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Say bye to variety for me

The Noughties will end with variety television closing a chapter after Rove bid his own show farewell last week. But Seven took the night and Week 47 of ratings.

rmcThe Noughties will end with a nail in the coffin of variety after Rove McManus announced he was winding down his show last Sunday. It closed a ten year chapter for the genre with a string of Logies, A-List guests and live memories to take home. Without any advance warning it also didn’t pull the kind of figures such a farewell deserved. Both the night and the week went Seven’s way for the second last week of the ratings season.

The Seven Network won Week 47 with a big 30.0% ahead of Nine’s 27.4% and TEN’s 20.1%. The ABC had 17.1% and SBS 5.4%.

Seven won three key demographics 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54.

GO! had 2.7%, 7TWO 2.0%, ABC2 1.5%, ONE 0.9% and SBS TWO 0.4%.

Seven also took Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Nine won Monday and Thursday. All cities fell to Seven except Melbourne -which Nine won by just 0.1%.

Once again Packed to the Rafters was the week’s top show with 1.8m viewers. Its other big drawcards were The Force, Border Security, Seven News, Today Tonight, Bones, Sunday Night, Highway Patrol, RSPCA Animal Rescue and Better Homes and Gardens. Under 1.2m were Medical Emergency, Last Chance Surgery, City Homicide, Criminal Minds, Destroyed in Seconds, FlashForward and Beauty & The Geek Australia. Even lower was Ghost Whisperer -down to 768,000. Deal or no Deal continues to defeat Hot Seat but is whipped in Brisbane. Sexiest Celebrity Body Parts slumped on 303,000. Kill Bill took 147,000 on 7TWO.

Big figures for the new episode of Two and a Half Men this week -1.46m viewers. Nine’s other top titles were The Big Bang Theory, Nine News (Sunday) and The Mentalist. They were followed by 60 Minutes, 20 to 1, A Current Affair and CSI: Miami. The Apprentice Australia was 793,000 while RPA Where Are They Now? was 835,000. Today again had some close shaves with Sunrise, just 20,000 behind on Tuesday and 11,000 on Friday. Nine’s long False Witness screening disappointed at just 529,000. But Sunday’s Australian Masters Golf with Tiger Woods was strong at 713,000. Aussie Ladette to Lady ended on 676,000 and no buzz this season. An episode of The Big Bang Theory was best for GO! with 276,000.

1.3m viewers tuned in for NCIS on TEN last week, much better than the 1.06m for Celebrity MasterChef. The reality show has settled the argument that we prefer watching ourselves on screen than C-List celebs. Elsewhere only Lie to Me and NCIS: LA topped the 1m mark with Australian Idol, Glee, Rush, Good News Week and The Simpsons to follow. The last edition of Rove was 760,000 amid some rumours the host wanted a better timeslot next year. Electric Dreams and Jamie’s American Road Trip disappointed. Best for The 7PM Project was 679,000 and 741,000 for Neighbours. Another soft week for ONE with UFC Wired on 73,000. Friday and Saturday nights were again slight, landing fourth on the latter.

The last Midsomer Murders drew 1.31m for the ABC, with Spicks and Specks also strong on 1.13m. Without many of its regular titles, ABC had a generally light week. Andrew Denton returned with a healthy 968,000 for Elders. Lilies premiered with 641,000 while Jail Birds opened to 632,000. Hungry Beast dropped to 641,000 but John Safran’s Race Relations slipped even lower, down to 492,000. The Bill, Hope Springs and ABC News continued to perform while Junkyard Wars and Doctor Who were ABC2’s best. ABC1 was second on Saturday.

Top Gear’s Winter Olympics Special took 680,000 for SBS, with Man vs Wild, Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam, Demetri’s Castle, Mythbusters, Iron Chef, RocKwiz, Inspector Rex, Trawlermen amongst it other best titles. The network’s Tuesday share was especially low. Encouragingly, Destination FIFA World Cup on Monday kicked a goal with 433,000.

The last week of the 2009 ratings survey is already underway.

Week 47

19 Responses

  1. Nothing Wrong with Good News Week.Considering the rubbish alternatives SBS gives us in the same timeslot with those overdone South Park Repeats GNW makes for a good alternative

  2. @Boy Wonder, you really are quite the conspiract theorist. But the latest one makes no sense at all. What motivation would a network have to do themselves out of viewers?

    Oh and David, I want to take back my comment that you weren’t biased. I have noted a bias towards Prisoner and Desperate Housewives.

  3. I’ve been watching Top Gear on BBC Knowledge (just came to Austar) and those eps run just over 45 minutes, SBS runs at about 50 while the original (only on BBC in the UK) runs around 60 minutes. My guess is Nine will get the 45 min version to allow for more ads but I still have to wonder what else is cut, the news segment doesn’t run 15 minutes.

    BTW the new UK series (airing on Nine in 2010) is great, 2 eps down, 5 to go.

