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TEN on tenterhooks

Spare a thought for TEN. It's been an awful week, and worse may be yet to come.

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It’s been an awful week for TEN, Taken Out, 90210 and Bondi Rescue: Bali were all erased within seven days of each other.

As of Friday TEN has only had three shows above the 1m mark -and one of those was a repeat.

On two nights this week TEN finished behind the ABC, with two more results yet to be handed down. As it tries to save face from a week of crushing blows, TEN is in danger of ending the week behind the ABC.

Ominously, Fridays are often weak for TEN, while Saturdays are generally strong for the ABC.

By Friday the results for the week stood at:

Seven: 30.5%
Nine: 25.9%
TEN: 19.8%
ABC: 18.7%
SBS: 5.1%

And while TEN’s fortunes are tumbling, there’s good news in sight for Nine. Melbourne playing in the NRL Grand Final is a ‘best case scenario’ for the network, giving it a big boost for Week 41.

Week 40

35 Responses

  1. Australian Drama suffers from “Trying too hard to be edgy like American shows” syndrome. They try to be seriously dramatic, but they forget to be natural and real, and they completely remove any potential for humour and appealing characterisation. They try for epic, serious, and action packed, but it just ends up weak, small, and domestic. See “Rush,” “City Homicide,” and “Sea Patrol”.

    Of course, if they abandon attempting to copy America, they just end up with soapy stuff like McLeod’s Daughters.

    They have to find that middle ground that makes a show funny yet exciting, entertaining yet powerful, and uniquely Australian. So far, from what I’ve seen, something like that hasn’t even been attempted. It’s all one thing, and failure to be anything else, every time.

    They should try taking their lead from the Brits instead.

  2. DansDans, I agree with all of your statements (especially 2 and 3), Ten really looks like a kids channel, but by not evolving with the departing audience, always relying on two core programs for nearly the last twenty years (i.e The Simpsons and Neighbours), being the first Australian TV network to fall into overseas owners hands and the dramatic decline in content produced by the individual stations themselves.

    A critical example is ADS-10 in Adelaide. Back in 2000, Adelaide’s Ten News bulletin was moved to Melbourne, due to costs with upgrades for digital broadcasting. When ADS opened their new station facility recently, the Adelaide Ten News 5pm bulletin should have been returned to Adelaide. Ten did not include room for a news studio in the new facility, henceforth keeping Ten News Adelaide produced interstate at the expense of Adelaide jobs.

    Same with TVQ-10 in Brisbane. Just recently, the station “celebrated” twenty years since the switch from channel 0 to channel 10, with no special report, no nothing. Same with the Expo 88 20th anniversary, even though TVQ-0/10 was the official broadcaster of the world exposition I am seriously scared that Ten will completely wreck Q150 next year, as they have the rights. If you wreck our state’s sesqucentenary Ten, Brisbane will not forget it…

  3. I have read extensively about tv ratings, so that is why i believe they are reasonably accurate. There have even been extensive tests with about 20 000 people, and the oztam system was accurate within 1%. It may not sound representative, but i believe it is. Although, yes it only includes home use, so it obviously can’t measure pubs etc.

    Totally agree Sephiroth_FF, anything that remotely sounds like a factual show or reality show, i stay clear from. If we got to see behind the scenes of those factual shows, i guarantee the context would be very different to what gets shown on screen.

  4. I think there are few things here:

    1) How can 2 to 3 thousand ratings boxes really be representative of 21 million people? This is the first joke of the TV industry. When I go to work and hear 9 out of 10 people talking about a TV show that they watched that gets axed because no one watches it, it makes me wonder how accurate these figures are. I’m not saying that everyone watches TV at the same time and that the 10 people I know watching that show are reflective of the population, but sometimes these directors need to look a little further than 3000 people Australia wide – this is also reflective of sports broadcasts as well. I honestly dont believe less than 800,000 people are watching the AFL on saturday night when it doesnt include hotels, pubs, clubs and groups of people watching in one location.

    2) Ten looks like a kids channel. They need a new look as others have suggested. A new logo, a new slogan, new colours, new talent and a new line up of shows. They need to take their news more seriously (no pun intended) and give their shows a chance for longer than a week.

    3) They need an Australian board and owners. They need to release this firm grip on Sydney and realise there are other cities in the country as well – dont base everything out of Sydney.

