’t say bold!) that should encourage a fair percentage of older women to ignore the 6pm news on the rival nets – whether it will do better than the Simpsons (currently around the 600,000 mark) we don’t know, but it’s a strong indication that ten realises it needs and older aud to sustain it’s operation. Judge Judy moves into 4.30 lead-in duty for the summer.

At 7pm Will & Grace makes way for Friends (yes again!) given that Seven will likely position reruns of How I Met Your Mother in this slot, Friends seems like a shrewd move – if only because How I Met Your Mother is a virtual clone of Friends and after a while viewers might prefer to watch the original.

TUESDAYS
No idea what will sit here on a regular basis (so far we have a Britney Spears special in the first week) I imagine it will possibly be more Rules of Engagement, once the summer sets in. After 8.30 Ten has snubbed Burn Notice and instead cranked up a second hour of NCIS. Given that show’s recent performance I say why not? But it would be good (without the heat of All Saints) to retry Burn Notice or another middling show in their lineup. With Nine putting movies on this night – Tuesdays is up for grabs this summer so any promotion ten can do on the back of their naval hit will be worth it.

WEDNESDAYS
Gone: Law & Order SVU, Back: House MD. Maybe someone at Ten read my blog last Friday (OK I doubt it) but it seems like they’ve opted for some consistency in their schedule rather than moving things willy nilly. That’s commendable, will reruns of House outmatch reruns of CSI? And will Seven keep Criminal Minds on Wednesdays? Will Wednesday night become a Mexican standoff with reruns?

THURSDAYS
The only change here is that SVU is back in its current 9.30 slot and the original Law & Order is off to…

FRIDAYS
Ahh Friday night – remember Fridays – that night at the end of the week that TV programmers didn’t know existed – well eureka Ten has discovered it! The Ice Road Truckers have been despatched back to cable TV and The Simpsons (always a reliable Friday night entrant) are back to fill another hole which frankly needs filling.

Now remember – there are two types of audiences on Friday nights – kids and old people, the kids are well catered to with The Simpsons – that’s a sound move and the old people just might discover the math related antics of Don and Charlie Epps on Numb3rs (one of the most interesting and underrated procedurals in recent times) and then go for some legal wrangling on the original (and best IMO) Law & Order.

SATURDAYS
They were going so well, outstanding in fact and then oooo – epic fail! Where the f&%# is MacGyver??? Why get people’s hopes up like that!! Instead we get BBC dross Big Cat Diary and I get to watch channel Nine which has the best Saturday lineup yet again!

Curious Phenomenon - Tuesday 18 November 2008

Another Tuesday night of wall to wall Seven dominance. You know a night of TV is big when people you know start talking to you about it apropos of nothing!

So it was last night with All Saints lifting for the last episode with actor Mark Priestley who died shortly after the Olympics in an apparent suicide. This help to subdue the figure for Rush, ten’s strategy for a quick summer turnaround for the Melbourne based drama is a welcome move – getting it out of the path of Seven’s steamrolling Tuesdays.

At least Ten has the one show that can weather a Seven storm in NCIS, occasionally this show, a procedural laced with sarcasm feels like it’s straight out of the 80s, which makes sense as it’s from Don Bellisario, the creator of such 80’s highlights as Magnum PI, Airwolf and Quantum Leap and although he has long since left NCIS (over a dispute with series lead Mark Harmon) the tone of the show is unmistakeable.

In the US NCIS is proving to be indestructible with reruns outperforming other new series wherever they land and the series itself standing up against megahits like House and American Idol.

Here in Australia it has been Ten’s most solid import, while their other big draw House implodes NCIS goes against the toughest show of the week and shines.

This week we can also bear witness to that curious phenomenon of the 8pm episode of The Simpsons outrating the 7.30pm episode. Anecdotally this makes a lot of sense, viewing generally (but not always) peaks at 8.30pm because with people working later and commuting longer they are often not ready to watch TV until later in the night.

For Ten this has been a factor for years – they used to show Everybody Loves Raymond after Becker on Tuesday nights because Raymond could net the larger audience – amazingly it has never occurred to anyone at channel ten to post the New Simpsons episode at 8pm and see what happens!

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.

Where are Seven Now? - Sunday 16 November 2008

A Solid night last night for Nine with the network dominate every slot from 6.30 onwards. Keeping Rugby League away from the southern states seems to be a good idea with CSI Miami picking up the slack for Nine down south.

