The Newcastle Ratings Week 20, week ending 16 May 2009

 Only one program in Newcastle achieved an audience greater than 100,000 last week while the rest of the top 10 programs ranged between 84,000 and 63, 000 viewers. Those sort of numbers don’t normally represent Top 10 programs outside of summer non-ratings periods.

Two weeks ago the 10th highest rating program in Newcastle had 74,000 viewers. Likewise, this time last year saw an average of 10,000 more viewers watching the top 10 free-to-air programs. So where did all the viewers disappear to last week?

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This has nothing to do with media except to demonstrate how well the internet can be used to spread a message. Plus I just like this clip from Stephen Niebauer which I came across on the Only Dead Fish blog.

Watch it, tell your friends, enjoy:

Life is Beautiful from Stephen Niebauer on Vimeo.

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Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

You can tell it’s a non-ratings period when the most watched show of the week is the news, when six of the week’s top 20 are repeats, and when the ABC’s best performer is a repeat of a whodunit first shown on Channel Nine in 1999.

Seven’s collection of repeats earned it 26.7 per cent of the prime time audience, Nine managed 24.2 per cent, Ten 23.5, the ABC 19.4 (a big boost, due largely to Midsomer, Gruen, Specks and Poirot) and SBS 6.1 (thanks mainly to Top Gear, Trawlermen and Mad Men). Can any reader explain why Trawlermen would pull 442,000 to SBS?

The Easter silly season is over now, and normal competition recommences tonight.

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Wednesday 1 April 2009, San Francisco

The Web 2.0 Expo begins today in San Francisco featuring the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies. It provides examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.

The web 2.0 Expo was founded by Tim O’Reilly, the person who helped coin the term “Web 2.0”.

I will be covering the Web 2.0 Expo for the rest of this week for Marketing Magazine. Check in daily for the latest news and views from San Francisco.

Sessions I plan to catch include:
•    Transforming IT with Cloud Computing
•    Use It or Lose It: Proving the Business Value of RIAs
•    Darwinism on the Web – Surviving and Thriving in a Web 2.0 World
•    Optimize Your Organic Search Results Leveraging Social Media and Your Own Website
•    The Social Media Trilogy: Three Vital Components for Building a Successful Online Strategy
•    Cloud Computing and the Paradigm Shift That’s Coming in IT
•    A Conversation with the Founders of Threadless

You can also follow the action on Twitter with the tag #w2e and my own Twitter stream #MHOT (Media Hunter on Tour).

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Austin, Texas

Tony Hsieh is CEO of Zappos.com the world’s largest online shoe retailer.

Approx half the room has purchased from Zappos. 2-1 Female/male buyer ratio.

(I’m sitting near Darryl Orht from Plaid.)

Tony originally co-founded another dot com that was sold to Microsoft. Left when lost desire to turn up to work.

Zappos was a company he invested in (one of several) then decided to work in.

Zappos is about the brand and excellent customer service. Doesn’t see it staying as a shoe retailer only. Could be an airline in the future.

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Media Hunter on Tour

I flew to LA this week on the new V Australia and was very impressed with the whole experience.

Qantas has totally dominated this route for years and the quality of their service has noticeably dropped over time, so a new competitor is very welcome.

The V Australia experience begins at check-in which is efficient, friendly and even fun as the staff hand out Mintis to the queue and wave Aussie flags. At LAX the V Australia staff were still at work helping guide us through immigration and baggage collection.

The new Boeing 777-300 is spotless and quite comfortable. It had more legroom than I’ve been used to on longhaul flights and the in-flight entertainment system is amazing. Movies, music, videos, TV shows, games and more. Each seat comes with a USB port for charging computers and smart phones, so you can get more done on the flight.

The flight crew are typically Virgin. Very friendly and relaxed.

The food is more than adequate but a warning on drinks folks. Only the first alcoholic beverage is complimentary. You pay after that. Boonie would go broke.

Best of all, the new planes are faster. We did the trip in 12.5 hours, the fastest I’ve ever flown to the US for sure.

The flight was full, but that was only after V sold plenty of heavily discounted seats in the week leading up to departure. The guys sitting in my row had both purchased tickets in the last week for $1000AUD.

If you are considering a Sydney/LA flight soon then I recommend giving V Australia a go. And keep an eye out for cheap tickets, there should be plenty around this year.

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Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

This was the last week of the Summer “non-ratings” period. From 8 February we are back in official ratings season, and all the big guns will be wheeled out.

1 TENNIS: 2009 AUST OPEN – MEN’S FINAL Seven 2,246,000
2 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 2,008,000
3 PACKED TO THE RAFTERS Seven 1,874,000
4 FIND MY FAMILY Seven 1,654,000
5 TENNIS: 2009 AUST OPEN – MEN’S FINAL INTRODUCTION Seven 1,622,000
6 SEVEN NEWS – SAT Seven 1,552,000
7 LIE TO ME Ten 1,504,000
8 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,485,000
9 NCIS Ten 1,473,000 373,000
10 TODAY TONIGHT Seven 1,453,000
11 RSPCA ANIMAL RESCUE Seven 1,436,000
12 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA Ten 1,414,000
13 DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES Seven 1,374,000
14 AUSTRALIA’S GOT TALENT Seven 1,313,000
15 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE AUSTRALIA – AUDITION 1 Ten 1,306,000

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NBN has ended the 2008 official survey year with a 31.7% share across Northern NSW and the Gold Coast, Australia’s fourth largest television market.

The PBL Media owned station dominated the region with its 6pm – Midnight audience share of 31.7% , 7.0 points above Prime’s 24.7% and 10.5 points above Ten’s 21.2%.

In the core demographic, viewers aged 25-54, a solid 31.7% share was 1.4 points up for NBN on last year whilst Primes 24.9% was down 2.5 points year on year Southern Cross Ten finished with a 24.1% in this demographic.

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Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

On Friday and Saturday, Channels Seven, Nine and Ten attempted to capitalise on what they imagined would be a booming interest in Australiana and Hugh Jackman. See the charts below for how Mick Dundee, Van Helsing and Wolverine pulled in the punters.

Seven won the last week of the “official” ratings year with 29.9 per cent of the prime time audience, while Nine got 26.5, Ten 20.2, ABC 17.7 and SBS 5.7.

Of course, the people meter boxes will keep sending their data to OzTAM’s computer over the silly season, so this column will continue to provide regular discussion on how Australians are entertaining themselves.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was radio president. Kennedy was the first television president. Reagan the first movie-star president. Will Barack Obama be America’s first web president?

The 2008 US Presidential Election will be a referendum on many things – the war in Iraq, the Bush years and now the economy – but it can also be viewed as a referendum on old versus new media.

While the 72 year old, admitted technophobe McCain is the default old-world media candidate, Obama has been the new media superstar, embracing web 2.0 technology and techniques with aplomb.

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