    4) Meh what do I know? I hardly watch TV anymore thanks to torrents. I hate commercial and would rather play video games than wait around for shows to start. Too bad, hey Ten? I’m one of your core audience. Ah well, but you really dont care about what I think.

  5. I’m not a big fan of most Australian shows but they do need to be on. This is Australia after all.

    I’m beginning to think that this reality garbage will never go away. I’m so sick of it all the time. There’s never anything on because trash like this takes up all of the timeslots. I want quality, scripted TV. I know a lot of people bash American TV but there are loads of high quality shows over there. We need more of them to be brought over here.

    Another thing I can’t stand is shows like RPA, Medical Emergency, The Force, Find My Family, Air Crash Investiagtors, Serious Crash Unit, etc. I don’t see how someone can get pleasure out of viewing these. I couldn’t think of anything worse to do with my time than watch despressing things like this. That’s why I enjoy fiction.

  6. They definitely should have kept dollhouse, and just extended the show to 70 (advertised – unlike nine’s fringe) minutes. They do that for shows from cable as well. That would have pulled the numbers.

  10. I agree with most of what has been said here but I’d like to point out another point of view…

    Ten’s reliance on reality and American TV has may have stemmed from the fact that a lot of the time when they launch Aussie-made scripted TV NOBODY WATCHES it. Remember The Cooks, The Surgeon, White Collar Blue? Ratings weren’t strong enough to keep these shows running. Even Rush’s ratings aren’t spectacular. Perhaps this explains Ten’s reliance on reality and American shows and hesitation to produce Aussie TV.

    I have a sneaking suspicion that if these shows (even the new Kenny series or Bondi Bali) had been screened on Seven or Nine they would have a better chance of larger ratings.

    Some of Ten’s problems arise from the notion that peole are less inclined to watch Ten, which I guess stems from their erratic programming, constant axing of shows, running shows late etc. (Then again Seven and Nine do this too!)

    But I consider Ten one of the best for “fasttracking” (better than Seven or Nine).

  11. Canwest need to get on a plane to Ten’s Sydney HQ and start making heads roll.

    Bring some Canadians over here, get them to fire some life into this corpse.

    Hot tip! Rebrand as >Global.

  12. It looks like ABC will beat Ten this week WITHOUT BIG BROTHER ON!!!!

    The early evening timeslots are tough and Neighbours suffers due to the poor lead in of Taken Out which has resulted in lower ratings for The Simpsons. Neighbours need older viewers to be a lot stronger and be able to beat H&A.

    Only 3 shows managed the 1 million mark, Idol on Sunday, TGYH and NCIS. Sunday and Tuesday were good, Monday and Friday were horrible and Wednesday and Thursday were not so flash. Tonight will be just as bad as yesterday and ABC will take 3rd place. Football would have helped but thats over.

    Ten needs to fix timeslots up, advertise better (aim for some older audiences 40+ as well), sort out 2009’s schedule so it will not get similar ratings to now. Sundays are better but Mondays and Wednesdays are worse. Maybe Jamie Oliver can help bu Supernatural will not improve Ten’s Mondays by much but we will have to wait and see.

  13. If they keep axing all these shows they will have nothing left. They should have at least tried 90210 in the Friday time slot. I have been a fan of House for many years but I am just not enjoying it anymore. They will have to put on their thinking caps 10 or they will loose many more viewers.

  15. Ten’s youth focus is a joke. It might have actually worked if they gave the male side of thier demographic some love. Seriously though, Ten needs to drop the whole thing and try instead to be more well rounded than Seven and Nine.

    And drop the seriously tag line. That just screams “We’re a joke!”

  16. Agree with Kuttyswood comments -about folks moving on as Ten just kept pitching ideas to so called Youth (15-26) aka sms, market.

    I am over 040, so Ten lost me ages ago.
    I only go back for specific shows like Medium,House,

    Ten bu throwing all its marbles at the “give it to now market’ ignore its old audience.

  17. Your quite right Russell 10 are really only concerned about those younger demos as that’s where the $$$ are. When you look at it in those terms 10 are very competitive. Same with Nine who while losing in TP will do very well in 16-39/18-49 which is a result of a concerted effort by Gyngel to target the younger demos this year.

    As for Neighbours it regularly beats ACA/TT in 18-49 but lags in TP as the over 50s avoid it like the plague.

