★★★★★ 0/5

Power of 704,000

4
Leave a comment

With ratings back in biz, we are already seeing some clear-cut decisions by the audience.

Gladiators had a huge premiere with 1.8m viewers. It chomped into the The Biggest Loser and, remarkably, even allowed Seven’s Police Files: Unlocked / My Name is Earl to topple TEN’s So You Think You Can Dance Australia. Meanwhile the CSI / Without a Trace double hit the return of Rove hard. After a strong 2007 with regular figures of 1m, he debuted to just 777,000 against Nine’s crime double, Grey’s Anatomy (1.1m) and a strong premiere for the ABC’s East of Everything (1m). A shame the show didn’t have Jodie Foster in studio.

Last night Enough Rope with Andrew Denton won his timeslot with an impressive 1.45m. In Melbourne it attracted 623,000 viewers and was the city’s top show of the night. It was also the highest ever figure for Rope in Melbourne and Perth.

Sea Patrol’s return for Nine was a respectable 1.23m, not bad given it had no lead-in help from Power of Ten on just 704,000 viewers. It was powered down by Border Security returning to form with 1.7m.

Nine needs to consider whether Moment of Truth damaged the new local show, and indeed whether some of the questions in its marketing focussed too much on sex. While Nine mulls over how to respond to a poor premiere, the next logical question is whether Moment of Truth will last beyond tonight’s episode?

And if Nine pulls the pin on Power of Ten will the contestants still get their money? Probably. Last night it only cost them $200 anyway.

Ratings Week 14

4 Responses

  1. Matthew, the reason is because it’s less about results and ALL about ego and who’s got the biggest appendage.

    The execs playing at this silly game obviously never grew up after high school.

  2. Rove never had a chance going up against the networks’ big guns.

    I never got why networks compete for the same days. Don’t let the audience decide; choose another day with nothing on and get 100% of the potential audience.

  3. As far as Power Of 10 goes, I’d say “I told you so” except that I’m not entirely sure whether I actually told you so here 🙂 But really, the whole premise seemed uninteresting and Steve Jacobs as a host is hardly a case of star power.

    The whole “lead-in” thing is dubious to me. I know the networks really think people can be led to one show by another, but time and again this proves not to be the case. It’s not the 1970s any more, and people have remotes. They don’t find it at all an effort to change channels any more. One day the Australian networks might stop programming under the assumption that their viewers are lemmings.

    The 1.7m for Border Security – which was a repeat and this time (unlike usual for them) actually listed as one – was remarkable. Just goes to show that Seven doesn’t need to keep spending money producing this show, they can just keep recycling old episodes. The show’s target audience doesn’t seem to notice, as long as it has one minor drug bust, one crazy-but-ultimately-innocent man, one little Chinese lady illegally importing fruit and one Indonesian fishing boat per episode.

  4. 7s big hits of previous years,grey’s and desperate housewives included,continue to drop off. On the other hand Po10 flopped. And sea patrol did very well as you say considering it’s lead in. It gained almost 600,000 while DH lost roughly 300,000 from their respective lead ins. If sea patrol had DHs lead in you would expect something like 1.5m or more.

Leave a Reply