Ten and Seven biggest losers in summer TV ratings
It's a Knockout: Ten debut this summer
Seven and Ten were the biggest losers during the summer ratings black-out, according to a prominent media commentator.
Seven “ran dead” to save up shows for a more competitive 2012, noted Fusion Strategy’s Steve Allen.
The network pulled high-rating drama Packed to the Rafters four weeks before the 2011 ratings period finished to amass a bigger war chest for this year.
But Ten kept faith with big and new shows, debuting It’s a Knockout – which started well before going down hill – as well as first-run shows Merlin and The Glades.
Allen noted that Nine’s performance “wasn’t great” either.
The network benefited from the cricket, which has been far and away the winner unless Seven finds success with the Australian Open. This will depend on the performances of Australian players Bernard Tomic and Samantha Stosur to draw an audience.
“If Tomic or Stosur gets through to the quarter finals of the Australian Open that’ll be sensational for ratings,” said Allen. “If they get knocked out, no one will be interested.”
“Likewise, in whitewashing India (in the cricket), there is no question the cricket will rate less because we’ve already won the test series. That’s the unfortunate thing – people want to see a close competition. It’s entertaining, but we want five days – not two and a half.”
Overall, Allen said of the summer TV season: “I can get passionate about most things, but it’s been pretty lacklustre.”
With three weeks to go until the ratings season begins, Ten will come back with its new format next week and Seven the week after. Nine will wait until the season begins.
Allen added: “Seven wants to hang on to it’s number one position, knowing it will get more competition from Ten and Nine this year. But all the networks have three mouths to feed, so they’re struggling for content. Ten and Nine will start with good product. But we’re not convinced they have enough for the year. From our perspective, looking at their inventory, Seven will do well again.”
Allen would do better “to note” shows which are actually on the right channels – Ten does not have Harry’s Law, it’s a Nine show.
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I believe you mean ‘The Glades’ not ‘The Grade’. And I’m pretty sure Harry’s Law airs on Nine.
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Thanks Jake,
Consider The Glades corrected and Harry’s Law removed.
Cheers,
Colin – Mumbrella
And it’s Sam Stosur. And 3-0 in a 4 Test series is not a ‘whitewash’. Apart from those and the others mentioned … doing pretty well.
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im waiting for the new
1) bones
2) Sherlock
3) Castle
but it really shits me that 10 are going to take Graham norton (ad free on ABC) but make it prime time- 20 mins of ads per hour show. f*ing lovely.
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Where are EZTV’s ratings? o.0
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Hello again Az.
EZTV is not a broadcast TV channel, nor is its content signature coded to allow ‘matching’ – meaning that while viewing to EZTV may be captured in the Australian panel (of around 13,000 people per day) it cannot be distinguished from other non-broadcast content so therefore it is not reported.
I would hazard a guess that it would get the dreaded asterisk (*) as insufficient observations to report on, based on the ratings for some of the more niche Subsciption TV channels on tiers.
The most effective way to track content like EZTV at the moment is via download log analysis over the Internet.
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After a few years of getting smashed the Australian public is loving the Aussies dishing it out again after a drought
Not sure if he is looking at the same ratings I am
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The major mistake the commercial stations make too often is truncated season runs. Nine is especially bad at this, but Seven and Ten do it, too. You even mentioned it: Seven pulled Packed To The Rafters.
Showing whole seasons uninterrupted is how you build viewer loyalty. Why do the commercial stations struggle to embrace that?
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Good point Wade, and it annoys me like it annoys most viewers.
One of the reasons is that here in Australia we run a 40-week TV year. The countries we source most of our content from run shorter TV years. Therefore, most series are made in 13-week runs, and a “ful-year” of runs is 26 episodes.
So, if a network takes-up a US series pretty much after its premiere in the US, we will burn through that content quicker than it is being made – hence the “we’re giving that programme a rest” line you often hear.
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Hey John what is eztv? I assume you are not talking about the eztv.it torrent site?
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I was responding to Az … I suspect he meant that torrent.
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@John Grono In that case it is VERY interesting. So there are “Panels” that measure how much TV is taken from Bittorrent sites in Australia. And that there are about 13,000 on the Panel in Australia? If so that’s fascinating. Is there any other metrics on the amount of TV viewed via torrents? I ask because I am interested in using torrents as a distribution platform, and wonder what the reach of this technology is in Australia.
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Not quite right AB&GR’s LC. The panels (Metro TV, Regional TV and subscription TV) measure broadcast and subscription TV). They rely on having ‘referenced content’ – i.e. a known ‘digital signature’ for each piece of content. However, if (i) the content is referenced and (ii) that content is viewed on a TV (and working on via a PC) then it can be matched and picked up.
However, I am yet to see torrent current that has a digital signature that is Australian based. In the situation you’re talking about I suspect that measuring via the unique download request is the more appropriate approach. This of course may be measuring the torrent as a channel and not each piece of content separately. You also don’t know who is at the other end of the torrent, nor what other activity they undertook – which is the ‘magic’ of audience measurement. In essence, you’d be better off starting to look at traffic and not audience in the first instance IMHO.
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