  4. (I don’t know how i’d cope without this site so thank you David Knox, for even printing my rant which is really fair. I’m here many times thru the day)
    Why Rove did not give us all a heads up that something was going to announced makes me wonder if he has a resentment with TEN and purposely wanted to sabotage the final night? I mean he is no Oprah with 25years but 10 years is nothing to be sniffed at. In this tv climate 2 successful years is something. Heck on 9 four episodes in a row in the same time slot is something. I’m almost scared to see what 9 does with TopGear but will watch with high hopes they don’t wreck it. They will have the UK version so if all else fails I can watch that.
    2.5 is, well harmless fluff. Everytime I seem to switch on the telly it’s on. I would not buy it, or even download it but it’s okay to switch off for 22mins and not have to think about anything.

  5. It was about time Rove pulled the plug on his own show. It baffles me that there is always such a hysterical focus on this guy in the tabolid media. He is beige at best; a ‘poor man’s Adam Hills’. His program was never more than moderately chucklesome; a weary format with the odd half decent joke and a number of average to par sidekicks (see Peter Hellier). The ratings were rarely spectacular either.

    No more Rove and please, oh please Ten, follow suit by dumping Good News Week- funny in the nineties perhaps, bloody awful in the noughties. More Micallef and more Tony Martin!

  6. Now the questions remain –
    How many promised shows never made it to the screen ?
    Can Network Ten get The Panel back on air or a revitalised BB or will they overexpose Hamish & Andy ?
    Can Nine learn from their mistakes of this year ?
    Will Seven finda show to replace All Saints ?
    And finally will David Knox be ever able to say again – all shows ran on time and networks made no programming changes for last week

  7. Aside from the fact that I have never sensed a bias on this website, I find it very bizarre that some people are actually loyal to networks. Networks are just a bunch of shows stuck together, and at any time one will usually have more shows that I like than another, but I would certainly never watch anything just because it was on my prefered signal provider.

    They do, of course, raise my ire when they show viewers a lack or respect and take shows off at short notice or produce garbage, and TV Tonight provides a great place for venting about such things.

    Nine may be copping it now with a few years of bad choices, but before that (and admittedly before sites like this) Seven had a very long stretch in the doghouse themselves, and nobody really complains about Ten because they have been an also-ran since inception – to the point where it is now part of their business model – and there’s really very little point.

    David also runs a lot of stories on SBS despite the fact only about 16 people in the whole country watch it, but nobody calls that a “bias”.

    So David please continue to do what you do, “fair & balances” or not.

  8. I don’t think there’s any bias in this article. It’s just a fact that Seven won the week by a large margin, in 4 of 5 cities, 5 out of 7 days, and importantly in all key demographics, including their own (and Nine’s) target 25-54 and Ten’s target 18-49.

  9. To say David is biased is compeletly wrong, I only discovered this website about 5 months ago and since then I come back 3, 4 or 5 times a day to see what is happening in TV and what David has to say about TV land.

    Great work David

  10. Thank you David, I agree with you, I do not think you are biased and for this reason I always read this site each day to catch up on what is happening. Some people are never happy, and I thought the comment nine won Melbourne by .1 was a fair one, and shows how strong Seven is atm, and I think will be for a while to come, no I am not a seven fanboi, in fact I prefer watching TEN, but facts are facts, so again thank you for your reporting items of interest in the media sector

  11. lol Boy Wonder. If anyone is showing a bias towards a particular channel, it is you.

    This is one site which I think is very balanced and equal. Giving credit and criticisms where they are due, irrespective of the network. Keep up the good work David.

  12. David I have noticed a bias towards 7 here for a long time from you.
    ” All cities fell to Seven except Melbourne -which Nine won by just 0.1%.” Well All Cities did not fall to 7. Weather 9 won by 0.1% or with “a big” 3.0% is irrelevant. A win is a win.
    That being said I suppose you never said you were “fair & balances”. This is your blog so you can say what you want and set your own agenda.

    1. Bias to Seven? Interesting. Somehow I reckon they would say otherwise. 30.0% is a big weekly share whichever network wins it hence the reference. I did not say All Cities fell to Seven, I said All Cities except Melbourne. It still holds true and I don’t see the need to list the other 4 one by one given this outcome. It’s always a little amusing when people say “you’re biased to Network X.” It’s a bit like politics. By the end of the year I will have been ‘biased’ to about 5 networks which means I am probably hitting the right mark.

  13. The opening paragraph here seems rather sad! 🙁 Just makes me miss the show all over again. Pity they didn’t make a bigger send off for it.. with no advance warning seemed a little empty because of it .Although I think I read somewhere else it would have been strange to have a tribute to the last 10 years again after they had one not so long ago.

    I really hope the network heads (or even Rove himself) are working together for live variety replacements. Would love to see Shaun Micallef, Hamish & Andy or Tony Martin (or maybe Working Dog can organise something) with their own live variety shows. If no-one can do that then the return of Hey Hey better be permanent otherwise the only thing we can look to be the closest for local and overseas talent is The 7PM Project and they’re yet to open their show up to performances like The Panel did.

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