  18. From a email to a friend from around a couple of months back. (around the time of the BB axing…)

    “I have made reference at a blog I frequent (at http://showbritz.debritz.net ) several times this year that Ten needs to get rid of the demographic focus if they are to regain the viewers they lost when they went for the youth demographic nearly twenty years ago.

    I would say there would be some 1980’s Ten viewers which stopped watching Ten when Dallas,Prisoner, YTT etc ended their runs on Ten, others stopped watching Ten during the TV Australia period in 1989/1990 and there are those who stopped watching Ten when their main evening news moved to 5pm in the early nineties and those who watched Ten for the original Good Morning Australia breakfast program until Kerri-Anne Kennerly left in 1991.

    Those viewers moved on to Nine (for news) and Seven (for entertainment), leaving their children behind to grow up with the network’s GMA replacement, Cheez TV, then later Toasted TV as well as other programs. ”

    Ten’s other major issue is the early evening. It needs to be fixed urgently…

  19. Over the past decade, I’ve noticed that 10 has declined the most out of the commercial networks. I’m not talking about a decline in ratings. I’m talking about a decline in quality. 7 and 9 aren’t very good either but 10 are by far the worst. I really wonder whether a trained chimp could run the station better than them? Better yet, a trained cat. But I really wonder just what’s going through their minds when they make these decision. They can’t afford to be lolly-gagging around like this when most people will just say “stuff that” and switch off. There are so many ways to access shows online these days. 10 really need to see what they’re doing and pull their socks up.

  20. Exactly Russell, even though some of 7’s shows are considered hits, like pttr, find my family, rspca etc, these shows are definitely targeted at older people (no offense to anyone who watches these by the way). The industry, oztam and the newspapers should definately include 18-49 in every ratings survey and tv ratings.

    As an example, Dancing with the stars US had 19.72m viewers and a 4.6/11 household share in 18-49, while heroes had less than half the viewers at 9.34m viewers and almost a matched 4.5/10 18-49 household share – http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/09/30/monday-night-ratings-wins-for-abc-cbs-and-nbc/5376. So, they would arguably make similar money from the core target demographic.

    Until this happens, the networks here, especially 7, will churn out press release after press release saying that millions of people watched a particular show, when relatively speaking in terms of the core audience that matters, it is rather average. So when they replace a show with 800,000 with a older skewed show that gets 900,000 , they are quite possibly losing money.

  21. Ten is only reaping now what it’s been sowing for decades. For the last few years, Ten relied upon BB and Idol for the ratings, while mistreating scripted shows and their viewers, and slowly but surely dismantling the trust the audience may once have had.

    Now, with BB gone and Idol’s ratings not what they used to be, Ten is in trouble. None of their new purchased series with a promise gave them any decent ratings. 90210, Ten’s big hope for 2008, has flopped miserably.

    What’s worse, instead of some soul-searching after the 90210 fiasco, what did Ten do? It’s done what it’s best at: yanked the series off the schedule and gave its most desired audience — teenagers — a harsh lesson in network disdain, a lesson these kids won’t forget in a hurry. Never mind, the kids will still have their 90210 parties, with their show downloaded off the web.

    Here’s my prediction: Ten won’t have a ratings success with a new scripted overseas show any time soon, not unless it starts working on rebuilding their viewers’ trust, which would take years, if it is at all possible.

  22. It should be blatantly obvious by now, but they should stop digging their grave by running shows late, especially reality ones. Yes, 5 minutes late is still late. Until they stop this at a minimum, I feel no sympathy at all for them. They target younger viewers who know how to use the internet to get shows, so don’t enable their skills. I think trying to get back lost viewers of fta is a lost cause, but their prime goal should be keeping their existing viewers, and they seem to be doing everything possible to sabotage this.

  25. David, do you have shares and show rankings for 18-49 and 16-39, Ten’s 2 target demos.

    While Ten comes third in overall viewers I suspect they are 2nd in young adults. And considering that is the business model they operate on, that’s what their success should be measured on.

    By no means am I saying that Ten is not doing it tough right now. I think they would admit that. But considering they programme for success in 18-49 first and 16-39 second, I think we need to measure their success based on that. They don’t programme to be #1 in total viewers.

    The model is changing and demos are increasingly more important that total viewing numbers. If that is the industry’s measuring yardstick, we should take that into consideration a little more. It’s the ill-informed press that is still hung up on only reporting total people.

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