National TV ratings week ending April 12

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Life in Cold Blood might describe a typical day in the
programming department at Channel Nine, but it’s actually the name of
the program hastily rushed to air to replace The Power of Ten, a game show axed by Nine after it got a mere 521,000 viewers last Monday.

That was Nine’s second big axing of the year (the first had been Monster House) and Nine was looking at a third when Wednesday’s ratings arrived, showing that the much publicised My Kid’s A Star could
manage only 878,000 in the mainland capitals. It may be dawning on Nine
that Australians don’t like shows in which people are humiliated.

The only content working consistently for Nine now is Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Underbelly (which it can’t play in Melbourne). Seven’s Gladiators lost 300,000 from its opening night, but still remained among the week’s most watched shows, as you can see below.

The ABC pulled 1.33m for Steve Irwin’s father on Australian Story and SBS got 480,000 for China’s Great Wall.
Pay TV’s most watched in the week to Friday were a rugby league match
between Wests Tigers and Panthers (244,000) and an AFL match between
Adelaide and Port Adelaide (238,000).

The prime time audience shares are ABC 17.2% Seven 28.2% Nine 26.6% Ten 22.2% SBS 5.7%.

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Popularity: 1%

Source: Adnews

Advertising revenue rose 11.5% to $13.2 billion in calendar year 2007, with all mediums posting increases, according to the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia’s latest report.

The official CEASA report on advertising expenditure in main media revealed the following increases over 2006:

Metropolitan/national daily newspapers (including inserted magazines): up 4.3% to $2,341,519

Regional dailies: up 5.6% to $500,812,000

Regional non-dailies: up 14.7% to $432,391,000

Suburban newspapers: up 27.9% to $801,287,000

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Popularity: 5%

While other networks have placed single
episodes of comedy and current affairs programs on the net, Nine is the
first to launch multiple episodes of a local drama at once.

The first two episodes of Canal Road were slated for Ninemsn this
week, ahead of the show’s TV launch next Wednesday. The next two
episodes will be available next week.

Nine has experimented with downloads and "catch-up TV services",
making episode one of Sea Patrol available three days before its launch
last year.

Ten has traditionally been more receptive than its rivals to making
content available online, using YouTube to distribute episodes of Thank
God You’re Here.

Content from The Chaser, on the ABC, has similarly been widely distributed on the net.

Popularity: 1%

Source: tvtonight.com.au

What percentage of Australians thought the Power of Ten was a good idea?

Well,
it’s hard to say what the percentage was but 521,000 wasn’t enough to
keep the show going. Nine has pulled it after just two episodes, the
same life-span of Monster House.

Remaining
episodes of the series, hosted by Steve Jacobs (who received mostly
positive reviews), now hang in limbo while the Network considers
whether to air them later in the year or in a low-profile timeslot.

Given the contestants didn’t win much money from the show, Nine could probably just pay them out to avoid its own Bingo-style scandal.

Nine will fill the spot with the doco series, David Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood, probably not a bad alternative to the genres already stitched up by Seven and TEN in the 7:30pm Monday slot.

Popularity: 5%

RadioRave today reports B105 Music Director Mickey Maher will replace Andrew Very as Group Program Director for the Austereo/Macquarie Regional Radioworks duopoly of KO FM and NX FM in Newcastle.

Maher will commence his new role on April 28, just ten days after Survey #1 is released for the city.

Popularity: 1%

NBN have had a strong return from the Easter non-ratings period to record a resounding victory in week 14. NBN had 7 of the Top 10 programs and a significant 7.4 points lead over Prime.

Station ratings:
                Week 14 2008    Week 14 2007    Prog 2008    Prog 2007
NBN                33.5                        34.1                31.7        34.0
PRIME             24.1                         23.6                25.6        27.2
TEN                18.4                        19.2                19.3        16.5
ABC                17.1                        16.9                16.7        17.0
SBS                  6.9                            6.2                 6.7          5.4

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Popularity: 1%

Source: Nikki MacLennan, Adnews

SYDNEY: The much-publicised consortium bid for CMH by Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer is understood to have collapsed and all parties are expected to withdraw from the deal in an announcement this afternoon.

Today’s development follows a final push over the weekend for agreement between Packer and Murdoch’s new backers, Providence Equity Partners, on a share price for the bid.

CMH (ASX:CMJ) shares were suspended this morning pending an announcement from the company.

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Popularity: 1%

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

It was a week of historic moments in Australian television. On Thursday, Kate Ritchie’s character Sally Fletcher left Home and Away after growing up in public for 20 years, and 1.5 million people in the mainland capitals tuned in to say goodbye.

Also on Thursday, the central character in Life On Mars,
Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, gave himself a happy ending by
committing suicide, which must be a first for a TV series (and which
suggests that the program’s writers think Heaven is Manchester in the
1970s). Only 757,000 people saw him jump.

On Monday Enough Rope with Andrew Denton pulled the second
biggest audience in its history — 1.5 million to see footballer Wayne
Carey hang himself. On Sunday Channel Seven’s Gladiators scored the highest audience for any series debut this year — 1.9 million. But Channel Nine was delighted with its 1.6 m for Without A Trace and 1.5 m for CSI and the ABC was pleased with 1 million for its new coastal dramedy East of Everything, which doesn’t beat the SeaChange record but is a strong start.

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Popularity: 1%

The music industry is in absolute disarray. Cd sales are plummeting, artists are going "independent", the old world model is falling apart. iTunes provided a partial answer to the problem, with a legal, reliable system for downloading music, but it still hasn’t stopped the bleeding.  Most recording companies and artists don’t have an answer. Up til now the best solution big record companies have had is to sue down loaders and try to prevail with fear tactics.

The same is beginning to happen to publishing. Television has major concerns about the downloading of programs as they too begin to lose control of the audience and distribution.

In the midst of the digital revolution, English rock band Radiohead have taken control of their future by engaging the audience in the most unique ways.

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Popularity: 1%

The second week of the Easter non-survey period was a string one for NBN here in Newcastle. While Prime hid their big shows for the break, NBN rolled out football, swimming Olympic trials and Underbelly. As a result Prime and TEN only had one program each in the Top 10 fro the week. Given that it doesn’t count towards the official ratings tally, I guess they don’t care.

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Popularity: 1%