No Dancing with the Stars meant that Seven’s Sunday went into freefall after the news. Surprisingly the (very late) return of Where are they now? Didn’t give the network any traction at 7.30 with Dancing’s viewers flocking to 60 Minutes.

Rove’s Season Finale didn’t set the house on fire but it didn’t suck either thereby ensuring Ten a shot at four millionaires this week.

Thank God You’re Here improved slightly but is now the poor cousin of 20 to 01, here’s how clever 20 to 01 is – that episode about child stars was a rerun but it’s subjects were so interesting I didn’t realise until they got to Liz Taylor! A celebrity who long ago crossed into ‘famous for fame’s sake’ territory and is now the exclusive province of gossip magazines – it was enough to snap me into reality and realise I’d seen it before!

Week on Week NCIS and The Outdoor Room both fell.

The Outdoor Room is in a particular pickle – it has the best lead in on television – Seven News yet it sheds almost 400,000 news viewers. Compare that to a recently renewed Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader which raises almost the same amount on it’s lead in and you see that networks weigh actual performance against potential performance.

The Outdoor Room is done for, you’ll probably see Durie on Seven next year but I doubt it will be in this show.

POSTSCRIPT
I thought I might end with what I watched on the box last night – since it was none of these shows and yet I found it quite entertaining.

At 7.30 after some channel surfing I discovered a series on CI called ‘The Academy’ which follows police recruits through their training – I reckon Ten will be emulating this show for their factual about Goulburn Police Academy next year.

At 8.30 E! had a premiere True Hollywood Story about Oprah Winfrey – it astonished me the whole way through how much about Winfrey I already knew just by osmosis and watching the news. A lot of the events they profiled were very familiar and yet I don’t really watch her show!

At 9.30 SBS showed the first in their Stanley Kubrick festival – 2001: A Space Odyssey – what a film, it has the most unsettling opening and closing scenes in the history of cinema (for my money anyway), I still can’t figure out what the hell is going on with that ending (the astronaut is aging so rapidly he can see his future self or something??) and it’s the only film I know of that’s ever tried to imagine the dawn of man. A classic film, and even though it was made in the 60s and set in 2001 it still looks futuristic today!

Friday & Saturday 14-15 November 2008

I've Decided to Lump Friday and Saturday together this weekend because there really wasn't that much going on and there was a dearth of information about the results

FRIDAY NIGHT

Had it's first shake-up since Nanny McPhee with Nine's first 20/20 Cricket Match of the season (some sort of exhibition game) drawing a commanding figure for Nine. Nine's early schedule though is in dire straits with ACA sinking on a Friday, both ACA and TT seem to be depressed from their lead-in and lead out programs, I can only surmise this is impact of Neighbours remaining competitive at 6.30 (compared to Ten's 6 and 7pm shows) but you never know.

Better Homes and Gardens put up a good show at 7.30 but the movie Shark Swarm must've done pretty badly because I can't even get figures for it or Ice Road Truckers which is probably limping along at the same old speed.

Perth is excluded from the chart because Cricket may have disrupted their schedule more than the eastern states.

SATURDAY NIGHT

Ahh Saturday Night - the night where our television network devolve into radio stations - Local and Low Rating.

Apart from the usually networked Ten, Seven and Nine stuffed things around a bit, Nine for the ongoing RL World Cup and Seven for the Myer Melbourne Xmas Parade, for my own sanity I just chose to run with Sydney/Brisbane overnights only as they were the most complete figures I could get a hold of!

Saturday night was a very low viewer turnout, although it's no longer unusual to have only 1 show over 1 million (normally Seven News) by the 8th ranked show (Ten News at 5) we're now going under the 700,000 mark.

Seven's Movie "Agent Cody Banks" suprisingly didn't hit with the kids (when you consider other movies which have worked for them in this slot), only the ABC's 'Mother Country Lineup' kept a stiff upper lip in the face of what must've been substantial competition for the elderly eyeball with Foxtel's Main Event channel which had a pay per view live Andre Rieu concert, if his DVD sales are anything to go by it could be Main Event's biggest night ever - I eagerly anticipate the results.

POSTCRIPT
Last Thursday I published ratings for 10.30 series Heroes (462k) and The Strip (430k) amazingly I found out later both were beaten by Ten News (488k) for the record Lateline pulled 277k in the timeslot - that's a total of over 1.6 million watching the TV after 10.30