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Bottom of the heap

Foreign language News, Home Shopping & classic sitcoms -what’s sitting at the bottom of the TV ratings?

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Foreign language News, Home Shopping, classic sitcoms and shows we never even knew existed. That’s what’s sitting at the bottom of the TV ratings.

We’re always focussed at the top of the heap, but what’s at the other end?

TV Tonight took a look at last week’s ratings results as a snapshot of what isn’t working or passes for ‘filler’ these days. Many of the shows were overnight and early morning, including familiar titles in replay.

Shows that ranked an absolute zero last week were dominated by foreign language news services replays on SBS TWO:
Hungarian News, Hindi News, Polish News (2nd Edition), Spanish News, Urdu News, Chinese News, Portuguese News, Indonesian News, Korean News, Arabic News, Japanese News, Turkish News, Hong Kong News, French News, and Maltese News. Most of these had their their first broadcast on SBS ONE but remained minute.

Here’s the way the numbers fell, literally, for each channel last week.

Disclaimer: includes some replays.

ABC1
Bottom of the heap last week was Boblins, The Dreaming, Basketball WNBL (all on 1,000) then Big Ideas Sampler, Art Nation, National Press Club Address (all 2,000 in early morning replays) , Catalyst and The New Inventors also in early morning replays on 3,000.

ABC2
Fittingly the Station Close on ABC2 was its lowest rated show. 1,000 viewers watched the shutdown. Next was a Cold Feet replay (4,000), How Do They Do It?, Taking the Flak and Can We Believe the Science? (each 5,000).

ABC3
Station Close was also the lowest on ABC3 at 1,000 then Voltron: Defender of the Universe (3,000), What Do You Know?, The 3 Factor (6,000), Barney’s Barrier Reef (7,000).

ABC News 24
The lowest rated shows for ABC News 24 were State to State (1,000), Big Ideas (1,000), replays of The Business (3,000), 7:30– NT (3,000), 7:30– ACT, 7:30, Capital Hill, (3,000) and BBC World News: The Hub (4,000).

SEVEN
NBC Meet the Press (6,000) was lowest for Seven. The West Real Estate Program and Beyond Tomorrow pulled 7,000, NBC Today Best Bits and It Is Written Oceania were 8,000, Home Shopping was 10,000 (and 11,000 in repeat), and Timeless Hunters had 12,000.

7TWO
7TWO registered a 0 for Home Shopping (Early), Sons And Daughters (Early), and W.A.U: Where Ocean Giants Meet (Early) all of which were repeated on the multichannel. 2,000 viewers watched Home Shopping, a Coronation Street replay was 3,000 then Great Outdoors Extra Time Early and Sea Breeze were 4,000.

7MATE
7mate had 0 for Home Shopping (Early and Day), Sunday Night (Extra Time-Early [R]), then 3,000 for The Jeff Foxworthy Show, 4,000 for K Zone: Handy Manny, K Zone: Stitch!, The New Adam 12, and 5,000 for K Zone: Zeke and Luther.

NINE
Nine had 0 viewers for Riverview Live. Next were On Display (2,000), The Baron (3,000), The New Adventures of Old Christine (14,000), Selfcare (14,000), Alive and Cooking (17,000) and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (17,000).

GO!
Danoz had 4,000 (and other broadcasts were 6,000), Bratz! was 5,000, MCD and Home Shopping were 6,000, Looney Tunes, Alcatraz and Conan were 7,000, Extra was 8,000 and The Flintstones was 9,000.

GEM
Home Shopping, Friends, Poor Cow were all 1,000, MCD, Joyce Meyer Enjoy Everyday Life, Seaway, No Palea and more Home Shopping were 2,000, Gem Presents, Dangerman and F Troop were all 3,000.

TEN
Life Today with James Robison (4,000) was lowest for TEN followed by The Early Show (4,000), Self Care Corporation (5,000), Mental (5,000), Bayless Conley (6,000), Danoz Home Shopping (6,000) and Hour of Power (7,000).

ELEVEN
The Brady Bunch (Sat Early) had 4,000 viewers then Toasted TV (5,000), Jag (8,000), The King of Queens (10,000), 7th Heaven (10,000), Happy Days (11,000) and Everybody Loves Raymond (12,000).

ONE
ONE had nobody watching Expedition Impossible or I Fish repeats, Football: FA was 1,000, 2012 MotoGP was 3,000, Triathlon: ITU World Championship was 3,000, NFL Total Access and The WWE Experience were 4,000, and MASH was 5,000.

