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%

Now that The Age of Conversation is well and truly launched on Amazon, the team behind this amazing collaborative effort can begin focusing on their 2008 publication. Once again Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton have called on marketing and social media bloggers around the world to sign up for an even bigger and better book.

This years book is tentatively titled, Age of Conversation: Why don’t people get it?  The boys have had an amazing response with 275 authors putting their hands up to contribute a chapter each. And once again, this is all for charity, with the proceeds of the book going to Variety, The Children’s Charity.

Media Hunter is fortunate enough to be involved again this year, and has been joined by fellow Novacastrian Gordon Whitehead, aka The Marketer.

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Popularity: 1%

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Channel Seven had the biggest audience in a week that wasn’t worth
winning. Deprived of of interesting drama, those Australians who
couldn’t make it to the DVD store settled for fly-on-the wall
documentaries: Border Security (7) got 1.75 million viewers in the mainland capitals, SCU: Serious Crash Unit (7) got 1.64 million and Bondi Rescue (10) got 1.57 million.

Nine did OK with the Olympic swimming trials, attracting 1.17m on
Thursday and ending the week with an average of 25.3 per cent of the
prime time audience (to Seven’s 28.5 and Ten’s 22.9). The ABC stuck to
normal programming, and was rewarded with 17.7 per cent of the prime
time audience and 1.31m for Doc Martin and 1.22m for Midsomer Murders, while SBS scored 564,000 for Mythbusters (and averaged 5.7 per cent).

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Popularity: 1%

The power of social media was demonstrated today when the Age of Conversation online community combined to push their book near the top of Amazon’s bestseller charts.

A 24 hour "Bum Rush" co-ordinated by Chris Wilson saw hundreds of bloggers mobilize to promote the innovative marketing publication The Age of Conversation.  In one day the book has risen from an Amazon ranking of approximately 110,000 to finish the day at  #262 for all books and  #36 on the Business Bestsellers list.

The "Bum Rush" marketing effort saw the book’s release promoted on hundreds of websites and blogs around the world, then heavily pushed on Digg.com, where it was the fastest rising web topic in the last 24 hours.

Readers were encouraged to buy the book from Amazon, make comments, review it, Digg it and tell their friends, and discuss the progress on Twitter.

The rush started in Australia, which is only lightly represented in the book, then proceeded around the world until midnight on the US east-coast. Bleary-eyed bloggers stayed online for the entire push, giving encouragement in a real online-style festival.

The book had another breakthrough when it became listed on Wikipedia during the "Bum Rush". A profile of the book and listing of authors can be found here.

Of course thats not the end of the story. Now that Age of Conversation is well up the Amazon rankings, we want to maintain the rage and try to push it further. Its not too late to buy a copy. Buy one for your business, your clients, your friends or family. All proceeds go to Variety, the children’s charity.

Popularity: 1%