Seven’s comedy schedule tweak doesn’t stop the ratings rot
Seven’s decision to move TV Burp ahead of Double Take failed to improve the two comedy shows’ audience on Thursday night.
TV Burp delivered ratings of 751,000 in its new slot, according to preliminary data from OzTam – down on last week’s 774,000. This came despite Deal Or No Deal’s Andrew O’Keefe being pulled in to give assistance with a song and dance number.
Double Take fell too, from last week’s 832,000 to 724,000.
However, the two shows were not helped by inheriting a weak audience, with The Amazing Race pulling in only 949,000.
Meanwhile Ten’s Rush continued to perform well, with another 1.2m audience. But the time slot belonged to Bert Newton’s 20 to 01, pulling in 1.3m.
It was also a strong night in current affairs programmes, with Today Tonight’s investigation into the joys of working from home on Seven (1.3m) outrating Nine’s A Current Affair (1.2m).
And it was another poor night for Ten’s The 7PM Project, which slipped below 700,000, with an average audience of 697,000.
Nine easily won the night. Thursday evening’s TV viewing share: Nine 31%; Seven 25.1%; Ten 23.4%; ABC 14.7%; SBS 5.9%.
Thursday’s top rating TV shows:
- Seven News Seven 1.5m
- Getaway Nine 1.4m
- 20 to 1 Nine 1.3m
- Today Tonight Seven 1.3m
- Rush Ten 1.2m
- Home and Away Seven 1.2m
- Two and a Half Men Nine 1.2m
- A Current Affair Nine 1.2m
- Nine News Nine 1.1m
- ABC News ABC 1m
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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TV Burp is not that great..Ed is trying to hard to be funny. He was great when he was on Get This on MMM. Double Take is just “Comedy Inc on Seven”, nothing new or exciting.
Glad to see that Ten is bringing back Burn Notice on Thursdays 9:30 to take over the L&O slot
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TV Burp is has potential, it just needs to find it’s feet and develop a bit more. Seven should (but wont) stick it on at 11pm for a few months and let it cook at little longer. It’s trying too hard to be like it’s British parent which was hosted by a comedian with a unique style that you can’t just pick up and drop on another performer.
I don’t understand why networks don’t start some programs “off Broadway” as it were and move them to prime-time once they get up to speed and find their audience. Getting a new show up and running is an expensive exercise – why not spend some of that money wisely rather than just throwing it at a wall?
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Ed Cavalie is the problem. When you have to try to be funny… chances are, you’re not xxx
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Might have been better starting on the Comedy Channel on foxtel?
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hmmm… Sorry. I’ve just watched that clip posted above and I take it all back! They can keep it at 11pm for a thousand years and that crap is never going to be funny!
And I don’t think it would take too much to get Ed Cavalie to admit the same thing.
It does highlight a problem that a lot of Aussie comedies on commercial TV have had for a while now – producers/performers/writers are concentrating too much on what they think audiences want and not enough on what they think is funny.
If you don’t think it’s funny, then your audience won’t either.
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I dunno why, but I still think they can turn this around.
I was chatting to someone who works on the programme-making side, and he suggests a couple of the issues are: 1) Not enough researchers to dig out the obscure gems – particularly the more bizarre reaches of mutlichannel. 2) a fear of going too hard, particularly against Seven’s shows.
Again, I didn’t absolutely love last night’s, but it was good enough to make me want to coem back and see how it goes next week.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Maybe it needs to be more like The Soup on E! and mix the two shows together
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Instead of paid researchers, they could have the audience give them a heads up and just do a shout out “thanks” to them. (People love seeing / hearing their name on TV).
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Maybe they could do a segment on that TV Burp show… the ultimate in navel gazing!
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check out http://www.youtube.com/jdubya2k
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