★★★★★ 0/5

9021-uh-oh

90210 may have hit #1 in the 16-39 demographic on Monday night, but there was no crowing by TEN.

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First the good news: 90210 (at 8:30pm) was #1 in the 16-39 demographic last night, just ahead of Australian Idol.

Now the bad news: It only got 837,000 and 666,000 (is that an omen?) nationally, thrashed by City Homicide at 1.78m.

TEN of course is always chasing demographics rather than total audience, indeed so are all our networks, but it will take time to change the culture of total figures in the mind of the Australian public.

Nine had its own troubles on Monday, too. Kitchen Nightmares USA was also thumped with a disappointing 732,000 viewers (across 2 hours). Maybe it will lift when Ramsay visits new restaurants next week (he was revisiting previous establishments last night).

90210 had a good launch on the CW Network in the US which prompted TEN programmer David Mott to say last week, “What a fantastic result. The show resonates perfectly with our core 18-49 demographic and we can’t wait for its Australian debut on Monday.

“Rarely do you have a show with such great global buzz and we’re confident come Tuesday morning we’ll be crowing our own rating victory.”

TEN finished the night with a disappointing 17.8% share, beaten again on a Monday by the ABC, and almost doubled by Seven.

Tuesday morning has now come and gone and so far TV Tonight is yet to hear any crowing from TEN…

Week 37

19 Responses

  1. I never watched the originial (since I’m 15yo!) so I can’t compare but I have to say it was okay.

    Although it wasn’t great. 1) I didn’t watch the second hour. 2) It really wasn’t as “bitchy” – for want for a more eloquent word – as Ten made it out to be, and 3) I didn’t see Shannen Doherty!

  3. I loved it! Seeing Brenda and Kelly back together was a real thrill. It’s a big thing, really to have Shannon Doherty back, considering the time she was in the show previously was the shows best years and she never appeared again after she was axed. I also loved the nods to other Aaron spelling drama’s as the father was from Melrose and the Mother was on Summerland. Then there was a suprise cameo from Linda Grey ( Dallas, Models Inc) The Young cast are good too, can’t really fault them. ( Although why is Kellys half sister going by her surname and not her first, who does that?) But alll in all I was in Soapy Heaven!

  5. I might have been more interested in 90210 if they had done more to encourage me than air those annoying promos every second ad break. Some actual indication of plot maybe. I vaguely remember one longer advert nearer the air date but aside from that there was nothing to make me want to watch it. I was a fan back in the early days, so… yeah.

    As for Ramsey, I watched that. I was a bit disappointed it was just a clip show though and would have turned off had there been anything else on I wanted to watch, but there wasn’t. Perhaps that is what everyone else did though?

  6. I thought the show was FANTASTIC. The scrpit was fast paced and very witty. …and as for Shannon Doherty, she is still so HOT.
    Keep showing it ch10 you have got me hooked

  7. 9021-told-you-s0 🙂

    SwaySlayer, Rob Thomas wrote the original pilot script and then walked off the show, replaced by Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs, who rewrote it. You won’t see Rob’s name in the writing credits again.

    As for Ramsay, Nine’s hands were obviously tied by the sudden imposing upon them of what appeared, from the first 10 minutes, to be a clip show (actually it was half clip show, half “revisit” show, still way better than the ridiculous UK “revisited” episodes which had a total of about 5 minutes’ new content!) I agree, it will likely life next week with proper new episodes – *if* Nine doesn’t censor them as drastically as it did last night’s! The chopping in the first half hour in particular was ludicrous – brutal jump-cuts to remove ANY trace of swearing. It continued to be lightly edited and occasionally bleeped throughout.

    Nine should be careful with this. Ramsay fans don’t want him censored.

  9. What I want to know is if they’re planning to bump the show when Good News Week comes back. Will they just plonk it off at 9:30pm? That isn’t very friendly with their target demographic. They might have better luck doing what they did with The OC and letting it continue airing over the summer

  10. I used to watch the original back in the day, and this one wasn’t as tragic as it could have been – it definitely has many elements of the old one in terms of scripts and storylines. Don’t know whether I’ll watch it regularly, as I am a big fan of City Homicide, but I hope 10 sticks with it for a little while.

  11. ITA at times it was hard to pick the kids form the teachers, is it a case of the actors playing roles 5 years younger than their age or with the likes of Lori and Jennie running around looking ten years younger?

    I like it and watched it last week but will probably wait the 6 days and watch it on ch10, City Homicide was a snooze last night and don’t get me started about Ramsay.

    IMO ch10 should be pleased with the demographics and let it have time to grow.

  13. J Bar, i was actually surprised to find out the age of the actors, i figured they’d be in their twenties playing 15 but they are more like 18 playing 15, i’m 22 and most of them are younger than me, makes me feel old. the teacher guy is my age, i don’t look as old as these people. i didn’t mind the show and would keep watching, these days i pretty much watch anything that is different and not a cop/crime/medical show though. i didn’t like the way they changed the theme tune, i was dying to hear the original tune, i thought they’d at least keep that the same.

  14. I tuned in to 90210 at 9:30 and tuned out (after switching over to Ramsay numerous times) at about 10pm. It just wasn’t believable in the slightest. Were all the ‘teenagers’ in the original 90210 THAT confident, skinny, tanned and perfect-toothed?

  15. It might not have been as bad as I thought it would be but it was still rubbish and deserved the ratings it had. Are we supposed to believe that these actors who look like they’re in their twenties are actually 15/16?

    The real challenge for networks worldwide is how to attract younger viewers to televison when they’re so distracted by the internet and other forms of technology. For Australian networks, the challenge is to find content that can’t easily been downloaded from the internet. ie make more Australian programs. Only older viewers are watching television in the old way. Many younger Australian viewers with the technology couldn’t even wait a few days for Ch 10 to fast track 90210. They downloaded it the next day. Others are too busy occupied with other things, to care about watching television.

  16. “but it will take time to change the culture of total figures in the mind of the Australian public”

    Of course it will when media commentators continue to report as such! The US reports in 18-49’s the same as Australian media does in Total People… why is it so hard to make the change here? Is it the fact we’ve only got three main commercial FTA channels?

  17. Let’s put it this way, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

    There were a few flashes of wit where I assume Rob Thomas remembered that he once created a brilliant show (Veronica Mars), but outside of the hilarity of Shannon Doherty and Jennie Garth pretending not to hate each other, I won’t be coming back for another viewing.

    Having said that, I won’t be watching City Homicide either. Ugh. Boring.

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