SBS ONE
Lowest for SBS ONE was Portuguese News plus Weatherwatch and Music on 0 viewers, Latin American News (1,000), Urdu News (1,000), Greek News, Russian News, Arabic News, Hindi News, (all 1,000), Weatherwatch Overnight (1,000), Turkish News, German News (both 2,000).

SBS TWO
Hungarian News, Hindi News, Polish News (2nd Edition), Spanish News, Urdu News, Chinese News, Portuguese News, Indonesian News, Korean News, Arabic News, Japanese News, Turkish News, Hong Kong News, French News, and Maltese News all ranked a 0.

53 Responses

  2. @EvanOnTheGC: Seems about right. I know for a fact that people were watching the Expedition Impossible repeat – I was, and I was chatting to someone else who was at the same time. I don’t doubt the show didn’t rate, but at the same time the numbers themselves just aren’t that reliable.

  3. The problem I have with watching Conan or Craig or Dave is that I don’t have time to watch these every night. If the program guide on foxtel listed guests. I’d watch them way more often. As i’d tape them when I like a guest.

    Also I don’t know if I remembered conan was on go… opps

  4. I thought that Conan would have gotten more than 7,000 viewers on GO!, but it’s doing a descent job because it doesn’t start until around 11.30pm or midnight most nights. Conan has a small, but loyal fan base.

  6. Personally I love the Home Shopping shows, they are a guilty pleasure. The advertorials and products are so cheesy, they are entertainment in themselves. I don’t watch them in the small hours of the morning, I occasionally catch them during the day when they run on the digital channels. Fascinating to see what the insominiacs, shift workers and others are watching! Thanks!

  7. Gosh, I watch Cold Feet, Alive & Cooking, Sons & Daughters and Extra. What does that say about me? Nothing good I guess… I have watched S&D every time they have repeated the series, I think I am probably up to my sixth rotation, and I am not sure why I even do watch it, I just can’t not! Maybe it’s the fabulous fashions or seeing simpler times when people used phone boxes and couldn’t prove who a babys father is because it was before DNA profiling! Oh, if any other S&D tragics are reading this, I saw Susan Palmer (the 2nd one) playing the mother on one of those pre-paid funeral ads, she still sounds the same.

  8. In WA sons & daughters is shown at 12.30am Thursday on 7Two. only once a week it seems. I was one of 4000 people who watched sea breeze on Saturday morning

  9. I’m willing to bet anything that the “Friends” airing that rated zero is the one that’s on occasionally around midnight. The regular nightly episodes would definitely have regular viewers. I didn’t realise that “Sons and Daughters” was on 7TWO. I usually catch it on Seven. I loved that show as a kid!

  10. Most of the long running sit-coms have short lived shows that are closley related. I’d love it if they mixed in Joanie Love Chachie with Happy Days episodes and added Joey to Freinds and Tabitha to Bewitched. I don’t know how available these shows are, as they havn’t been seen since their original airing, but they would be interesting plus adding to the looped epsode count.

  12. @ David or Andrewb

    So does that mean only 7 people were watching Conan or 7,000? And either way isn’t that really bad numbers for Conan for a 12.00am start? Thanks!!

  13. Interesting story! I’m not suprised by some of those figures for shows on Eleven because they have already repeated all seasons of those shows at least twice since 11 started, cmon 11 how about a new batch of classic shows?? i mean i love Happy Days but theres only so many times i can re watch it!

  16. thanks for posting up these figures. It’s good to see once in a while what is on the other side of the ratings list.

    I find it interesting to see how shows like those listed rate, mainly in the ”middle of the night”.

  19. Terrible Figures for Everybody Loves Raymond.It deserves to do better even though an old sitcom I would rather watch that than the crap that passes for Home and Away for instance since the River Thugs came along to the latter.

  22. another sons and daughters tragic here i dont watch the tv repeats because i already have all 972 episodes and am currently watching those yes there are 2 sons and daughters on

    1 the early morning repeats a couple of times a week on channel seven usually around midnight tuesday and wednesday i think

    2 the 7two repeats 8:30am on 7two

  23. re: Sons and Daughters – earlier episodes are shown twice a week around midnight on the Seven’s main channel. But the figures above said the 7Two episodes are attracting zero viewers. There’s no way the 7Two episodes has no viewers, perhaps it’s an error from OzTam.

  25. I think that these figures really show how hit and miss the ratings are. I know loads of people that watch the news from their part of the world on both SBS1 and 2, and yet I don’t know of anyone who will admit to being among the near 1m viewers of Winners and Losers!

    However, if these are realistic viewing figures, it does make you wonder why each of the commercial channels are persevering with infomercials and home shopping if hardly anyone is watching.

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